VoIP Rant Thread

[nitrodigital]

Furthermore...what is totally ironic is a company that expects you to pay for service by bank wire of 100 bucks or more or western union to some unknown person down in mexico is the one who is checking MY credentials....
That is almost knee slapping hilarious if it weren't so sad.

[nitrodigital]

One last thing i would like to say is in business , customer service is EVERYTHING.
It will make or break your company in the long haul even if you think you are a high flier now.
The is always up and coming competition, that is smarter and has most importantly competitive pricing and BETTER CUSTOMER SERVICE! A good example of a company that thought they had it all figured out and didnt have to listen to what customers were telling them is RIM. It didnt take long for their complacence to get the best of them.

[Mango]

If your primary goal is to tell us how angry you are, rather than solve your problem, you have certainly succeeded.

[nitrodigital]

Mango,

OK now that you have confirmed i am angry (and if you are a voip.ms rep or not some clown wasting time posting) what are you going to do about it.

I would also like to point out (since it isnt obvious to you) that i had to resort to posting these true comments online because VOIP.ms did not respond to my emails after i politely asked them 3 times why am i being screened when the tenents in my block whom i rent to and referred to this service have not been screened and are paying with paypal no questions asked?

The point being if they had decent customer service would i be here posting in the first place? get it ?

[Mango]

I'm not a VoIP.ms rep. Even if I was, quite frankly, your posts don't really motivate me to help you.

You're not the first person to be a false positive in a VoIP provider's fraud prevention system, and you won't be the last. VoIP fraud is pretty rampant which makes it difficult for those of us who just want a phone on our desk. Last I heard, VoIP.ms' record was USD$10,000 of fraud in ten hours. If I were a business owner and had to assume that kind of risk, I'd be overly cautious with my fraud prevention too. If I lost a few good customers because of it, that would be unfortunate, but the price of staying in business.

I suggest you stop and think about the reason you're not getting an explanation from VoIP.ms about the situation. If they provided details about why they flagged you for potential fraud, that would defeat the purpose of their system as it would tell you exactly what to do to get around it. Some common reasons to be flagged for fraud are IP location / billing address mismatch, making calls to countries historically associated with fraud, or multiple PayPal accounts used with the same IP address. These are not necessarily the reasons you were flagged, they're just to give you an idea of the kind of things they're looking for.

I'm not accusing you of attempting to commit fraud, just stating that in a typical false positive situation like this, the customer in question has accidentally met some criteria that people who actually do intend to commit fraud statistically meet.

I'll leave your racist comments aside, except to say that I always find it amusing when a customer claims racism when we've never met and I have no idea what his race is.

You have three options:

1) Send VoIP.ms the information as requested.
2) Take your business elsewhere.
3) Keep bitching.

Though 3) may make you feel better for a short time, you may be shocked to discover that when you are through bitching, you still will not yet have paid your phone bill. You will be sad.

m.

[nitrodigital]

Mango,
I get what you are saying but i have never and will never commit fraud of any sort. I have googled online and found them treating people from nigeria the same way they are treating me! I am from friggin manitoba, i have not made one out of country call since i started with them as i have no relatives outside canada. Dont you think my call record should be enough? So you think that i dont deserve an answer as to why i am being flagged for scrutiny and i should just give in and give up to being treated this way?? Because it will give away some secret of theirs? That is pathetic. Well my friend , people like you are the exact reason civil liberties in this country are down the toilet. If i follow your advice i will just bend over and say yes sir please harrass me for nothing.
As far as racist goes i am the furthest thing from it but now i know how the ethnic minorities feel being racially profiled ...but i guess that is perfectly alright with you as well huh?...and if you dont like my bitching, well dont read it, my comments were meant for VOIP.MS support to read and hopefully gain some perspective as to how their customers are feeling about this screening procedure, and maybe think of changing and/or refining it because from my perspective it is not working.
So if you were me you tell me what would you do?
a) continue getting ripped off by western union for the rest of the time you were a voip.m,s customer or
b) transmit your full color passport over over the internet and risk identity theft?

i await your enlightening response

[Mango]

The day I invent a fraud prevention algorithm that is 100% accurate and is incapable of generating false positives or negatives, I will be a rich man. Unfortunately, I have not yet accomplished such a task, and neither has anyone else.

I'd like to answer your question with another question. What do you want VoIP.ms to do?

a) Continue occasionally turning away good customers in the rare circumstances when the fraud prevention system is not accurate, or

b) relax their criteria, lose more money due to fraud, and be forced to raise their prices to compensate?

[nitrodigital]

one more thing i would like to say is if VOIP.ms can provide this service at this price it wont be long before someone else can also....and when that does happen the difference between them and the competition will be a) price b) quality of signal and c) customer service. I have no beefs with any of these except for this verification nonsense which is obviously flawed. If you doubt what i am saying i would like you to know that i routinely access, modify and transmit propietary military aircraft data as part of my job and have clearances to do so. The fact that i can't pay my my phone bill without being hassled for my passport data is proof that their screening procedure is critically flawed and should be fixed.
I have no idea how many other potential or current customers they have alienated by this treatment but if i was running a business even one customer lost would be too many. A good example of a company that had everything and didnt listen to what the market/customers wanted is RIM. Complacency due to growing market share is the downfall of many a good company.

