Re: [biz] Unlimitel Problems again anyone? Inbound busy signal... outbound working.
I'm currently ok but I've had some major problems with Unlimitel over the past week. On Friday our lines were down all day - that's about $2000 in lost business based on average work day. Late afternoon yesterday DTMF stopped working. I called support and was informed that it's a problem on their end. Notification message from them came 3 hours later. I lost 2 hours worth of calls because people couldn't navigate the IVR. Few weeks ago I wanted to get few more DIDs. Long story short after 4 days I didn't get any. Every time By the time support got back to me the numbers I wanted were gone. Anyway... I've always been pleased with the service so I've let my guard down and didn't have proper redundancy in place. I think I'll move my main vanity number over to Bell SNR and direct the calls to Unlimitel and some second SIP provider for redundancy. On Mar 21, 2014, at 11:04, Chuck Mariotti cmario...@xunity.com wrote: Regards, Chuck Mariotti 13 Seymour Ave. Toronto, Ontario M4J 3T3 Office: 416-469-5008 x 222 Fax: 416-469-5009 cmario...@xunity.com www.xunity.com
RE: [biz] Unlimitel Problems again anyone? Inbound busy signal... outbound working.
Bell SNR – Can someone explain this since it appears that the service is about $50 a month, per phone number. Can it handle multiple simultaneous inbound calls? From: Alex Kink [mailto:alexk...@gmail.com] Sent: March-25-14 11:50 PM To: Chuck Mariotti Cc: biz@taug.ca Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Problems again anyone? Inbound busy signal... outbound working. I'm currently ok but I've had some major problems with Unlimitel over the past week. On Friday our lines were down all day - that's about $2000 in lost business based on average work day. Late afternoon yesterday DTMF stopped working. I called support and was informed that it's a problem on their end. Notification message from them came 3 hours later. I lost 2 hours worth of calls because people couldn't navigate the IVR. Few weeks ago I wanted to get few more DIDs. Long story short after 4 days I didn't get any. Every time By the time support got back to me the numbers I wanted were gone. Anyway... I've always been pleased with the service so I've let my guard down and didn't have proper redundancy in place. I think I'll move my main vanity number over to Bell SNR and direct the calls to Unlimitel and some second SIP provider for redundancy. On Mar 21, 2014, at 11:04, Chuck Mariotti cmario...@xunity.commailto:cmario...@xunity.com wrote: Regards, Chuck Mariotti [Xunity_Ad] 13 Seymour Ave. Toronto, Ontario M4J 3T3 Office: 416-469-5008 x 222 Fax: 416-469-5009 cmario...@xunity.commailto:cmario...@xunity.com www.xunity.comhttp://www.xunity.com/
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
Reza, You were generating $3.00/month in VoIP minutes. We couldn't keep your account active with such low usage. For some reasons, we got a lot of customers with very low usage accounts (almost 25% of our customer base as of last year) and we needed to do something about it. The same customer base was still calling and requesting support and we were loosing a lot of money serving low usage customers. We couldn't refuse to support customers with low usage call volume. Keep in mind our service is not a residential service, it's a business service. The network was designed for business use, not residential use. This is why we use Bell as our PRI-T1 carrier, we get top quality and also a full redundant PRI-T1 network, but at a much higher cost than anyone else. We have now change our procedure last February and we ask our customers to spend a minimum of $50.00/year in VoIP minutes plus the DID cost in order to keep the account active. That change fixed our issues with very low usage accounts and residential customers. By doing so we are now generating more revenues per DIDs and we can now proceed with expanding our network and purchase more equipment to do so. At the end, it cost the customer a minimum of about $7.50/month for his DIDs, which is still a steal for a business phone line. The reason you were asked to move your DIDs out of our network was because you only spent $3.00/month for all your DID (I can't remember how many DIDs you had in total) in VoIP minutes. As a business, we need to make sure we generate enough revenue per DIDs to be able to serve you right. At $3.00/month we cannot keep your account active for sure. Would you? Like every businesses on TAUG, we have rent, datacenter, internet links and much more to pay and needs a decent revenue per DID to cover so. You ported out your DIDs to your own PRI to save some money to reduce your cost and this is fine. But Unlimitel couldn't afford to keep your other DIDs and loose money on your account. The issue here is the cost to provide DID services from other rate centre than Toronto is a lot higher than you think. VoIP providers have to pay extra $$$ for back hauling the DIDs on the PRI-T1 from other cities. But we sell the DIDs at a blended rate. But if a customer gets his own PRI-T1 in Toronto and buys DIDs from us for all other cities, we're loosing way too much money. That fact was also explained to you then. We were professional about asking you to port out your DIDs and we gave you enough time to do so without loosing service on your DIDs. The reason why Unlimitel is still in business today is because we do make sure that we get enough revenue from each customer. The cost to support our customers is our biggest cost in our company. It cost us more money in salaries every month for our support staff than our PRI-T1 cost!!! By making sure we get enough revenues for our DIDs, we keep the business going and the service up and running for our business customers. Stephan Monette Unlimitel Inc. Tel.: 1-877-464-6638 Fax: (613) 482-1077 On 2010-08-04, at 12:42 AM, Reza - Asterisk Consultant wrote: *Dear Mark (and readers):** *As a TAUG promoter, TAUG evangelist, and someone who has contributed for the benefit of TAUG and bringing/inviting over 100+ of my clients and students to TAUG from different avenues of expertise, including but not limited to promoting TAUG in major career fairs and providing Asterisk training (while representing TAUG) at international venues world wide over the past several years -- *without prejudice,* I have to interject here and say that this **is** also the place to bring forth concerns against carriers or service providers (not just recommendations) - for the benefit of everyone else, no matter how bitter it may sound. Yes, the thread is ugly and though it may sound like a pissing contest (as per your words) - it needs to be heard by those who are considering VoIP services or have voip services from Unlimitel. I'm not going to speak for Keith, Alex, Bruce or Chuck -- though they are my friends, business associates and also competitors for the past several years. I am going to speak for myself about my experience with Unlimitel and readers may interpret this as they see fit. No doubt, Alex isn't happy, Keith, Bruce and Chuck are being diplomatic, but I'm going to be very blunt. *On October 1st, 2009, 10:51 AM - I wrote to Stephan;* *I got my own PRI's and have my own capacity now, and marketing to Toronto based SMB SOHO. I need to port out 2 of my numbers. One is my home number and the other is my business number. *416-xxx- and 416-xxx-. *Nothing personal - just that I need more control over these numbers. The 3rd number I have, I want to keep with you. Please advise which company holds the PRI for my number and the main BTN - in order to ensure my port out request goes smoothly.* *Same day at 11:11 AM, I
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
Hello Stephan, Was there ever an announcement from Unlimitel about shifting to Business-only customers ? The service was clearly marketed for Resindential and Business back in 2006 when I signed up, See a copy of the web site from back then: http://web.archive.org/web/20060101013903/www.unlimitel.ca/voip.html Thanks, Liviu http://web.archive.org/web/20060101013903/www.unlimitel.ca/voip.html On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 6:06 AM, Stephan Monette monet...@unlimitel.ca wrote: Reza, You were generating $3.00/month in VoIP minutes. We couldn't keep your account active with such low usage. For some reasons, we got a lot of customers with very low usage accounts (almost 25% of our customer base as of last year) and we needed to do something about it. The same customer base was still calling and requesting support and we were loosing a lot of money serving low usage customers. We couldn't refuse to support customers with low usage call volume. Keep in mind our service is not a residential service, it's a business service. The network was designed for business use, not residential use. This is why we use Bell as our PRI-T1 carrier, we get top quality and also a full redundant PRI-T1 network, but at a much higher cost than anyone else. We have now change our procedure last February and we ask our customers to spend a minimum of $50.00/year in VoIP minutes plus the DID cost in order to keep the account active. That change fixed our issues with very low usage accounts and residential customers. By doing so we are now generating more revenues per DIDs and we can now proceed with expanding our network and purchase more equipment to do so. At the end, it cost the customer a minimum of about $7.50/month for his DIDs, which is still a steal for a business phone line. The reason you were asked to move your DIDs out of our network was because you only spent $3.00/month for all your DID (I can't remember how many DIDs you had in total) in VoIP minutes. As a business, we need to make sure we generate enough revenue per DIDs to be able to serve you right. At $3.00/month we cannot keep your account active for sure. Would you? Like every businesses on TAUG, we have rent, datacenter, internet links and much more to pay and needs a decent revenue per DID to cover so. You ported out your DIDs to your own PRI to save some money to reduce your cost and this is fine. But Unlimitel couldn't afford to keep your other DIDs and loose money on your account. The issue here is the cost to provide DID services from other rate centre than Toronto is a lot higher than you think. VoIP providers have to pay extra $$$ for back hauling the DIDs on the PRI-T1 from other cities. But we sell the DIDs at a blended rate. But if a customer gets his own PRI-T1 in Toronto and buys DIDs from us for all other cities, we're loosing way too much money. That fact was also explained to you then. We were professional about asking you to port out your DIDs and we gave you enough time to do so without loosing service on your DIDs. The reason why Unlimitel is still in business today is because we do make sure that we get enough revenue from each customer. The cost to support our customers is our biggest cost in our company. It cost us more money in salaries every month for our support staff than our PRI-T1 cost!!! By making sure we get enough revenues for our DIDs, we keep the business going and the service up and running for our business customers. Stephan Monette Unlimitel Inc. Tel.: 1-877-464-6638 Fax: (613) 482-1077 On 2010-08-04, at 12:42 AM, Reza - Asterisk Consultant wrote: *Dear Mark (and readers):** *As a TAUG promoter, TAUG evangelist, and someone who has contributed for the benefit of TAUG and bringing/inviting over 100+ of my clients and students to TAUG from different avenues of expertise, including but not limited to promoting TAUG in major career fairs and providing Asterisk training (while representing TAUG) at international venues world wide over the past several years -- *without prejudice,* I have to interject here and say that this **is** also the place to bring forth concerns against carriers or service providers (not just recommendations) - for the benefit of everyone else, no matter how bitter it may sound. Yes, the thread is ugly and though it may sound like a pissing contest (as per your words) - it needs to be heard by those who are considering VoIP services or have voip services from Unlimitel. I'm not going to speak for Keith, Alex, Bruce or Chuck -- though they are my friends, business associates and also competitors for the past several years. I am going to speak for myself about my experience with Unlimitel and readers may interpret this as they see fit. No doubt, Alex isn't happy, Keith, Bruce and Chuck are being diplomatic, but I'm going to be very blunt. *On October 1st, 2009, 10:51 AM - I wrote to Stephan;
