Voicestick no longer free - now $3.75/month
 

Here is the email I received....

---------------------------------------------------------

Dear Valued VoiceStick Customer,

In order to comply with government regulations and industry trends, it has become necessary that we discontinue our policy of waiving regulatory fees and taxes.

Starting October 1, 2007 ALL VoiceStick customers with a valid telephone number and an active account will be subject to the following fees:

Telephone Number (monthly recurring fee) $1.50
E-911 Regulatory Recovery (monthly recurring fee) $1.00
Universal Service Fund (monthly recurring fee) $1.25


To avoid service interruption all customers must have a valid credit card on file to cover these new charges.

If you would to convert your existing account to an i2Outbound Only calling plan Send a Request to Customer Service. To ensure the quickest possible response to your request please select Plan Conversion from the Department dropdown list.

Yeah. I got that too. It's forutnate I never put much credit into Voicestick. Now I regret spending the extra money for their USB gizmo. I don't understand what the i2Outbound Only plan is but if it saves the $3.75/mo I guess I'll convert to save my remaining credit.

Me too...I do not see the i2Outbound Only plan on their website, but if I can still have calls forwarded via their service on this plan and don't incur the $3.75 month fee, I will convert to it. If not, I will drop them!

I got the email too. What other services do you guys recommend now since Voicestick has these recurring monthly charges now? Voicestick was actually the cheapest thing I could find to call/forward to a Norway cell #

What a disgrace......

At this point I am not aware of any free service that gives a US DID number that can forward internationally . I also have les.net, but it's $1/month. The rates are higher than voicestick's, but it's more reliable and gives more configuration options. Will use up my credit with voicestick and cancel. Hung on to it because it did not cost me anything to do so.

Update
 

Msg from Voicestick Tech:

You can convert to an outbound plan and avoid the charges for inbound
service if you like and still make calls anytime.

If you want to convert follow the process below

Converting to Outbound only calling.

The easiest way to do the conversion is as follows:

1. Signup for a new N2N account
2. During the selection click the button for “this account will be used
for Outbound Call Only�
3. This will give you a 333-xxx-xxxx number
4. Complete the signup process.
5. Go to http://www.voicestick.com/Support/Contact.aspx and open a new
Trouble Report.
6. Insure you put in new VoiceStick# you get in activation e-mail and in
comments put in Old VoiceStick# along with comments to close your old
number and transfer balance from old account to the new account at no
additional cost.
Please allow at least 24 hours for this process to be completed after TR
is sent to us.

Also if you convert to outbound only features such as I2bridge and
Global call Forwarding will no longer function.

Thank you for using Voicestick

================================

Isn't skypeout FREE? Why would you go with Voicestick?

Stan

clsoed account
 

When I tried to sign up for a new account, they wanted to bill my credit cards $10. I aborted the process and have asked them to close my account. They have done so. $3.75 per month for a number I would rarely use is too much for me. The $10 would have been < $1 per month, but I have plenty of other FREE and SUNK COST prepaid minutes.

Your mileage may vary.

My first trouble ticket from last nite was 18352. The ticket number to close the account was 18897. Think they are having some issues with the sudden change?

Stan

I got cancelled in little more than 3 hours. Not too bad! I only just realised that I had a couple of $'s of credit that I forgot to use though.

(headbang)

How did you go about it. Called them or just opened a ticket via the web. Also, how did you know you got cancelled? They sent a verification or the # just no longer works?

I don't know why they always wait till the last minute to make theri announcements...if at all. They are actually giving less than a week notice.

Trouble ticket
 

I submitted a trouble ticket. They emailed me back. I too lost credit but they GAVE $5 free to sign up. I have not tried the number. Given the SHORT NOTICE (start of fees on Oct 1), I was surprised the responded so quickly.

A buddy of mine can't get his voicestick to work at all. Could not dial out; could not receive calls. Even reloaded software. He wrote emails and we called one day (he is without a phone otherwise) and left a voicemail for their CS staff; nobody answered - it was 430 or so in the afternoon on a weekday. As far as we can tell, they never responded.

Stan

I opened a ticket via the web. Got the normal acknowledgement email and then two one line emails back a few hours later. The first said "Thanks you for using i2telecom's Voicestick Product" and a minute later one which said "Done". The subject of both emails was just my ticket number and name.

Number is also no longer working. Pity as I had such a nice number: 029 2002 9999. It had the same 9999 number chain that I have in my mobile number and also my work number! I should have really paid for it, but then again I only used it at the very beginning! I always had issues of call forwarding and premature charging etc.

i have also submitted the ticket two days ago and still no reply from them....

? not sure
 

I BELIEVE (others please correct me if I am wrong) they send an AUTOMATIC response IMMEDIATELY with a trouble ticket number. Did you receive that? If not, I suggest you submit a new ticket.

You may want to check your SPAM filters.

Best wishes,

Stan

I have received this response. But nothing more besides that.

i asked them to change to the outgoing plan and one day later they confirmed and sent me the new login data.

So now my question from the other thread again... how can i get a cheap or free US phone number that could ring on my SIP device?

Chris

Free: ip2kall. Washington state numbers.

ip2call? Are you sure? What is the website? Do you mean ipcall?

Typo! http://www.ipkall.com/

Not sure how it works though or if it can be forearded to an international number.

It can't be forwarded to a PSTN number, but it can be made to ring on a SIP device very easily.

I'd guess that IPKall would be ok for North American users but nobody else

The problem is that they seem to have changed policy that they must have a recognised caller ID for incoming calls to the number, which might leave out some VoIP providers.

But even with a caller ID sent, they themselves have corrupted the incoming DID by truncating it at both ends

+4478xxxxx605 becomes 478xxxxx60

Well, that was 2 or 3 months ago, and I haven't tried since

I signed up there some days ago.
But the number never got activated as it seems. Always get a fast-busy-signal when i try to call it.

Chris

Does anyone think it will still be possible to use Voicestick for call forwarding, with a different DID pointed to the SIP address?

You will get a fast busy signal if you don't have your SIP client running and have the ipkall account properly configured. I got it to work without any trouble.

Probably... I don't see why not. They are after all just a standard SIP service. However, even though they were obviously very popular here on ppgsm, are their rates really any good? I don't think so!

I opened a trouble ticket telling them I didn't want an account that charged $3.75 per month and got a terse "Thanks for your business." reply. Now I can't get into my account. It looks like they just took my credit balance. I think I'm due some explanation.

They will give you a new login number once the process is complete. They will also transfer your balance to the new account. Only the passwd remains the same.

ok i'll check the settings again. The SIP device is always running as it is my DSL modem. But maybe the SIP adress doesnt work for them. I have several ones to check though ;)

EDIT: Now i used a differnet SIP-adress to forward and it works. :-)

Chris

OK. I'll try to be patient. They could have told me something like that.

.....anybody ever hear the term bait and switch...that is exactly what has happened here and while it is not illegal, it is certainly immoral (and no there have been no recent legislation to justify this charge...it's greed pure and simple).

the deal seemed to have gotten worst. I logged in to find this message:

"BILLING CHANGE -
We are now charging the extremely low rate of $0.0118 per minute for inbound Calls.
To avoid service interruption: Customers without Ultimate Calling Plans must
have prepaid funds available to cover the cost of these calls "

I was using Voicestick primarily to forward calls to an international number.

Great...

I wonder if you can convert it to a UK number instead which would deal with the 911 issue.

I got rid of the $3.75 per month fee on Voicestick.

Inbound rates are 1.2 cpm and USA outbound is 2 cpm.