Monday, February 25, 2008

Tpad has cleaned out dormant accounts although they were in use

One of the most reliable VoIP services I know is Tpad. Not only that it worked flawlessly for more than one year, they even credited $10 to my account when I found an error this weekend. Needless to say that Tpad never got any money from me penny pincher, because I use their service only to receive calls.

Long before Jajah Direct, Wifimobile or Gizmocall started similar services, Tpad already had break-in numbers in 39 countries. It's an entire callthrough system: You can dial whichever of these 79 numbers and the number of my Tpad account to reach me for the price of a local call. That's much more reliable than the other services, which depend on the Caller ID to connect the call. In poor countries with bad networks this Caller ID often cannot be transmitted for technical glitches. I am permanently connected to Tpad with my SIP ATA so that my Peruvian friends in Lima can always call me for the price of a local call.

Today it's more than one year that I started to write about Tpad and I have used it since then. But some days ago I realized that my SIP devices could not connect to the Tpad server anymore. Not from my ATA, not from Voxalot, not from a Nokia E61, not from a Nokia N810. Other German friends had the same problem. What was wrong? I asked in their forum and learned that Tpad had cancelled my account because they thought I didn't use it anymore:
Tpad performed a cleanup of "dormant" accounts, without remembering that call records are only captured for calls that use the Tpad softphone. Since you use Tpad exclusively from an ATA or non-Tpad softphone, your call activity is not remembered. So, it is very likely that your account was improperly considered dormant and was suspended. Tpad should be able to restore it for you pretty quickly.

What really impressed me was that the forum admin immediately wrote "Send me a PM of your Tpad Number(s) and we will fix asap". What a difference to other VoIP services! His answer, apology and $10 to my account arrived the same Saturday. On Sunday they fixed the problem. What a great service!

I think I should charge some money to my Tpad account as a gesture of gratefulness. If only it was necessary! With $10 I can call for more than ten hours to Germany and this credit never expires. That's another big difference of Tpad to other VoIP companies.

4 comments:

  1. Hi,

    If you have any problems with your Tpad Account then send me an email with your Tpad Number to:

    steven.johns@tpad.com

    and i can get someone to reactivate your account and i will add some test credit for you.

    Apologies, this was just a human error and steps have been taken to stop this happening again. All accounts affected were users just using Tpad for receiving calls on our free Break IN Service.

    Tpad.

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  2. Hey Markus -
    Glad to see you are still riding the VoiP wave! Regarding TypePad: good thing you have friends in Peru!

    I am going to Russia and there is no service from Russia to USA. What else would be good? Calling Card? You can’t use Rebtel from Russia at the moment.

    Seems the only way is to register a Moscow SIM card with PhoneGnome service and call into a USA ATA that has PhoneGnome enabled...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sipbroker has one callthrough number in Russia. It works similar to Tpad. Look here.

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  4. Hola Markus, espero que se encuentre bien. Gracias al artículo sobre Tpad, he podido conocer el proveedor y sus posibilidades, ya que no lo conocía.
    Resulta, que también tengo amistades en Perú. Concretamente, una amiga de Lima, se viene a España a trabajar. Así, que dicho proveedor le va a encantar, para que la familia y amigos la llamen por teléfono desde Perú a España, como llamada local.
    Hoy le he dado la noticia, y se ha puesto contenta. Me ha llamado ella por teléfono desde allí, a mi nueva cuenta de tpad, y ha funcionado a la perfección.
    Para que vea que tus artículos, sirven para mucho. Gracias.

    ReplyDelete

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