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
Liviu, Back then we had a residential service for $18.95/month. We stopped offering this service to new customers in 2008 (or 2007, can't remember) but we keep serving existing residential customers with our $18.95/month service. Our VoIP a la carte is for PBX business customers. We do have residential customers using our VoIP a la carte, but as explained before, we require a minimum annual revenue of $50.00/year. We designed our network for business use and we keep maintaining it for businesses. Thanks, Stephan Monette Unlimitel Inc. Tel.: 1-877-464-6638 Fax: (613) 482-1077 On 2010-08-04, at 7:34 AM, Liviu Toma wrote: Hello Stephan, Was there ever an announcement from Unlimitel about shifting to Business-only customers ? The service was clearly marketed for Resindential and Business back in 2006 when I signed up, See a copy of the web site from back then: http://web.archive.org/web/20060101013903/www.unlimitel.ca/voip.html Thanks, Liviu http://web.archive.org/web/20060101013903/www.unlimitel.ca/voip.html On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 6:06 AM, Stephan Monette monet...@unlimitel.ca wrote: Reza, You were generating $3.00/month in VoIP minutes. We couldn't keep your account active with such low usage. For some reasons, we got a lot of customers with very low usage accounts (almost 25% of our customer base as of last year) and we needed to do something about it. The same customer base was still calling and requesting support and we were loosing a lot of money serving low usage customers. We couldn't refuse to support customers with low usage call volume. Keep in mind our service is not a residential service, it's a business service. The network was designed for business use, not residential use. This is why we use Bell as our PRI-T1 carrier, we get top quality and also a full redundant PRI-T1 network, but at a much higher cost than anyone else. We have now change our procedure last February and we ask our customers to spend a minimum of $50.00/year in VoIP minutes plus the DID cost in order to keep the account active. That change fixed our issues with very low usage accounts and residential customers. By doing so we are now generating more revenues per DIDs and we can now proceed with expanding our network and purchase more equipment to do so. At the end, it cost the customer a minimum of about $7.50/month for his DIDs, which is still a steal for a business phone line. The reason you were asked to move your DIDs out of our network was because you only spent $3.00/month for all your DID (I can't remember how many DIDs you had in total) in VoIP minutes. As a business, we need to make sure we generate enough revenue per DIDs to be able to serve you right. At $3.00/month we cannot keep your account active for sure. Would you? Like every businesses on TAUG, we have rent, datacenter, internet links and much more to pay and needs a decent revenue per DID to cover so. You ported out your DIDs to your own PRI to save some money to reduce your cost and this is fine. But Unlimitel couldn't afford to keep your other DIDs and loose money on your account. The issue here is the cost to provide DID services from other rate centre than Toronto is a lot higher than you think. VoIP providers have to pay extra $$$ for back hauling the DIDs on the PRI-T1 from other cities. But we sell the DIDs at a blended rate. But if a customer gets his own PRI-T1 in Toronto and buys DIDs from us for all other cities, we're loosing way too much money. That fact was also explained to you then. We were professional about asking you to port out your DIDs and we gave you enough time to do so without loosing service on your DIDs. The reason why Unlimitel is still in business today is because we do make sure that we get enough revenue from each customer. The cost to support our customers is our biggest cost in our company. It cost us more money in salaries every month for our support staff than our PRI-T1 cost!!! By making sure we get enough revenues for our DIDs, we keep the business going and the service up and running for our business customers. Stephan Monette Unlimitel Inc. Tel.: 1-877-464-6638 Fax: (613) 482-1077 On 2010-08-04, at 12:42 AM, Reza - Asterisk Consultant wrote: *Dear Mark (and readers):** *As a TAUG promoter, TAUG evangelist, and someone who has contributed for the benefit of TAUG and bringing/inviting over 100+ of my clients and students to TAUG from different avenues of expertise, including but not limited to promoting TAUG in major career fairs and providing Asterisk training (while representing TAUG) at international venues world wide over the past several years -- *without prejudice,* I have to interject here and say that this **is** also the place to bring forth concerns against carriers or service providers (not just recommendations) - for the benefit of everyone
RE: [biz] Unlimitel
Reza, I understand where you're coming from but for me this is like when somebody asks for a reference and you can't give it because the person was useless. People come and ask TAUG who they would recommend, so if you've had a good experience with a company you put their name forth, if that happens to be any company but Unlimitel we can all read between the lines . To drag a person through the mud is bad enough but one who is a regular reader/contributor is just bad form in my opinion, this should have been discussed off board. I know I'm a lurker and read more than I post, just my 2 cents. From: Reza - Asterisk Consultant [mailto:aster...@neoenova.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 12:43 AM To: asterisk biz Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Dear Mark (and readers): As a TAUG promoter, TAUG evangelist, and someone who has contributed for the benefit of TAUG and bringing/inviting over 100+ of my clients and students to TAUG from different avenues of expertise, including but not limited to promoting TAUG in major career fairs and providing Asterisk training (while representing TAUG) at international venues world wide over the past several years -- without prejudice, I have to interject here and say that this **is** also the place to bring forth concerns against carriers or service providers (not just recommendations) - for the benefit of everyone else, no matter how bitter it may sound. Yes, the thread is ugly and though it may sound like a pissing contest (as per your words) - it needs to be heard by those who are considering VoIP services or have voip services from Unlimitel. I'm not going to speak for Keith, Alex, Bruce or Chuck -- though they are my friends, business associates and also competitors for the past several years. I am going to speak for myself about my experience with Unlimitel and readers may interpret this as they see fit. No doubt, Alex isn't happy, Keith, Bruce and Chuck are being diplomatic, but I'm going to be very blunt. On October 1st, 2009, 10:51 AM - I wrote to Stephan; I got my own PRI's and have my own capacity now, and marketing to Toronto based SMB SOHO. I need to port out 2 of my numbers. One is my home number and the other is my business number. 416-xxx- and 416-xxx-. Nothing personal - just that I need more control over these numbers. The 3rd number I have, I want to keep with you. Please advise which company holds the PRI for my number and the main BTN - in order to ensure my port out request goes smoothly. Same day at 11:11 AM, I got a reply from him, You will need to port out all your number as we will now close your account. In your port request just specify Bell as the carrier and Unlimitel as the reseller. Use your billing information you have with Unlimitel in your request. Bell will check your account status with our database to accept or reject the LNP request. This is your 30 days notice that we will be closing your account on November 1st 2009 and we will refund any balance from your prepaid account on that date. I checked your usage for the last 2 months and you used less than $6 in minutes. So we can't keep your account with us with such low revenues. I have referred customers to Unlimitel over the past several years and had them purchase their own accounts with their own credit card for termination and origination. For each of these referrals, I had been offering Asterisk hosting solutions. Each of them are light users with an average of 200-300 minutes per month.So I knew Unlimitel's excuse to terminate me as a client was... well... (fill in the blanks).I would caution you twice before you do business with Unlimitel. Was I upset and am I upset at Unlimitel? Absolutely! Anyone would be. I assure you, and I promise you - I am **not** the only person Unlimitel has fired as a client. This entire SNAFU could have easily been avoided by Unlimitel if they exercised a little more customer friendly professional approach with elegant courtesy, reasonable time line, and/or parting away under good terms. As per your quote, besides if you have nothing good to say, why say it, this is supposed to be a community helping each other -- You say it, so your fellow community members are cautioned about the true nature of certain business owners and you say it, because you believe that is the right thing to do. I commend Alex and Keith for taking the stand in addressing their concerns openly and boldly. With no regrets, Reza. On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Mark Palser mpal...@acpa.ca wrote: Take this off board, really isn't the proper venue, besides if you have nothing good to say, why say it, this is supposed to be a community helping each other, not a place to have a pissing match
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
Whoa. I did not mean to open a can of worms. I have resolved a problem by providing Unlimitel with my girlfriend's credit card # to authorize a payment for $12, after getting my girlfriend in the middle of the day over to McGill to scan her credit card form and signature (she was not too happy :) ) and will provide them with new CCs when they come in from a bank (hopefully this morning). Thank you. What I wanted to say was that I was a bit surprised that they treat you like a criminal threating to cut off your service within hours (for $12 nevertheless) even when you have steady minutes / payments for the last several years. I understand that it could become a problem, but maybe with new accounts, and not long term existing clients. As for www.VoIPGizmos.ca - we have clients who pay after and have about $8,000 in outstanding payments - we only give this benefit of the doubt to customers who have spent several thousand with us in a past and not for new ones. As Mike Lipkin would say, Trust your fellow man. BUT Unlimitel VoIP quality and support is amazing and highly recommended and the only of its kind in Canada. Just make sure no one steals your credit cards or you are in trouble, Buster. :) -- Alex Kovalenko, http://ca.linkedin.com/in/kovasys Director of Operations @ Kovasys IT Recruitment IT Recruitment and Headhunting | Chasseur de Tête en TI 888.568.2747 x701 | www.ITHeadhunters.ca Read about us in the News: http://bit.ly/KovasysNews Join our IT Jobs Association Linkedin group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2464449 Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kovasys On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 7:46 AM, Mark Palser mpal...@acpa.ca wrote: Reza, I understand where you're coming from but for me this is like when somebody asks for a reference and you can't give it because the person was useless. People come and ask TAUG who they would recommend, so if you've had a good experience with a company you put their name forth, if that happens to be any company but Unlimitel we can all read between the lines . To drag a person through the mud is bad enough but one who is a regular reader/contributor is just bad form in my opinion, this should have been discussed off board. I know I'm a lurker and read more than I post, just my 2 cents. From: Reza - Asterisk Consultant [mailto:aster...