[nitrodigital]

mango posted:
"I'd like to answer your question with another question. What do you want VoIP.ms to do?

a) Continue occasionally turning away good customers in the rare circumstances when the fraud prevention system is not accurate, or

b) relax their criteria, lose more money due to fraud, and be forced to raise their prices to compensate?"

reply:
neither

C) fix the screening procedure, if you are not savvy enough to do it i know plenty of people that could come up with something a lot better than what they have in place.

answer me this Mango? please name me one company that has requested a scan of your passport (or anyones) to accept payment for a good or service?

i am afraid you just dont get it

[Mango]

I'm glad to hear you routinely access, modify and transmit propietary military aircraft data. I build and maintain business VoIP systems. I don't disagree that VoIP.ms' (and every other VoIP provider's) fraud prevention technique is imperfect. I don't dispute that what VoIP.ms is asking you to do is inconvenient and annoying. But I also understand why VoIP.ms runs their business in the way that they do.

To answer your question: NCIX, TD Canada Trust, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, some hotel I stayed at in San Francisco. Plenty of companies keep an ID copy on file.

Also, regarding: "if VOIP.ms can provide this service at this price it wont be long before someone else can also" ...plenty of companies provide VoIP services, some at better prices than VoIP.ms, and have for much longer than VoIP.ms. By all means if you're this upset with VoIP.ms, use a competitor instead.

[gzink]

You mentioned tenants. Are you all internet account sharing? One ip and many voip accounts? Seems to me that was one possible scenario for a flag. And I would be easy on Mango,no polite more like it, being he is probably the most helpful person regarding voip voip.ms. .

I'm originally from MB and have lived in SK, AB, and now BC. Keep the tone the way it is and I will continue to be embarassed. Civility works in most cases.

[viper359]

nitrodigital: I can name a few companies for you that wanted my passport for proof of ID. Toronto Hydro, Air Canada, Bell Canada, Rogers, and Enbridge. They all wanted proof of who I was, since I didn't have a drivers licence at the time, they only other thing they would accept was a passport.

I get it, your frustrated. Guess what, as a paying customer of VOIP.MS, i expect nothing less from them. Credit card companies, banks, voip providers, paypal, almost anything that can have fraud associated to it, has some form of fraud detection with it. I want their security, and mine, secure. If they lose money, it costs me more for the service.

How many of us had our credit cards declined, only to find out it was locked out due to suspicious activity on your card! You shopped somewhere you never have before, or used it out of province, when you never have before. etc. They did this to protect themselves. VOIP.MS is in the business of providing a service, they have every right to declare what their terms will be. If I was a manager there, I would be a little concerned that you don't want to verify who you are. It would make me wonder in the back of my head, what are you doing that you don't want us to know who you actually are.

Maybe their fraud detection system is working just fine?

[MichelR]

I've had to provide a scan of my driver's license to my web host because the package I had picked gave me more "power" on the server - i.e. if I were malicious I could do bad things, so this was their way of keeping people honest I guess. Never been asked for a passport by anyone other than an airline though.

And yeah, I've had my credit card declined once or twice. Had to phone the credit card company and answer a couple of questions (I had to point out "no I wasn't in New York City, but you know with online shopping I don't have to be there...) Anyway, it's very humiliating to be in the check-out line at the grocery store and have the cashier tell you the card is declined.

[nitrodigital]

Yes Peter got to the root of the problem and found out what happened pronto in a professional manner and for that i thank him.
I would also like to add and reiterate that in the new economy of the internet when you can do years worth of research on a company within minutes the old adage of "the customer is always king" applies more than ever. Just like the words i quoted from Steve Poiriers profile about how important every customer is, are spoken from a man that knows what successful business is all about, they stepped up to the plate and fixed the situation. From day one i have given this company nothing but praise to my associates because it is an example of what is truly missing from the current impersonal business environment we see everywhere, dont even get me going on banks because i'd have to restrain myself...lol. What impressed me most about this company is the excellent website and my hat is off to the programmers for the ease of use and configuration they have set up. Combine that with a one on one human interaction and there is nothing that can touch them. Regardless of the nagging and complaining i did about my particular problem, this company is a jewel among the junk that is out there nowadays.

[FunkyTown]

I agree with you that customers these days have a lot of power thanks to the internet. Companies need to ensure they deal with issues and not just brush them off like they sometimes used to. Any company who gives customers the brush off will eventually find their sales low and unfortunately many have gone out of business due to poor customer service. Word of mouth has much more power than any other form of advertising.

The flaw I'm finding with companies is that some staff members don't seem to honor what the head of the company would like as far as providing good customer service. What companies need to do is focus on how their employees are treating the customers more, but some companies are not there yet. Unfortunately many of the ones I've found have been Canadian companies. It's rare to find a US company treating customers badly and staying in business. If you look at our department stores here in Canada, Zellers is now going out of business. We've lost Simpson's, Eaton's, Woolworth/Woolco, and now Zellers. The companies thriving in Canada are Sears, Walmart, (Target is coming), and what I've noticed is these are US companies. Perhaps as Canadians we don't get it.

I've had issues with customer support at VoIP.ms too. However, there were a couple of people I dealt with that were wonderful. I try not to let the poor workers/employees tarnish my opinion of the company, although this is very hard sometimes as support employees are the front door to the company. They are the company's voice! It just goes to show how important good employees are - and it's equally important that they are equipped with knowledge on how to handle irate customers.

I'm glad that you alerted the COO about the problem. He may have spoken to the one(s) you were dealing with and hopefully this will not happen again to someone else.