Amid major speculations on Pricing and Quality of Service of YupeePhone, we today received a clarification email from YupeePhone on their business practices, What they are going to provide as a part of their VOIP service and What they won't. The email is lengthy but I suggest you all read it. At the EOD, you are the BUYERS so this clarification hopefully help you in taking a stand.
Update: Yupee Phone has now offered a special partnership with us which will give you a free $4 talktime in your account when you signup via our blog. You can signup directly via this link. Or at the time of signing up there is a box which says "Coupon code". Enter
Dear friend,
The reason I am writing this email is because I have heard so many good and bad news on your forum and I can't resist to the idea of answering to some of the "nasty" reviews that are posted. I am currently working for YupeePhone.com and I have been doing so for 12 months, preparing the project from scratch. I have worked before in the field and I am a telecom technician.
1) The first thing I read was that we were not ready to get 2000 customers in a day and 15,0000 emails. No we weren't. However in 3 days most of the orders were sent out, except the ones that were Unverified or paid with an uncleared check. I know the people that work for the billing department and they did their best. I could never do that. I have ordered WOW or Comcast service and it was installed 14 days later and I was happy. I have ordered online calling cards and they came after 1 week.
2) ADRESS : We have a PO BOX as a customer address. However the state and the FCC know where to knock our door. We are an FCC approved company and this is the reason I work for this company. We are not a calling card company with no name and no license. For this I ask anybody to find the address of Comcast or Sprint or any other company's mailing address that is not a mailbox. With the volume of letters we receive our building would be a happy place for anyone who needs a letter to read!
3) PROMO PRICE : The price was a promotional offer. $19.95 was a price that never appeared in the market and never will be back. The $36.95 is a very good price. With the same money you get 600 minutes to India the most and this will be from a gray route (you know... illegal cell phones in a basement in India dialing out).
4) FAIR USE POLICY : Our Fair Use Policy changed! We started with 1200 minutes, we went up to 2000 minutes and now we are to 2400 minutes. We never decreased our residenial limit. The only real reason, appart from cost, is the stolen credit cards and the compromised Paypal accounts that they were used for 5 months now on our web site. Customers want their PIN yesterday, however after 4 DAYS Paypal actually canceled payments because the owner compained he never authorized the payment. In 3 cases we informed the proper authorities for this and we provided real IPs.
5) TERMS OF USE : The Terms Of Use NEVER changed. If someone has a copy of another document from our company I will eat it in public. I sent the pages to the server so I know better!
6) UNLIMITED PACKAGE : We received a banch of emails from people that were agents from Vonage, CallCentric and Time Warner. They were upset we are advertising an Unlimited Package for Residential Use and they threatened to report us to the FCC for unethical practices and faulse advertising. When they received the pages with more strict Fair Use Policies in their respective companies, they name came back to us.
7) TRUE UNLIMITED PACKAGE : The Monthly Unlimited 60 Countries for Residential Use is advertised as one, even with a fair use policy notice, because the in-Network calling is trully unlimited. No limit at all between our devices. If someone who has our device dials to another device in our Network he/she can talk for two days straight. Calls to the PSTN network are covered by the Fair Use Policy. There is no company in the entire world that does not have a Fair Use Policy, even Skype has one and in value is is less than ours.
8) BLOCKED ACCOUNTS : We never cancelled one single account. Ask users how many were cancelled by Vonage. Many of these users are still our clients. The employees of our company offered all their free vouchers to customers with blocked accounts in order to talk to their families. We had to stop issuing Vouchers to the employees because most of them are immigrants and they feal the same way as the clients.
9) QUALITY OF CALLS : The quality of the voice is good in our network. It is not AT&T's quality as I read on a post, however it is actually pretty good compared with other providers. There are two types of problems:
a) users who think they know how to unlock an ATA and use it on our network.
b) users who think they know how to configure X-lite.
c) customers who are calling a cell phone in India and they think it is always our fault the voice quality is not good.
At the technical support department we have answered close to a thousand emails from people who :
a) where using ulaw with our service, while in their accounts there is a notice for using g729a or g723 in the worst case.
b) where using silence suppression, while we asked them not too.
c) where using MagicJack to connect to the Local Access Numbers !
d) did not know that the sip settings are posted in their online account.
e) used linksys ad knew only how to change the username and password, nothing else.
10) EXISTING CUSTOMERS : Yupee Phone LLC honored the price for all the people that signed up while the promo was on. Everyone got the price and will keep it as long as they stay with us. Next month their accounts will have $19.95 less and they will have to add more money to use our service, simple as that.
11) BILLING : We have no contract, no recurring billing, no maintenance fees, no connection fees, no disconnection fees, no strange fees, no this an no that. Our fees are the standard fees that apply in the industry.
12) NEW CUSTOMERS : The $36.95 we offer now is the lowest price in the market. And I mean the lowest price I know of. If someone knows a better price for India, Albania, Iraq, Pakistan let me know. Especially for India we have absolutely the best price galaxy-wide. For Pakistan it is the best price universe-wide when everyone starts from 12 cents / minute. We are not Betamax to change the list of countries every month so people have to spent the money they already deposited
13) INVESTMENT : We are in the middle of an investment in India. Obeying the local strict rules for VoIP in India (ask the Lingo-India employees) we are getting ready to provide even a better quality of voice with the same price. .
14) YUPEEPHONE is going to survive. And it is going to survive for three major reasons :
- It is run by people who know what they are doing. I have never seen anybody panicking. Only smiling!
- it has the best prices in the market
- it does not depend in people from one country only.
Thank god the people who invested in this company have the money to pay us even if they do not get a single customers for months to come. And why do you think our 1800 number has no free lines, even when we (add more lines every day. Orders my friends... We have the hottest product in the market since soap was invented!
Finally, I am sorry for the length od the email but this is how I feel. I would be more than happy to receive your feedback and comments.
Regards,
Steve
Technical Support Dep.
YupeePhone.com
--------------
I just noticed that Yupee Phone prices are now $24.95, If I remember right someone told me it was around $36.95. I would like a clarification on change of Pricing. I strongly suggest Yupee Phone to stick to the prices they can afford and provide a quality service at. Comments Welcome.
{ 0 comments... Views All / Send Comment! }
Post a Comment