@neoenova.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 12:43 AM To: asterisk biz Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Dear Mark (and readers): As a TAUG promoter, TAUG evangelist, and someone who has contributed for the benefit of TAUG and bringing/inviting over 100+ of my clients and students to TAUG from different avenues of expertise, including but not limited to promoting TAUG in major career fairs and providing Asterisk training (while representing TAUG) at international venues world wide over the past several years -- without prejudice, I have to interject here and say that this **is** also the place to bring forth concerns against carriers or service providers (not just recommendations) - for the benefit of everyone else, no matter how bitter it may sound. Yes, the thread is ugly and though it may sound like a pissing contest (as per your words) - it needs to be heard by those who are considering VoIP services or have voip services from Unlimitel. I'm not going to speak for Keith, Alex, Bruce or Chuck -- though they are my friends, business associates and also competitors for the past several years. I am going to speak for myself about my experience with Unlimitel and readers may interpret this as they see fit. No doubt, Alex isn't happy, Keith, Bruce and Chuck are being diplomatic, but I'm going to be very blunt. On October 1st, 2009, 10:51 AM - I wrote to Stephan; I got my own PRI's and have my own capacity now, and marketing to Toronto based SMB SOHO. I need to port out 2 of my numbers. One is my home number and the other is my business number. 416-xxx- and 416-xxx-. Nothing personal - just that I need more control over these numbers. The 3rd number I have, I want to keep with you. Please advise which company holds the PRI for my number and the main BTN - in order to ensure my port out request goes smoothly. Same day at 11:11 AM, I got a reply from him, You will need to port out all your number as we will now close your account. In your port request just specify Bell as the carrier and Unlimitel as the reseller. Use your billing information you have with Unlimitel in your request. Bell will check your account status with our database to accept or reject the LNP request. This is your 30 days notice that we will be closing your account on November 1st 2009 and we will refund any balance from your prepaid account on that date. I checked your usage for the last 2 months and you used less than $6 in minutes. So we can't keep your account with us with such low revenues. I have referred customers to Unlimitel over
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
This has been a most entertaining and in the end quite a constructive feed. Just my opinion. A couple of years ago I went to a conference in Florida for vici and met a couple of fellas from Brazil, they had been wrestling with fraud, hacked systems etc for call center clients in Brazil just ONE incident came to $50,000.00. (some number you called to pre pay cell phones and huge call centers 2k seats plus so blend right in to the bill i guess). Sometimes its hard to find that right balance. On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 11:01 AM, Henry Coleman henry.cole...@voip-pbx.cawrote: I think Stephan has got it about right, however he may want to look a product offering for new Asterisk (TAUG) members who basically want to experiment with VoIP lines. Although $50 is not a lot of money a six month introductory rate ($25) for new customers may bring in some new clients that can be developed as they grow. As for myself I have found Unlimitel to have constantly improved their QOS over the years and quite frankly would not consider any other carrier unless I had to. I would also like to mention a problem I had a couple of months ago when one of my client's servers got hacked ( It was my fault for leaving the door open). The hacker made about 12 calls to North Korea early one morning. Within an hour, someone from Unlimitel called me to ask if this was real, at which time I said NO and cut the calls and fix the security hole. Although I had to pay for these calls ($200) if I had been on a post payed business model I could have racked up thousands of dollars of calls without knowing. I am not a large user of VoIP services but I have to have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that my clients can be sure that their lines are the highest quality and are not going to disconnected because the VoIP supplier goes out of business. It is in everyone's interest to have a strong a viable carrier. PS I shall be giving Unlimitel a back-up credit card (just in case) H On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Kovalenko, Alex a...@kovasys.com wrote: Whoa. I did not mean to open a can of worms. I have resolved a problem by providing Unlimitel with my girlfriend's credit card # to authorize a payment for $12, after getting my girlfriend in the middle of the day over to McGill to scan her credit card form and signature (she was not too happy :) ) and will provide them with new CCs when they come in from a bank (hopefully this morning). Thank you. What I wanted to say was that I was a bit surprised that they treat you like a criminal threating to cut off your service within hours (for $12 nevertheless) even when you have steady minutes / payments for the last several years. I understand that it could become a problem, but maybe with new accounts, and not long term existing clients. As for www.VoIPGizmos.ca - we have clients who pay after and have about $8,000 in outstanding payments - we only give this benefit of the doubt to customers who have spent several thousand with us in a past and not for new ones. As Mike Lipkin would say, Trust your fellow man. BUT Unlimitel VoIP quality and support is amazing and highly recommended and the only of its kind in Canada. Just make sure no one steals your credit cards or you are in trouble, Buster. :) -- Alex Kovalenko, http://ca.linkedin.com/in/kovasys Director of Operations @ Kovasys IT Recruitment IT Recruitment and Headhunting | Chasseur de Tête en TI 888.568.2747 x701 | www.ITHeadhunters.ca Read about us in the News: http://bit.ly/KovasysNews Join our IT Jobs Association Linkedin group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2464449 Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kovasys On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 7:46 AM, Mark Palser mpal...@acpa.ca wrote: Reza, I understand where you're coming from but for me this is like when somebody asks for a reference and you can't give it because the person was useless. People come and ask TAUG who they would recommend, so if you've had a good experience with a company you put their name forth, if that happens to be any company but Unlimitel we can all read between the lines . To drag a person through the mud is bad enough but one who is a regular reader/contributor is just bad form in my opinion, this should have been discussed off board. I know I'm a lurker and read more than I post, just my 2 cents. From: Reza - Asterisk Consultant [mailto:aster...@neoenova.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 12:43 AM To: asterisk biz Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Dear Mark (and readers): As a TAUG promoter, TAUG evangelist, and someone who has contributed for the benefit of TAUG and bringing/inviting over 100+ of my clients and students to TAUG from different avenues of expertise, including but not limited to promoting TAUG in major career fairs and providing Asterisk training
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
/contributor is just bad form in my opinion, this should have been discussed off board. I know I'm a lurker and read more than I post, just my 2 cents. From: Reza - Asterisk Consultant [mailto:aster...@neoenova.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 12:43 AM To: asterisk biz Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Dear Mark (and readers): As a TAUG promoter, TAUG evangelist, and someone who has contributed for the benefit of TAUG and bringing/inviting over 100+ of my clients and students to TAUG from different avenues of expertise, including but not limited to promoting TAUG in major career fairs and providing Asterisk training (while representing TAUG) at international venues world wide over the past several years -- without prejudice, I have to interject here and say that this **is** also the place to bring forth concerns against carriers or service providers (not just recommendations) - for the benefit of everyone else, no matter how bitter it may sound. Yes, the thread is ugly and though it may sound like a pissing contest (as per your words) - it needs to be heard by those who are considering VoIP services or have voip services from Unlimitel. I'm not going to speak for Keith, Alex, Bruce or Chuck -- though they are my friends, business associates and also competitors for the past several years. I am going to speak for myself about my experience with Unlimitel and readers may interpret this as they see fit. No doubt, Alex isn't happy, Keith, Bruce and Chuck are being diplomatic, but I'm going to be very blunt. On October 1st, 2009, 10:51 AM - I wrote to Stephan; I got my own PRI's and have my own capacity now, and marketing to Toronto based SMB SOHO. I need to port out 2 of my numbers. One is my home number and the other is my business number. 416-xxx- and 416-xxx-. Nothing personal - just that I need more control over these numbers. The 3rd number I have, I want to keep with you. Please advise which company holds the PRI for my number and the main BTN - in order to ensure my port out request goes smoothly. Same day at 11:11 AM, I got a reply from him, You will need to port out all your number as we will now close your account. In your port request just specify Bell as the carrier and Unlimitel as the reseller. Use your billing information you have with Unlimitel in your request. Bell will check your account status with our database to accept or reject the LNP request. This is your 30 days notice that we will be closing your account on November 1st 2009 and we will refund any balance from your prepaid account on that date. I checked your usage for the last 2 months and you used less than $6 in minutes. So we can't keep your account with us with such low revenues. I have referred customers to Unlimitel over the past several years and had them purchase their own accounts with their own credit card for termination and origination. For each of these referrals, I had been offering Asterisk hosting solutions. Each of them are light users with an average of 200-300 minutes per month.So I knew Unlimitel's excuse to terminate me as a client was... well... (fill in the blanks).I would caution you twice before you do business with Unlimitel. Was I upset and am I upset at Unlimitel? Absolutely! Anyone would be. I assure you, and I promise you - I am **not** the only person Unlimitel has fired as a client. This entire SNAFU could have easily been avoided by Unlimitel if they exercised a little more customer friendly professional approach with elegant courtesy, reasonable time line, and/or parting away under good terms. As per your quote, besides if you have nothing good to say, why say it, this is supposed to be a community helping each other -- You say it, so your fellow community members are cautioned about the true nature of certain business owners and you say it, because you believe that is the right thing to do. I commend Alex and Keith for taking the stand in addressing their concerns openly and boldly. With no regrets, Reza. On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Mark Palser mpal...@acpa.ca wrote: Take this off board, really isn't the proper venue, besides if you have nothing good to say, why say it, this is supposed to be a community helping each other, not a place to have a pissing match. Confidentiality Note This message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended
RE: [biz] Unlimitel
