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Almost a year ago I heard that BellSouth was offering stand-alone DSL. I was so excited because I could now drop my conventional land-line and instead opt for Voice Over IP. It really did not make financial since for me to operate VOIP before now. Why pay BellSouth for land-line service and not use it. With Bell’s new policy I could drop the land-line, keep my internet, and subscribe to a VOIP service hence saving some money.

In order to keep my phone number the same when I switch services I had to set up another line for my DSL to run on. BellSouth had me a second line with stand-alone DSL on it within a dew days.

I am not going into all the reasons I chose VOIP.com. Let’s just say I did not do my research as well as I should have. I should have known how things were gong to go from the very first surprise. I wanted to keep my phone number so I ported it over to VOIP.com. In doing so VOIP.com told me that they would ship a phone adapter and that I should have it by the time BellSouth releases my phone number.

Everything rocked and rolled on for a few days until one day I had no land-line. I got online and found VOIP.com customer service number. After calling it for the third time and exhausting every menu option I gave up and called the sales number. I finally got a live person on the phone and even though we did not speak the same native language I understood that my adapter had not shipped and I would not have a home phone for days. I fussed a little but it did not matter as they understood me no better than I understood them.

A week later the phone adapter came in. I plugged it in and we had a dial tone. I made a call or two and everything seemed to be working. What a pleasant change. That is until we started getting ‘dead air’. Yes, you heard it right. Dead Air was a new term to me but apparently was not new to hundreds of people on VOIP.com support forums. Yes, I gave up calling the support phone number because I was never able to get anyone. At least on the support forums someone would respond within a few days. Back to Dead Air. When we would make a phone call the person on the other end of our call would pick up the receiver only to hear silence or Dead Air.

This would happen two to three times ever ten calls. Annoying as it was I could live with it. VOIP.com said it was my firewall or router between it and the DSL. I am an IT man by trade and knew well and good that it was not, however it was not worth the hassle at this point. We would just hang up and call the person back and usually the call would go through.

Until that one day when nine out of ten calls went to dead air. For three weeks I conversed with a support tech on their website. This was a total waste of time as they kept wanting me to run tests and post results. They kept asking which calls were bad and I kept telling them. After three weeks of frustration I posted a fairly lengthy, demanding, and pointed thread. Our phone service was restored within one day of the post.

Since then we have had fair service at best. Two to three calls per ten go to dead air. After another chat on the support forum I was told it was my BellSouth DSL. I decided not to waste anymore time responding to the folks over at VOIP.com. When my year of prepaid service is done I will leave them. I do want to try another VOIP service and would love to hear any suggestions as to who you guys/gals use.

My recommendation from personal experience woudl be to stay away from VOIP.com. The phone service is decent at best while the support is terrible. They are certainly not worth the seventeen dollars a month we pay.