Here I document my problems with Earthlink trueVoice for the benefit of others. I have had a very poor experience with trueVoice (as a service, and also with Earthlink customer support) and at this time I personally recommend that no one consider using trueVoice. Since I first wrote this, sixteen other Earthlink trueVoice customers have found this page and have written to me (smoonen@andstuff.org) as recently as February 2008, sharing similar troubling experiences with trueVoice and with Earthlink trueVoice customer support.
We orginally ordered trueVoice service on 2006-01-26. I had preferred to use Vonage, but at the time they were unable to transfer our home phone number, while Earthlink trueVoice was able to transfer our number. At the time of ordering, I was asked to enter a delivery address. The form already contained an address: one that we had moved from 5 years prior. I erased the address and typed our current address.
On 2006-02-06 I called Earthlink because our SPA 2002 ATA device had not yet arrived. I was informed that it had been wrongly shipped to our old address, even though I had explicitly corrected this address in the sign-up form. Moreover, the operator informed me that service would switch overnight from BellSouth to trueVoice. I was assured that a new device would be overnighted to me, after a 24-48 hour processing delay. She indicated that she would escalate the issue to see if it was possible to reduce the processing delay.
On the morning of 2006-02-07 we had no dial tone from BellSouth. We were able to check voice messages at Earthlink’s trueVoice portal, but could not make or receive calls. Since our cell phone plan includes only 60 minutes, this was very restrictive for us. We exceeded our cell phone minutes as a result of Earthlink’s mistake and have had to pay for the overrun ourselves.
On 2006-02-09, I chatted with a liveChat operator to confirm that the device had been shipped. Much to my surprise, I found that 1) the device was just in the process of being shipped (approximately 72 hours after I was assured it would be shipped in at most 48); and 2) it was not being sent overnight, but was being sent via 7-10 day ground service. Understandably, I was very upset because this represented not just an error, but outright deception on Earthlink’s part. The operator I chatted with was gracious, but was unable to change the shipping method at that time, and was unwilling to send another device overnight. I asked if it were possible to treat the device as defective and send another one; every suggestion and request that I made was rebuffed.
On 2006-02-09 and 2006-02-10, I contacted several liveChat operators to inquire about using a softphone in the interim (recall that I cannot use a phone at this time). Earthlink does not advertise softphone support, but in principle it is possible because the SPA 2002 device uses SIP to communicate with the Earthlink servers. Most of the operators I chatted with did not understand what a softphone was. Some understood that but did not understand what SIP was. One operator confidently gave me obviously false information about my SIP server, username, and password. Only one operator spoke with his supervisor, who admitted to me that they did not know what the answer was. This was the only honest answer I got for this question! He assured me that they would escalate the question to product engineering and that I would receive an answer by email within 24-48 hours. I never received an email.
In all of the liveChats, above, I was instructed to call 1-877-ELNK-VOICE. This is ironic because I had explained to each operator that I had no phone service. Even more ironic, each operator thanked me for contacting Earthlink and asked if there was anything else they could help me with. That wrongly assumes that I had been helped in the first place.
I received the ATA device on 2006-02-14, after more than one week without phone service. Upon plugging it in, there was no dial tone. I toyed with various router settings for awhile in order to get it to work; at one point I even plugged it directly into my cable modem. There was never a dial tone.
On the evening of 2006-02-14, I was able to visit a friend’s house and plug the device in while calling Earthlink technical support. Over the course of an hour, the technician walked me through various sequences of power-cycling devices. While I was certain that this would not resolve things (especially since the problem manifested itself on two separate home networks), I understood that this is standard operating procedure for problem diagnosis, so I patiently followed along. There was never a dial tone. In the end, the technician indicated that he wasn’t sure whether it was a problem with the Earthlink servers or with the device. He created a problem ticket to look into the Earthlink servers, and assured me that, if it wasn’t working in 24-48 hours, Earthlink would send me a replacement device.
On 2006-02-16 there was still no dial tone. I called to cancel my Earthlink trueVoice service and spoke, ironically, to the most sympathetic Earthlink representative I had interacted with to this point.
I returned my ATA device to Earthlink, and they willingly surrendered my phone number to Vonage; the transfer took 12 days. I haven’t had any significant trouble with the Vonage service and it is good to have a dial tone again!
This whole story is full of bitter irony, and it ends in the same way. On 2006-03-01, two days after our number was successfully transferred to Vonage, an unknowing Earthlink saleswoman called our home phone number (as an Earthlink cable internet customer) and enthusiastically pitched the trueVoice service to us. My wife answered the phone, and the saleswoman was mostly speechless as she listened to our story of Earthlink’s carelessness and mistakes. In closing she asked if there was anything else Earthlink could do for us. What an ironic platitude!
As of January 2008, Earthlink continues to periodically call us to solicit our ordering trueVoice service, and continues to send us regular solicitations by mail.