Hummm.i joined this list because I wanted to convert our 3 offices to VOIP...i've learned more in the last 24hrs than I have in the last 6months, definitely thinking of putting off the decision till the technology gets better , So, although I agree that we shouldnt air out dirty laundry (and what seemed like some old history between 2 individuals) I think this type of open forum does allow potential customers to understand the other side of the technology better. Thx M -Original Message- From: Stephan Monette [mailto:monet...@unlimitel.ca] Sent: August 4, 2010 11:46 AM To: Tony Cowling Cc: Taug Bisiness List Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Hey Tony, I hear you. We had customers who got their system hacked and rank up a bill of $7,000 in just 2 hours. I was the one who called the customer at 23:00 on a Thursday night asking what was going on. Imagine if we didn't called the customer, it would had went all night for $60,000!!! I know another telecom provider in Ottawa that lost over $200,000 with just one customer. That business customer filed for bankruptcy immediately and the telecom provider was stuck with the bill. People do not realize how much money service providers looses to hacked systems and bad debts. They do not realize how much is at risk all the time. Stephan. On 2010-08-04, at 11:16 AM, Tony Cowling wrote: This has been a most entertaining and in the end quite a constructive feed. Just my opinion. A couple of years ago I went to a conference in Florida for vici and met a couple of fellas from Brazil, they had been wrestling with fraud, hacked systems etc for call center clients in Brazil just ONE incident came to $50,000.00. (some number you called to pre pay cell phones and huge call centers 2k seats plus so blend right in to the bill i guess). Sometimes its hard to find that right balance. On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 11:01 AM, Henry Coleman henry.cole...@voip-pbx.cawrote: I think Stephan has got it about right, however he may want to look a product offering for new Asterisk (TAUG) members who basically want to experiment with VoIP lines. Although $50 is not a lot of money a six month introductory rate ($25) for new customers may bring in some new clients that can be developed as they grow. As for myself I have found Unlimitel to have constantly improved their QOS over the years and quite frankly would not consider any other carrier unless I had to. I would also like to mention a problem I had a couple of months ago when one of my client's servers got hacked ( It was my fault for leaving the door open). The hacker made about 12 calls to North Korea early one morning. Within an hour, someone from Unlimitel called me to ask if this was real, at which time I said NO and cut the calls and fix the security hole. Although I had to pay for these calls ($200) if I had been on a post payed business model I could have racked up thousands of dollars of calls without knowing. I am not a large user of VoIP services but I have to have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that my clients can be sure that their lines are the highest quality and are not going to disconnected because the VoIP supplier goes out of business. It is in everyone's interest to have a strong a viable carrier. PS I shall be giving Unlimitel a back-up credit card (just in case) H On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Kovalenko, Alex a...@kovasys.com wrote: Whoa. I did not mean to open a can of worms. I have resolved a problem by providing Unlimitel with my girlfriend's credit card # to authorize a payment for $12, after getting my girlfriend in the middle of the day over to McGill to scan her credit card form and signature (she was not too happy :) ) and will provide them with new CCs when they come in from a bank (hopefully this morning). Thank you. What I wanted to say was that I was a bit surprised that they treat you like a criminal threating to cut off your service within hours (for $12 nevertheless) even when you have steady minutes / payments for the last several years. I understand that it could become a problem, but maybe with new accounts, and not long term existing clients. As for www.VoIPGizmos.ca - we have clients who pay after and have about $8,000 in outstanding payments - we only give this benefit of the doubt to customers who have spent several thousand with us in a past and not for new ones. As Mike Lipkin would say, Trust your fellow man. BUT Unlimitel VoIP quality and support is amazing and highly recommended and the only of its kind in Canada. Just make sure no one steals your credit cards or you are in trouble, Buster. :) -- Alex Kovalenko, http://ca.linkedin.com/in/kovasys Director of Operations @ Kovasys IT Recruitment IT Recruitment and Headhunting | Chasseur de Tête en TI 888.568.2747 x701 | www.ITHeadhunters.ca Read about us in the News: http://bit.ly/KovasysNews Join our IT Jobs
[biz] FW: [on-asterisk] RE: [biz] Unlimitel
I absolutely understand your reasoning. And it's also more business for you if the customer goes over $0. It's like asking Bell Canada to not provide long distance service by default. It would be depriving them of their good chunk of revenue source and it's un-fair. But maybe an option to TRUE pre-paid vs pre-paid/post-paid should be given to all customers at sign-up or portal level. I also understand that from a billing point of view this is a lot of work but it may clear the air for your customers who expect to receive some leniency if a bill is not paid within few hours on a pre-paid/post-paid account model. Regards, Bruce From: monet...@unlimitel.ca Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2010 11:48:59 -0400 CC: henry.cole...@voip-pbx.ca; aster...@uc.org To: het...@hotmail.com Subject: Re: [on-asterisk] RE: [biz] Unlimitel Bruce, Can you imagine how much hate mail we would receive if the system would suspend the service as soon as it hits $0.00 or less? Stephan. On 2010-08-04, at 11:40 AM, Bruce N wrote: I agree with Reza on this listing being the absolute right venue for recommendations and *concerns*. This post is not being made to the Asterisk User list but rather to the Biz list. I don't see why something like this should be censored. I understand Unlimitel's reasoning for payment on-time but I would not agree with them that accounts are *pre-paid*. A true pre-paid account would stop at $0 and customer is requested for more money. If a hacker is allowed to rack up $200 bill or so at the expense of the customer then a customer with a good payment record should be given a $50 chance as well. Or maybe not :-) Though, I commend Unlimitel for having a system in place to catch abnormal activity on the *post-paid* accounts. -Bruce
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
I think I see part of the problem with Unlimitel's business model. Typically as a consumer I don't fully appreciate problems until they happen to me. I may not think about how I might be unable to provide a credit card in a 24 hour period to keep service running. When it does happen I would be mad at a provider that I openly endorsed. To make matters worse, most of us have met Stephan and, on occasion, communicate directly with him and so we naturally feel like we have developed a better level of trust than his business model allows. To find out that disruption of service can happen and that there is no compassion from a person who has the authority to correct problems is disturbing. Stephan I really like what you are doing at Unlimitel, and cost isn't the reason I'm a customer, I gave up a cheaper provider to use Unlimitel. The quality and stability of your service isn't just being able to handle calls, I'm just realizing because of this thread another weak point is credit card processing. I don't care if your service is five-nines if a credit card issue brings it down. How can I justify moving a client's in-bound DID to Unlimitel if a credit card screw up can cost their business real dollars. It hurts my credibility as well. Part of the reason why I think you have been successful is that we all know you personally, at least through TAUG. If you were some faceless corporation people might not be so upset. Finally prepay seems to be better accepted by consumers than business. - Original Message - Whoa. I did not mean to open a can of worms. I have resolved a problem by providing Unlimitel with my girlfriend's credit card # to authorize a payment for $12, after getting my girlfriend in the middle of the day over to McGill to scan her credit card form and signature (she was not too happy :) ) and will provide them with new CCs when they come in from a bank (hopefully this morning). Thank you. What I wanted to say was that I was a bit surprised that they treat you like a criminal threating to cut off your service within hours (for $12 nevertheless) even when you have steady minutes / payments for the last several years. I understand that it could become a problem, but maybe with new accounts, and not long term existing clients. As for www.VoIPGizmos.ca - we have clients who pay after and have about $8,000 in outstanding payments - we only give this benefit of the doubt to customers who have spent several thousand with us in a past and not for new ones. As Mike Lipkin would say, Trust your fellow man. BUT Unlimitel VoIP quality and support is amazing and highly recommended and the only of its kind in Canada. Just make sure no one steals your credit cards or you are in trouble, Buster. :) -- John Van Ostrand CTO, co-CEO Net Direct Inc. 564 Weber St. N. Unit 12, Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 Ph: 866-883-1172 x5102 Fx: 519-883-8533 Linux Solutions / IBM Hardware -- John Van Ostrand CTO, co-CEO Net Direct Inc. 564 Weber St. N. Unit 12, Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 Ph: 866-883-1172 x5102 Fx: 519-883-8533 Linux Solutions / IBM Hardware - To unsubscribe, e-mail: biz-unsubscr...@taug.ca For additional commands, e-mail: biz-h...@taug.ca
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
John, This is why we have an option to use 2 credit cards in your account profile. You can have a backup credit card in your profile for situations like this. You can purchase a $100.00 prepaid credit card from your local corner store and use it as a backup credit card under your Unlimitel profile. This way you are protected against any down time due to credit card issues. Stephan. On 2010-08-04, at 2:08 PM, John Van Ostrand wrote: I think I see part of the problem with Unlimitel's business model. Typically as a consumer I don't fully appreciate problems until they happen to me. I may not think about how I might be unable to provide a credit card in a 24 hour period to keep service running. When it does happen I would be mad at a provider that I openly endorsed. To make matters worse, most of us have met Stephan and, on occasion, communicate directly with him and so we naturally feel like we have developed a better level of trust than his business model allows. To find out that disruption of service can happen and that there is no compassion from a person who has the authority to correct problems is disturbing. Stephan I really like what you are doing at Unlimitel, and cost isn't the reason I'm a customer, I gave up a cheaper provider to use Unlimitel. The quality and stability of your service isn't just being able to handle calls, I'm just realizing because of this thread another weak point is credit card processing. I don't care if your service is five-nines if a credit card issue brings it down. How can I justify moving a client's in-bound DID to Unlimitel if a credit card screw up can cost their business real dollars. It hurts my credibility as well. Part of the reason why I think you have been successful is that we all know you personally, at least through TAUG. If you were some faceless corporation people might not be so upset. Finally prepay seems to be better accepted by consumers than business. - Original Message - Whoa. I did not mean to open a can of worms. I have resolved a problem by providing Unlimitel with my girlfriend's credit card # to authorize a payment for $12, after getting my girlfriend in the middle of the day over to McGill to scan her credit card form and signature (she was not too happy :) ) and will provide them with new CCs when they come in from a bank (hopefully this morning). Thank you. What I wanted to say was that I was a bit surprised that they treat you like a criminal threating to cut off your service within hours (for $12 nevertheless) even when you have steady minutes / payments for the last several years. I understand that it could become a problem, but maybe with new accounts, and not long term existing clients. As for www.VoIPGizmos.ca - we have clients who pay after and have about $8,000 in outstanding payments - we only give this benefit of the doubt to customers who have spent several thousand with us in a past and not for new ones. As Mike Lipkin would say, Trust your fellow man. BUT Unlimitel VoIP quality and support is amazing and highly recommended and the only of its kind in Canada. Just make sure no one steals your credit cards or you are in trouble, Buster. :) -- John Van Ostrand CTO, co-CEO Net Direct Inc. 564 Weber St. N. Unit 12, Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 Ph: 866-883-1172 x5102 Fx: 519-883-8533 Linux Solutions / IBM Hardware -- John Van Ostrand CTO, co-CEO Net Direct Inc. 564 Weber St. N. Unit 12, Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 Ph: 866-883-1172 x5102 Fx: 519-883-8533 Linux Solutions / IBM Hardware - To unsubscribe, e-mail: biz-unsubscr...@taug.ca For additional commands, e-mail: biz-h...@taug.ca - To unsubscribe, e-mail: biz-unsubscr...@taug.ca For additional commands, e-mail: biz-h...@taug.ca
