BroadVoice Service or lack thereof

I needed a home office telephone line and since I already had a Linksys IP phone, started looking for a service provider which allowed me to "BYOD" or bring your own device. I quickly selected BroadVoice, they've been around the longest with about 45,000 subscribers and their pricing was half way decent.

So I signed up. Easy enough and in under 30 minutes my account was operational. I plugged the configuration into my Linksys phone and bang, I was live and on the air. I was happy. But my problems were just beginning.

Shortly after activation, BroadVoice sent me an authorization form saying I needed to complete it and fax or email it in. The form asked for copies of the front and back of a credit card plus a copy of my driver's license or passport. BroadVoice said until I sent this back, I wouldn't be able to make international calls and worse, if I didn't send the form back within 5 days, they would suspend my account. Seemed pretty harsh to me and had I been aware of all this extra work, I might have gone elsewhere. But sure enough, buried deep in the terms & conditions was the clause saying I had to fill out this form.

While I forgot to fill out the form and 11:59 on the 5th day, Broadvoice suspended my account. Ooops. Since fax doesn't work over IP, I filled out the form, made a jpeg image of all my documents and emailed it to the address on the form. A minute later, the email was rejected, "no such address at Broadvoice.com".

I sent a note to [email protected] asking them what to do and 24 hours later, no reply. I then called their number and a gentlemen told me to send it to a different email address, which I did. Another 24 hours went by and a lady @ Broadvoice replied that they did not accept zip file enclosures. Zip file? I'd sent a PDF and jpeg.

OK, so I turned the jpeg images into a PDF and resent the documents. I had originally signed up to BroadVoice with a virtual credit card, but since they needed a copy of a "real" credit card, I sent a new one. Sure enough, 30 minutes later the same lady replied saying she couldn't unsuspend the account because the card numbers didn't match. I updated my account online and replied as to the situation. We'll see where that goes.

How sad. It's no wonder Broadvoice has an 'F' rating with the Better Business Bureau and unlike most VoIP companies where the complaints center on bad voice service, the majority of BroadVoice's problems center on bad billing practices.