Review of CallcentricMember review of |  about |
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AT&T was kind enough to offer that I could move my number to one of their other services and pay a minimum of $5 a month more as part of a bundled service for exactly what I was getting from them today, how nice… I quickly began my search on the DSLReports.com website and discovered many new VOIP companies I hadn’t heard of before. My brother has Vonage so I knew what I’d get there, but CallCentric was getting rave reviews. I landed on them and began my migration with some level of caution after my past AT&T experience. I was going to try it out before I committed fully and was interested to find their website encouraging me to do just that. I maintained my AT&T service and just forwarded my number to my new CallCentric account so I wouldn’t miss calls and could test their service fully for about a month. I found the services to be nearly identical with the exception of some small feature functionality. I do miss the ability to set my “do not disturb” feature during set times each night so people calling after hours are prompted to consider if the late night call is an emergency or not. CallCentric with just a couple exceptions has many more things I can do with the service. My first experience with CallCentric’s exceptional support staff was when I requested an incoming number or Direct Inward Dial (DID) number. I opted to order a “pay per call” number for $1.95/month just to test. The website stated the number area I ordered should only take one day but it did take them nearly 9 days to establish my account with an incoming number. A note to support to inquire where it was on day 2 returned the following within an hour, “the area you ordered was not in stock within our numbering pool and was back ordered at the carriers that serve the area”. This wasn’t a big deal since I had service with AT&T and they credited my account $.54 for the lack of service. My second experience with support was getting my PAP2T to work properly once I had the number. I was having problems receiving incoming calls. They gave me very detailed instructions of the screen shots they would need, how to upload those to support, and what I could do to upgrade firmware from Cisco’s website in the meantime. All this was done very quickly and thoroughly through the web. I eventually realized after some trial and error that my issue was due to my router and its firewall. After doing some additional web research I found documented issues with VOIP devices sitting behind my Belkin Pre-N Router. I ended up ordering a different Linksys SPA2102-NA device that could sit in front of my router like I’ve had my AT&T service configured for years. This was my issue not CallCentric but they hung with me… Once I received and configured my new ATA device everything has been working great. My old number was forwarded to my new service so all calls were received fine while we played with the service. This month was a great opportunity for me to play and learn about what I really needed for services going forward. First, I learned that the unlimited plan I intended to move to wasn’t necessary. The unlimited plan, like I had with CallVantage, was a bit less expensive than AT&T. However, the “pay per call” program was going to end up costing me about half of that due to seeing our detailed calling habits during the trial month. Because of the detailed visibility of our minute usage and charges I was able to see I didn’t need that much service. Coming from a POTS service to VOIP back in 2003 and getting phone service in the $25 dollar range was a steal. I found I could get the same service today for half that and explains why AT&T is getting out. I also learned how to tweak my ATA device, which I never had the ability to do with AT&T service. Now this isn’t necessary but the information is out there if you want to learn. The CallCentric support website provides a standard setup scheme that requires 11 digits and I’ve been so accustom to using 10 digit dialing with AT&T this was something I needed to research to see if 10 was possible. After reading a few post I found one showing me how to do 10 digit and another showing me how to do 7 digit. I learned from those posts enough to create my own dial plan that allows using 7, 10, and 11 digit dialing. The following is what I’ve been using successfully for over a month. (Please click on the attached screen shot of my dial plan below. My original post didn't correctly render the actual post because the DSLReports.com blog filters elements of the string because it believes it's HTML code) *You will need to replace “704” to be your local area code for this to work correctly. I have since ported my old number from AT&T to CallCentric and have said goodbye to AT&T before they gave me the permanent boot and on my terms. All-in-all, this is a great service with outstanding support. If you have been an AT&T CallVantage customer I’d strongly encourage you to check these folks out. I’d also encourage any other customers of Vonage, Time Warner, or other more established VOIP providers to do the price comparison. I assure you you’re overpaying like I was for the exact same service with less features than these folks provide. Attachments:  Followup comments:
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Callcentric
(14)
Davidson,Mecklenburg,NC
$12 per month
about 9 days
"The Tech Support Is The Best I've Ever Seen!!"
"Would like a Do Not Disturb option to be set by time of day, like CallVantage"
"Should have switched long before AT&T informed me I had to go."
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Former AT&T Call Vantage Customer Agrees 100%
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