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
* John Van Ostrand j...@netdirect.ca [100804 14:09]: Finally prepay seems to be better accepted by consumers than business. I don't really want get into this, except to say this: 1) As a business, I use a few pre-paid services. 2) Those services are always cheaper, because *I* accept the risk instead of the supplier. That's my choice. So, because of that, in the few prepaid accounts I manage, I refill my balance *before* it is closed to expiring... If I had a CC issue when I re-fill it, I'ld still have a week or two to fix it before I get to my normal expiry/0-balance. In the pre-paid accounts I use and rely on, I fully expect them to not work if the balance hits 0. And I plan for that, because I want to use that service which is generally cheaper for more features than if I had a billed/post-paid service. a. -- Aidan Van Dyk Create like a god, ai...@highrise.ca command like a king, http://www.highrise.ca/ work like a slave. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
Does Unlimitel allow you to add credit in advance? This would be really useful to prevent this kinds of problems. I have 3 employees who are authorized to use the creditcard I use with Unlimitel and its really hard to keep track of the balances to make sure there is enough funds to cover next charge. Overall I'm happy with Unlimitel and I've never had any major problems with their service or their billing dept. On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Aidan Van Dyk ai...@highrise.ca wrote: * John Van Ostrand j...@netdirect.ca [100804 14:09]: Finally prepay seems to be better accepted by consumers than business. I don't really want get into this, except to say this: 1) As a business, I use a few pre-paid services. 2) Those services are always cheaper, because *I* accept the risk instead of the supplier. That's my choice. So, because of that, in the few prepaid accounts I manage, I refill my balance *before* it is closed to expiring... If I had a CC issue when I re-fill it, I'ld still have a week or two to fix it before I get to my normal expiry/0-balance. In the pre-paid accounts I use and rely on, I fully expect them to not work if the balance hits 0. And I plan for that, because I want to use that service which is generally cheaper for more features than if I had a billed/post-paid service. a. -- Aidan Van Dyk Create like a god, ai...@highrise.ca command like a king, http://www.highrise.ca/ work like a slave. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFMWa6XuVxNPsxNPScRAmjdAJ9Se7zoT7fXg8L+SzmLdtjT2Qq6sQCgh4QJ k7Lr33i4cSkymL5+HvBXWu0= =8dGe -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
Or perhaps having an adjustable low-water mark on the account so that a week or month's worth of billing is kept at any time. That would give some leeway in dealing with CC issues. In our case I could justify keeping $100 there all the time. With today's best rates that's only a few of dollars a year of extra cost. That way, if a person is out of touch for a day, or for the email-averse set, off of email for a vacation, they could still have a decent grace period to arrange an alternative. - Original Message - Does Unlimitel allow you to add credit in advance? This would be really useful to prevent this kinds of problems. I have 3 employees who are authorized to use the creditcard I use with Unlimitel and its really hard to keep track of the balances to make sure there is enough funds to cover next charge. Overall I'm happy with Unlimitel and I've never had any major problems with their service or their billing dept. On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Aidan Van Dyk ai...@highrise.ca wrote: * John Van Ostrand j...@netdirect.ca [100804 14:09]: Finally prepay seems to be better accepted by consumers than business. I don't really want get into this, except to say this: 1) As a business, I use a few pre-paid services. 2) Those services are always cheaper, because *I* accept the risk instead of the supplier. That's my choice. So, because of that, in the few prepaid accounts I manage, I refill my balance *before* it is closed to expiring... If I had a CC issue when I re-fill it, I'ld still have a week or two to fix it before I get to my normal expiry/0-balance. In the pre-paid accounts I use and rely on, I fully expect them to not work if the balance hits 0. And I plan for that, because I want to use that service which is generally cheaper for more features than if I had a billed/post-paid service. a. -- Aidan Van Dyk Create like a god, ai...@highrise.ca command like a king, http://www.highrise.ca/ work like a slave. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFMWa6XuVxNPsxNPScRAmjdAJ9Se7zoT7fXg8L+SzmLdtjT2Qq6sQCgh4QJ k7Lr33i4cSkymL5+HvBXWu0= =8dGe -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- John Van Ostrand CTO, co-CEO Net Direct Inc. 564 Weber St. N. Unit 12, Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 Ph: 866-883-1172 x5102 Fx: 519-883-8533 Linux Solutions / IBM Hardware -- John Van Ostrand CTO, co-CEO Net Direct Inc. 564 Weber St. N. Unit 12, Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 Ph: 866-883-1172 x5102 Fx: 519-883-8533 Linux Solutions / IBM Hardware - To unsubscribe, e-mail: biz-unsubscr...@taug.ca For additional commands, e-mail: biz-h...@taug.ca
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
Word of warning about pre-paid CC. They appear to have an expiry (plus a service charge which has no real bearing on the point of this discussion but had everything to do with my kid's iTunes account :-) ). Not sure how the expiration fits legally with the gift certificate legistlation preventing expiration/service charges but take note as your backup may not be valid 3yrs down the road when you need it. -- dbc. John, This is why we have an option to use 2 credit cards in your account profile. You can have a backup credit card in your profile for situations like this. You can purchase a $100.00 prepaid credit card from your local corner store and use it as a backup credit card under your Unlimitel profile. This way you are protected against any down time due to credit card issues. Stephan. On 2010-08-04, at 2:08 PM, John Van Ostrand wrote: I think I see part of the problem with Unlimitel's business model. Typically as a consumer I don't fully appreciate problems until they happen to me. I may not think about how I might be unable to provide a credit card in a 24 hour period to keep service running. When it does happen I would be mad at a provider that I openly endorsed. To make matters worse, most of us have met Stephan and, on occasion, communicate directly with him and so we naturally feel like we have developed a better level of trust than his business model allows. To find out that disruption of service can happen and that there is no compassion from a person who has the authority to correct problems is disturbing. Stephan I really like what you are doing at Unlimitel, and cost isn't the reason I'm a customer, I gave up a cheaper provider to use Unlimitel. The quality and stability of your service isn't just being able to handle calls, I'm just realizing because of this thread another weak point is credit card processing. I don't care if your service is five-nines if a credit card issue brings it down. How can I justify moving a client's in-bound DID to Unlimitel if a credit card screw up can cost their business real dollars. It hurts my credibility as well. Part of the reason why I think you have been successful is that we all know you personally, at least through TAUG. If you were some faceless corporation people might not be so upset. Finally prepay seems to be better accepted by consumers than business. - Original Message - Whoa. I did not mean to open a can of worms. I have resolved a problem by providing Unlimitel with my girlfriend's credit card # to authorize a payment for $12, after getting my girlfriend in the middle of the day over to McGill to scan her credit card form and signature (she was not too happy :) ) and will provide them with new CCs when they come in from a bank (hopefully this morning). Thank you. What I wanted to say was that I was a bit surprised that they treat you like a criminal threating to cut off your service within hours (for $12 nevertheless) even when you have steady minutes / payments for the last several years. I understand that it could become a problem, but maybe with new accounts, and not long term existing clients. As for www.VoIPGizmos.ca - we have clients who pay after and have about $8,000 in outstanding payments - we only give this benefit of the doubt to customers who have spent several thousand with us in a past and not for new ones. As Mike Lipkin would say, Trust your fellow man. BUT Unlimitel VoIP quality and support is amazing and highly recommended and the only of its kind in Canada. Just make sure no one steals your credit cards or you are in trouble, Buster. :) -- John Van Ostrand CTO, co-CEO Net Direct Inc. 564 Weber St. N. Unit 12, Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 Ph: 866-883-1172 x5102 Fx: 519-883-8533 Linux Solutions / IBM Hardware -- John Van Ostrand CTO, co-CEO Net Direct Inc. 564 Weber St. N. Unit 12, Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 Ph: 866-883-1172 x5102 Fx: 519-883-8533 Linux Solutions / IBM Hardware - To unsubscribe, e-mail: biz-unsubscr...@taug.ca For additional commands, e-mail: biz-h...@taug.ca - To unsubscribe, e-mail: biz-unsubscr...@taug.ca For additional commands, e-mail: biz-h...@taug.ca - To unsubscribe, e-mail: biz-unsubscr...@taug.ca For additional commands, e-mail: biz-h...@taug.ca
[biz] Re: [on-asterisk] RE: [biz] Unlimitel
Hey John, Our network is not design to accept high volume termination customers as we use dedicated PRI-T1 to terminate traffic. If we accept high volume termination customers, we may end up affecting call capacity to our existing customers. This is a business decision not to accept customers for termination only because we need to accommodate call capacity for every customer. There's a lot of providers out there that designed their network to support high volume termination customers, but not us. We didn't take your money and we were honest and up front with you regarding this type of traffic. There was no ambiguity in our decision and you didn't lost any money with us. We can't serve everyone out there. Our sweet spot is small resellers that connects IP-PBX to our network. Our network cannot accommodate other VoIP providers as traffic is really hard to predict and we need to manage network capacity differently when we purchase physical PRI-T1. Same goes for other providers including Unlimitel that refuses traffic from Telemarketers because our network is not designed for this type of usage. Tier2 Tier1 providers are more suitable for this type of traffic. At the end, it's a matter on how well we want to serve our existing and new customers. We filter lots of customers to make sure we get the type of customers our network can accommodate. We want to make sure all our existing and new customers have access to the call capacity they've purchased and this is what our customers expect, nothing less. When our customers purchase our services, they expect it to work and we need to make sure we do so. Stephan Monette Unlimitel Inc. Tel.: 1-877-464-6638 Fax: (613) 482-1077 On 2010-08-04, at 9:48 PM, John Lange wrote: On Wed, 2010-08-04 at 11:48 -0400, Stephan Monette wrote: Bruce, Can you imagine how much hate mail we would receive if the system would suspend the service as soon as it hits $0.00 or less? On the contrary, for pre-paid I believe this is what most people would expect. Indeed it is the way many (most?) providers operate. They key to making it work is to send out warning emails when the balance reaches the level selected by the account holder so they have enough warning to replenish the account. And BTW, I don't recommend Unlimitel to anyone since you told me you didn't want us as a customer because we primarily needed termination, not DIDs. We now pay your competitors thousands per month so not only do you come across as arrogant but you might want to rethink your business strategy. John Lange - To unsubscribe, e-mail: asterisk-unsubscr...@uc.org For additional commands, e-mail: asterisk-h...@uc.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: biz-unsubscr...@taug.ca For additional commands, e-mail: biz-h...@taug.ca
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
You're lucky they even called. Other companies would have cut your lines off immediately, regardless of how much you've spent with them. That's the nature of the service. Stephan needs to pay his bills too and I imagine the margins are tight. Had the call came from you at the time you lost your credit card, instead of them having to find out by getting the charge denied, I imagine the outcome may have been a little different. On 8/3/10 11:38 AM, Kovalenko, Alex wrote: Unlimitel is definitely a great company to purchase your VoIP lines from. However they called me today to inform me that our lines will be cut if we do not pay our $50 bill which has been outstanding for only few days immediately by 4pm today. I have explained that my wallet was stolen at the gym last week and I should be able to provide them with a new card over the next few days (it takes Mastercard - 4-5 business days to get the replacement card over). However, Helene told me that they do not really care what happened and will cut if not received by 4pm. (Go get prepaid credit card - she told me.) This is very unfortunate - as I have been with them over 5 years, spent thousands of dollars and at www.VoIPGizmos.ca have recommended them to dozens of other businesses. Stephane - not very cool way to run your business. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: biz-unsubscr...@taug.ca For additional commands, e-mail: biz-h...@taug.ca
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
Alex, Unlimitel sells a prepaid service and it works exactly like a prepaid calling card service. If the prepaid account is empty, the service is suspended. Most VoIP provider runs their prepaid service this way. There's no credit allowed for any customers using this business model. But Unlimitel does allow 24 hours for customers to fix issues with credit card payments (which you already got since you receive the notice yesterday). Prepaid calling card companies do not allow this 24hours grace. We provide this 24 hours grace at our own expense and risk. Everyone knows a customer can run an hefty bill in 24 hours using VoIP, but we do this for our customers. In cases where customers lost their credit card, our billing rep. always suggest to go and purchase a prepaid credit card from your local corner store in order to fix your payment issue in the short term. The prepaid credit card is very useful in situations like yours and will avoid service suspension. Our billing department also offer to accept payment from another person's credit card and this was also communicated to you. But if you choose not to purchase a prepaid credit card or use someone else's credit card to fix this issue, this is your call and you will have to deal with the consequences. This is just unfortunate that you use this forum to complain about your credit card issue where Unlimitel offered you temporary solutions in the short term to avoid any problems. I'm sure you run your business the exact same way. You do not ship any products to any customers (regardless of their purchase volume) if the payment is rejected on the credit card, do you? I purchase products from your company any other businesses on this forum and you shipped it after the payment on my credit card was confirmed and this is what I expected, nothing less. Let's educate everyone on this forum. Here's why VoIP providers are using the PrePaid business model (not just Unlimitel, but almost every VoIP provider in Canada): 1- Between 6% to 10% of accounts do not get paid when you offer post paid services or credit to business customers. So for a $5Millions company (not Unlimitel case by the way!) this represents up to $500,000 in lost net revenues per year. 2- PrePaid services do not require full time staff to handle payments. Again for a $5Millions company, this would require about 5 full time staff at an average of $40k/employee for a total of $200k/year plus real estate space, computers,... 3- PrePaid services are usually fully automated. But for a post paid service, the payment process is manual. We also have to factor in the human error factor in a few transactions that can run your accountant crazy! There's also the bank fees to deposit all the customer's cheques. Bank fees will also increase your billing cost. With prepaid credit card, the payments are deposit into the business account daily as one payment which reduces the bank fees a lot. Billing services can cost as much as 15%to 20% of the service in some situation. With PrePaid services, the customer ends up saving a lot of money, but they have to make sure they have a valid credit card with their provider at all time. Cheers. Stephan Monette Unlimitel Inc. Tel.: 1-877-464-6638 Fax: (613) 482-1077 On 2010-08-03, at 11:38 AM, Kovalenko, Alex wrote: Unlimitel is definitely a great company to purchase your VoIP lines from. However they called me today to inform me that our lines will be cut if we do not pay our $50 bill which has been outstanding for only few days immediately by 4pm today. I have explained that my wallet was stolen at the gym last week and I should be able to provide them with a new card over the next few days (it takes Mastercard - 4-5 business days to get the replacement card over). However, Helene told me that they do not really care what happened and will cut if not received by 4pm. (Go get prepaid credit card - she told me.) This is very unfortunate - as I have been with them over 5 years, spent thousands of dollars and at www.VoIPGizmos.ca have recommended them to dozens of other businesses. Stephane - not very cool way to run your business. -- Alex Kovalenko, http://ca.linkedin.com/in/kovasys Director of Operations @ Kovasys IT Recruitment IT Recruitment and Headhunting | Chasseur de Tête en TI 888.568.2747 x701 | www.ITHeadhunters.ca Read about us in the News: http://bit.ly/KovasysNews Join our IT Jobs Association Linkedin group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2464449 Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kovasys - To unsubscribe, e-mail: biz-unsubscr...@taug.ca For additional commands, e-mail: biz-h...@taug.ca
RE: [biz] Unlimitel
Stephan, Sorry, don't mean to hijack the thread. I want clarification on this paragraph: Unlimitel sells a prepaid service and it works exactly like a prepaid calling card service. If the prepaid account is empty, the service is suspended. Most VoIP provider runs their prepaid service this way. There's no credit allowed for any customers using this business model. I was told that with DIDs from Unlimitel, in case of an attack or compromised system, unlimitel does not have a procedure to stop the traffic even if it goes past the $50 credit that is deposited as pre-paid. With true pre-paid once the balance reaches $0 the system should stop calls. Is that what Unlimitel does or is there a chance that a customer might rack up a $1000 bill if their PBX is compromised or hacked because it sent calls way past the pre-paid $50 credit. Or maybe I am not intrepreting your paragraph the right way Stephan. But can you please shed some light? You really put some good details of cost of running business out there :-) I agree wtih you. P.S. My confusions with billings were promptly taken care of through e-mail by Unlimitel always. I never use phone support for things like this though. Thanks, Bruce From: monet...@unlimitel.ca Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2010 12:10:10 -0400 CC: biz@taug.ca To: a...@kovasys.com Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Alex, Unlimitel sells a prepaid service and it works exactly like a prepaid calling card service. If the prepaid account is empty, the service is suspended. Most VoIP provider runs their prepaid service this way. There's no credit allowed for any customers using this business model. But Unlimitel does allow 24 hours for customers to fix issues with credit card payments (which you already got since you receive the notice yesterday). Prepaid calling card companies do not allow this 24hours grace. We provide this 24 hours grace at our own expense and risk. Everyone knows a customer can run an hefty bill in 24 hours using VoIP, but we do this for our customers. In cases where customers lost their credit card, our billing rep. always suggest to go and purchase a prepaid credit card from your local corner store in order to fix your payment issue in the short term. The prepaid credit card is very useful in situations like yours and will avoid service suspension. Our billing department also offer to accept payment from another person's credit card and this was also communicated to you. But if you choose not to purchase a prepaid credit card or use someone else's credit card to fix this issue, this is your call and you will have to deal with the consequences. This is just unfortunate that you use this forum to complain about your credit card issue where Unlimitel offered you temporary solutions in the short term to avoid any problems. I'm sure you run your business the exact same way. You do not ship any products to any customers (regardless of their purchase volume) if the payment is rejected on the credit card, do you? I purchase products from your company any other businesses on this forum and you shipped it after the payment on my credit card was confirmed and this is what I expected, nothing less. Let's educate everyone on this forum. Here's why VoIP providers are using the PrePaid business model (not just Unlimitel, but almost every VoIP provider in Canada): 1- Between 6% to 10% of accounts do not get paid when you offer post paid services or credit to business customers. So for a $5Millions company (not Unlimitel case by the way!) this represents up to $500,000 in lost net revenues per year. 2- PrePaid services do not require full time staff to handle payments. Again for a $5Millions company, this would require about 5 full time staff at an average of $40k/employee for a total of $200k/year plus real estate space, computers,... 3- PrePaid services are usually fully automated. But for a post paid service, the payment process is manual. We also have to factor in the human error factor in a few transactions that can run your accountant crazy! There's also the bank fees to deposit all the customer's cheques. Bank fees will also increase your billing cost. With prepaid credit card, the payments are deposit into the business account daily as one payment which reduces the bank fees a lot. Billing services can cost as much as 15%to 20% of the service in some situation. With PrePaid services, the customer ends up saving a lot of money, but they have to make sure they have a valid credit card with their provider at all time. Cheers. Stephan Monette Unlimitel Inc. Tel.: 1-877-464-6638 Fax: (613) 482-1077 On 2010-08-03, at 11:38 AM, Kovalenko, Alex wrote: Unlimitel is definitely a great company to purchase your VoIP lines from. However they called me today to inform me that our lines will be cut if we do not pay our $50 bill which
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
Bruce, Because of call volume on our network, it's almost impossible to process CDRs in realtime in our DataBase without incurring huge additional cost. So to keep our cost down, we process the CDRs in batch in the middle of the night and the prepaid account balance is updated once per day. Because we also target business customers, we would get so much hate mail if we would suspend accounts immediately once the prepaid balance is under $0.00!!! So for both reasons, the account doesn't get suspended immediately. We also communicate with the customer by mail and also by phone. As for hacked PBX, we do have an auditing process that runs every hour to detect possible hacked PBX. We detect about 5-10 hacked PBX per week!!! Once our system thinks a customer's PBX has been hacked due to a large amount of calls made to the USA and to international destinations, our auditing process will send an email to the customer with the list of all the calls made in the last hour. My technician and I will receive a page on our blackberry smart phone (in the middle of the night too!) and whoever is on call will have to login into our system to manually verify the account status. If we have strong feelings the customer's PBX was hacked, we call the customer immediately. If we cannot make phone contact with the customer, we would suspend the account immediately to reduce damages. Some customers got charges up to $1,000 in 2 hours!!! But we're now pretty good at it lately and I haven't seen anyone get charge more than $300.00 an hour once their PBX was hacked. But don't take the information in this email as a warranty that our auditing process will detect 100% of hacked customers. Hackers are getting smarter and I'm sure they will find ways to fly below the radar soon! So make sure you use a minimum of 8 digits or more in your passwords! Stephan. On 2010-08-03, at 1:56 PM, Bruce N wrote: Stephan, Sorry, don't mean to hijack the thread. I want clarification on this paragraph: Unlimitel sells a prepaid service and it works exactly like a prepaid calling card service. If the prepaid account is empty, the service is suspended. Most VoIP provider runs their prepaid service this way. There's no credit allowed for any customers using this business model. I was told that with DIDs from Unlimitel, in case of an attack or compromised system, unlimitel does not have a procedure to stop the traffic even if it goes past the $50 credit that is deposited as pre-paid. With true pre-paid once the balance reaches $0 the system should stop calls. Is that what Unlimitel does or is there a chance that a customer might rack up a $1000 bill if their PBX is compromised or hacked because it sent calls way past the pre-paid $50 credit. Or maybe I am not intrepreting your paragraph the right way Stephan. But can you please shed some light? You really put some good details of cost of running business out there :-) I agree wtih you. P.S. My confusions with billings were promptly taken care of through e-mail by Unlimitel always. I never use phone support for things like this though. Thanks, Bruce From: monet...@unlimitel.ca Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2010 12:10:10 -0400 CC: biz@taug.ca To: a...@kovasys.com Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Alex, Unlimitel sells a prepaid service and it works exactly like a prepaid calling card service. If the prepaid account is empty, the service is suspended. Most VoIP provider runs their prepaid service this way. There's no credit allowed for any customers using this business model. But Unlimitel does allow 24 hours for customers to fix issues with credit card payments (which you already got since you receive the notice yesterday). Prepaid calling card companies do not allow this 24hours grace. We provide this 24 hours grace at our own expense and risk. Everyone knows a customer can run an hefty bill in 24 hours using VoIP, but we do this for our customers. In cases where customers lost their credit card, our billing rep. always suggest to go and purchase a prepaid credit card from your local corner store in order to fix your payment issue in the short term. The prepaid credit card is very useful in situations like yours and will avoid service suspension. Our billing department also offer to accept payment from another person's credit card and this was also communicated to you. But if you choose not to purchase a prepaid credit card or use someone else's credit card to fix this issue, this is your call and you will have to deal with the consequences. This is just unfortunate that you use this forum to complain about your credit card issue where Unlimitel offered you temporary solutions in the short term to avoid any problems. I'm sure you run your business the exact same way. You do not ship any products to any customers (regardless of their purchase volume
RE: [biz] Unlimitel
Given this is a prepaid service, I find it difficult to disagree with the actions taken by Unlimitel. This is very consistent with a prepaid business model and seems like a very reasonable response to a declined credit card payment. Dean -Original Message- From: Stephan Monette [mailto:monet...@unlimitel.ca] Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 12:10 PM To: Kovalenko, Alex Cc: asterisk biz Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Alex, Unlimitel sells a prepaid service and it works exactly like a prepaid calling card service. If the prepaid account is empty, the service is suspended. Most VoIP provider runs their prepaid service this way. There's no credit allowed for any customers using this business model. But Unlimitel does allow 24 hours for customers to fix issues with credit card payments (which you already got since you receive the notice yesterday). Prepaid calling card companies do not allow this 24hours grace. We provide this 24 hours grace at our own expense and risk. Everyone knows a customer can run an hefty bill in 24 hours using VoIP, but we do this for our customers. In cases where customers lost their credit card, our billing rep. always suggest to go and purchase a prepaid credit card from your local corner store in order to fix your payment issue in the short term. The prepaid credit card is very useful in situations like yours and will avoid service suspension. Our billing department also offer to accept payment from another person's credit card and this was also communicated to you. But if you choose not to purchase a prepaid credit card or use someone else's credit card to fix this issue, this is your call and you will have to deal with the consequences. This is just unfortunate that you use this forum to complain about your credit card issue where Unlimitel offered you temporary solutions in the short term to avoid any problems. I'm sure you run your business the exact same way. You do not ship any products to any customers (regardless of their purchase volume) if the payment is rejected on the credit card, do you? I purchase products from your company any other businesses on this forum and you shipped it after the payment on my credit card was confirmed and this is what I expected, nothing less. Let's educate everyone on this forum. Here's why VoIP providers are using the PrePaid business model (not just Unlimitel, but almost every VoIP provider in Canada): 1- Between 6% to 10% of accounts do not get paid when you offer post paid services or credit to business customers. So for a $5Millions company (not Unlimitel case by the way!) this represents up to $500,000 in lost net revenues per year. 2- PrePaid services do not require full time staff to handle payments. Again for a $5Millions company, this would require about 5 full time staff at an average of $40k/employee for a total of $200k/year plus real estate space, computers,... 3- PrePaid services are usually fully automated. But for a post paid service, the payment process is manual. We also have to factor in the human error factor in a few transactions that can run your accountant crazy! There's also the bank fees to deposit all the customer's cheques. Bank fees will also increase your billing cost. With prepaid credit card, the payments are deposit into the business account daily as one payment which reduces the bank fees a lot. Billing services can cost as much as 15%to 20% of the service in some situation. With PrePaid services, the customer ends up saving a lot of money, but they have to make sure they have a valid credit card with their provider at all time. Cheers. Stephan Monette Unlimitel Inc. Tel.: 1-877-464-6638 Fax: (613) 482-1077 On 2010-08-03, at 11:38 AM, Kovalenko, Alex wrote: Unlimitel is definitely a great company to purchase your VoIP lines from. However they called me today to inform me that our lines will be cut if we do not pay our $50 bill which has been outstanding for only few days immediately by 4pm today. I have explained that my wallet was stolen at the gym last week and I should be able to provide them with a new card over the next few days (it takes Mastercard - 4-5 business days to get the replacement card over). However, Helene told me that they do not really care what happened and will cut if not received by 4pm. (Go get prepaid credit card - she told me.) This is very unfortunate - as I have been with them over 5 years, spent thousands of dollars and at www.VoIPGizmos.ca have recommended them to dozens of other businesses. Stephane - not very cool way to run your business. -- Alex Kovalenko, http://ca.linkedin.com/in/kovasys Director of Operations @ Kovasys IT Recruitment IT Recruitment and Headhunting | Chasseur de Tête en TI 888.568.2747 x701 | www.ITHeadhunters.ca Read about us in the News: http://bit.ly/KovasysNews Join our IT Jobs Association Linkedin group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2464449 Follow us on Twitter: http
RE: [biz] Unlimitel
Alex, I ran into a similar situation with my Mastercard. I use my credit card a lot, for everything. But I have never lost or had it stolen... however, almost religiously, Mastercard calls me up once a year (sometimes twice) to tell me that the number has been compromised and that they are sending me a new card. This has happened about 10 times now over than last 5 years only once have I seen a charge for a flight to Nigeria. Mastercard has always sent a replacement in less than 72 hours, in most cases, just a changed expiry date and code. Anyways, it just so happened that following happening once, Unlimitel tried to bill me and it didn't go through. I received a call regarding the matter, it was of course urgent and of course, I was on vacation. The timing was bad, but I was very close to having service suspended. At the time, I voiced some concern that the timeline was a little too tight, but I understood the limits and liabilities they took on at the same time. Technically, it was my own fault since I did not contact them to warn them. Shortly after this happening, Unlimitel called me to inform me that they introduced secondary billing accounts. Meaning, if my credit card is denied, a second credit card on file will be charged. This does not fix the stolen wallet problem, but it does fix the expired card issue. Either way, Unlimitel introduced a solution to my problem. Maybe Stephan can expand on how to do this. Regards, Chuck -Original Message- From: Stephan Monette [mailto:monet...@unlimitel.ca] Sent: August-03-10 12:10 PM To: Kovalenko, Alex Cc: asterisk biz Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Alex, Unlimitel sells a prepaid service and it works exactly like a prepaid calling card service. If the prepaid account is empty, the service is suspended. Most VoIP provider runs their prepaid service this way. There's no credit allowed for any customers using this business model. But Unlimitel does allow 24 hours for customers to fix issues with credit card payments (which you already got since you receive the notice yesterday). Prepaid calling card companies do not allow this 24hours grace. We provide this 24 hours grace at our own expense and risk. Everyone knows a customer can run an hefty bill in 24 hours using VoIP, but we do this for our customers. In cases where customers lost their credit card, our billing rep. always suggest to go and purchase a prepaid credit card from your local corner store in order to fix your payment issue in the short term. The prepaid credit card is very useful in situations like yours and will avoid service suspension. Our billing department also offer to accept payment from another person's credit card and this was also communicated to you. But if you choose not to purchase a prepaid credit card or use someone else's credit card to fix this issue, this is your call and you will have to deal with the consequences. This is just unfortunate that you use this forum to complain about your credit card issue where Unlimitel offered you temporary solutions in the short term to avoid any problems. I'm sure you run your business the exact same way. You do not ship any products to any customers (regardless of their purchase volume) if the payment is rejected on the credit card, do you? I purchase products from your company any other businesses on this forum and you shipped it after the payment on my credit card was confirmed and this is what I expected, nothing less. Let's educate everyone on this forum. Here's why VoIP providers are using the PrePaid business model (not just Unlimitel, but almost every VoIP provider in Canada): 1- Between 6% to 10% of accounts do not get paid when you offer post paid services or credit to business customers. So for a $5Millions company (not Unlimitel case by the way!) this represents up to $500,000 in lost net revenues per year. 2- PrePaid services do not require full time staff to handle payments. Again for a $5Millions company, this would require about 5 full time staff at an average of $40k/employee for a total of $200k/year plus real estate space, computers,... 3- PrePaid services are usually fully automated. But for a post paid service, the payment process is manual. We also have to factor in the human error factor in a few transactions that can run your accountant crazy! There's also the bank fees to deposit all the customer's cheques. Bank fees will also increase your billing cost. With prepaid credit card, the payments are deposit into the business account daily as one payment which reduces the bank fees a lot. Billing services can cost as much as 15%to 20% of the service in some situation. With PrePaid services, the customer ends up saving a lot of money, but they have to make sure they have a valid credit card with their provider at all time. Cheers. Stephan Monette Unlimitel Inc. Tel.: 1-877-464-6638 Fax: (613) 482-1077 On 2010-08-03, at 11:38 AM
Re: [biz] Unlimitel
Hey Keith, I'm sure that you have factored a percentage of delinquent accounts in your pricing model and you sell your services at a much higher price than $9.00/month per DID or extension right? In a prepaid business model, there's no provision for delinquent account and this is why it is run like this. Your business model is very different from a prepaid phone service. You offer a hosted platform with much higher margins. But margins for telecom provider are much thinner and there's no room for risk like this. I would love to sell our DIDs at $45.00/month per local channel and offer more services to our customers, but this is impossible in today's market. In your business model, you have to factor in a cost of 15%-20% in billing services. Most VoIP providers don't even make 20% in net profit and cannot afford to help customers the way you do. Stephan. On 2010-08-03, at 2:45 PM, Keith | Aquarius Telecom Inc. wrote: Interesting thread we have going today. I'm not about to tell people how to run their business but, I will say what makes your customers loyal to your business is the level of customer service you can provide to them. Having said this, I can respect the business model but, I'll use a situation that we encountered when the recession was at its peak; we had a couple of clients pay us a little late since their clients were paying them a little late. We made arrangements with them and in working with them, the outstanding balance was paid off. Since then, this client has referred more business to us and we have a very loyal client because, we choose to help them and work with them in their time of need. Imagine if we took the typical business model and shut down his companies phone service? His company would have shut down, and we wouldn't have gained the referrals we got from him. Customer service is not just a corporate responsibility but, a social responsibility and it's one of our founding principles here. Keith Major Network Engineer Business Development Aquarius Telecom Inc. www.aquariustel.com Hosted PBX Services Business VoIP Solutions ___ This e-mail may be privileged and/or confidential, and the sender does not waive any related rights and obligations. Any distribution, use or copying of this e-mail or the information it contains by other than an intended recipient is unauthorized. If you received this e-mail in error, please advise me (by return e-mail or otherwise) immediately. Ce courrier électronique est confidentiel et protégé. L'expéditeur ne renonce pas aux droits et obligations qui s'y rapportent. Toute diffusion, utilisation ou copie de ce message ou des renseignements qu'il contient par une personne autre que le (les) destinataire(s) désigné(s) est interdite. Si vous recevez ce courrier électronique par erreur, veuillez m'en aviser immédiatement, par retour de courrier électronique ou par un autre moyen. -Original Message- From: Dean Hansen [mailto:dhan...@dthsoftware.com] Sent: August-03-10 2:14 PM To: 'Stephan Monette'; 'Kovalenko, Alex' Cc: 'asterisk biz' Subject: RE: [biz] Unlimitel Given this is a prepaid service, I find it difficult to disagree with the actions taken by Unlimitel. This is very consistent with a prepaid business model and seems like a very reasonable response to a declined credit card payment. Dean -Original Message- From: Stephan Monette [mailto:monet...@unlimitel.ca] Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 12:10 PM To: Kovalenko, Alex Cc: asterisk biz Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Alex, Unlimitel sells a prepaid service and it works exactly like a prepaid calling card service. If the prepaid account is empty, the service is suspended. Most VoIP provider runs their prepaid service this way. There's no credit allowed for any customers using this business model. But Unlimitel does allow 24 hours for customers to fix issues with credit card payments (which you already got since you receive the notice yesterday). Prepaid calling card companies do not allow this 24hours grace. We provide this 24 hours grace at our own expense and risk. Everyone knows a customer can run an hefty bill in 24 hours using VoIP, but we do this for our customers. In cases where customers lost their credit card, our billing rep. always suggest to go and purchase a prepaid credit card from your local corner store in order to fix your payment issue in the short term. The prepaid credit card is very useful in situations like yours and will avoid service suspension. Our billing department also offer to accept payment from another person's credit card and this was also communicated to you. But if you choose not to purchase a prepaid credit card or use someone else's credit card to fix this issue, this is your call and you will have to deal with the consequences. This is just
RE: [biz] Unlimitel
Hi Stephan, You're making assumptions on our business when it isn't your place to make them; you don't work for us and you don't represent us. I simply placed an example of a success story we experienced. In reading your response, I have to say we know the industry and our prices are competitive for a business grade service and we have been in business since 2006. Part of being in business for this long is to make sure you have a proper business plan with a proper financial strategy. In our financial strategy we put aside a percentage of profit to cover the odd rainy day - this is a smart business practice and if a company is not prepared this way, then you are setting yourself up for failure if shit hits the fan. In addition, when we started looking into getting in this business, we did our due diligence and conducted a market survey of our target clientele and existing clients. What we found, the top priority that clients look for in a provider was QUALITY FIRST and price second. Imagine if the quality sucks? You can end up putting that customer's entire business at risk; including the trickledown effect of employees who get paid to then pay their car loans and home mortgages. Customer Service and Quality is part of a BIGGER picture than most people think it is. Having said that, when we were in our infancy, we used (past tense) Unlimitel for our old inbound DID. One day, when we were expecting to win a large opportunity, our inbound Unlimitel DID stopped working and we didn't win the opportunity simply because, they could not call us. After having our number not work 3 or 4 times (sometimes for whole days) in a period of 4 months, we ported the number away and yes just for the record, our credit card was valid and it had plenty of space for purchases. Now looking at what you said about the financials of most VoIP companies; we are not like most VoIP companies and we certainly are not looking at going into the VoIP Graveyard or selling our business or retracting on our company vision. Our clients rely on us to provide THE BEST SERVICE out there and we will stand firm to that ideal. Oh, and just for the record, we currently have zero delinquent accounts and haven't lost a client since we started in 2006. This is a testimony on how having good business planning and practices can help a business succeed and gives us the ability financially, to help our clients in their time of need. Don't get me wrong, nobody works for free and there is no such thing as a free ride but, if someone comes to us and says, Hey, I'm really sorry but, we are going to be a little late on our invoice and need a few days, can you help us?; we are not about to say no to that as it's within reason. In short, I'd like to say those who are mentioned as most VoIP companies, don't slit your throat to be cheap - it's bad for business longevity and makes potential reputable clients scared to sign-up. It's Excellent Service that makes the sale and keeps you customers happy and loyal. Keith Major Network Engineer Business Development Aquarius Telecom Inc. www.aquariustel.com Hosted PBX Services Business VoIP Solutions ___ This e-mail may be privileged and/or confidential, and the sender does not waive any related rights and obligations. Any distribution, use or copying of this e-mail or the information it contains by other than an intended recipient is unauthorized. If you received this e-mail in error, please advise me (by return e-mail or otherwise) immediately. Ce courrier électronique est confidentiel et protégé. L'expéditeur ne renonce pas aux droits et obligations qui s'y rapportent. Toute diffusion, utilisation ou copie de ce message ou des renseignements qu'il contient par une personne autre que le (les) destinataire(s) désigné(s) est interdite. Si vous recevez ce courrier électronique par erreur, veuillez m'en aviser immédiatement, par retour de courrier électronique ou par un autre moyen. -Original Message- From: Stephan Monette [mailto:monet...@unlimitel.ca] Sent: August-03-10 2:57 PM To: Keith | Aquarius Telecom Inc. Cc: dhan...@dthsoftware.com; 'Kovalenko, Alex'; 'asterisk biz' Subject: Re: [biz] Unlimitel Hey Keith, I'm sure that you have factored a percentage of delinquent accounts in your pricing model and you sell your services at a much higher price than $9.00/month per DID or extension right? In a prepaid business model, there's no provision for delinquent account and this is why it is run like this. Your business model is very different from a prepaid phone service. You offer a hosted platform with much higher margins. But margins for telecom provider are much thinner and there's no room for risk like this. I would love to sell our DIDs at $45.00/month per local channel and offer more services to our customers, but this is impossible in today's market. In your business model, you have to factor in a cost
