Phone Power Reviews 2,865

FRAUDULENT PRACTICES
they still charge my card after my account was closed. I dispute it, win it, get my money back, and they charge me again the next month... total scam

I have been a customer for probably over 10 years. I received a letter in the mail that my equipment from Obhai would not function completely with my equipment, so my wife and I decided to cancel this service, and return the cancellation letter to them.

Well after receiving another letter from them a few months back, that they were going to send me to collections if I didn't pay my balance of $111.71 in 15 days (This would also add a $25 collection fee). I sent an email requiring details since I cancelled this email. It took about a month for them to reply, it said:

The plan you had cost $59.99 plus taxes and fees. Therefore, the total for this year was $109.52 including taxes and fees. On top of it there is a late fee and collection fee included which brings the total to $142.15. The fees might be waived as long as you give us a call to make a payment using a debit or credit card over the phone.

Wow, that's interesting, that email had different numbers then the original letter. The delivered mail notice that said I owed $136($111.71+25) turned into $142.15. I was so pissed, the lady Sylvia said I would have to talk to collections (haha - another department at phonoepower) to get rid of the penalties. They are basically a scamming company that steals your money, I haven't used their service for over a year and they billed me $142. I'm pretty sure I paid < $25 a year for the service, and all of the sudden they are charging me $142 for something I didn't use.

I've had Phonepower service for many years. The cost has risen, and I switched to another voip provider. My phone number was sucessfully ported to the new provider. Calling Phonepower to cancel my month to month service has been a nightmare. They refuse to answer. The option when calling to receive a "callback" doesn't work, and I have been repeatedly disconnected when on hold. I submitted a cancellation request via their website, but realized I wouldn't be able to prove I did so. So, I manually emailed each website provided email address requesting that my service be terminated. Pretty sad. Phonepower used to be very good. They are now clearly in serious decline. If I worked there, I'd bail out ASAP.

Terrible provider, non existent customer service once they have your money. Never sent the adapter, never responded to emails requesting cancellation of the prepaid services, cannot get through via phone because the number keeps hanging up. Cannot access account, cannot use phone number. Worst ever.

You don't have a Zero star option, or I would have used it. Due to a relocation I contacted the company for a cancellation of their service. I immediately received a threatening email indicating that if I did not return their hardware, they would debit my account for $99. I sent the hardware back promptly and per the tracking it was received the following Monday. No confirmation of receipt, and no refund either. I called today and was told it was "policy" not to issue a refund for the unused 8 months of a 12-month contract. Then I get another email today that "I do not have to return the hardware and can dispose of it". WTF? I package the stuff, drive to the post office, pay postage when it was not necessary? It seems, their "policies" are made up at their convenience. Not a company I would ever do business with again and not a company I recommend using if you need an internet based land line.

Customer service refused to issue new number to the rest of the service time. Refuse to issue refund for the rest of unused time, refuse to connect to customer service supervisor. Did not send me cancellation notes.
Raising price from $69.99 pre yes till $200.

Scam. Stay away.

Be thorough if you try to cancel. I tried to cancel and they are still sending me bills with interest fees. When you call their number and select the option for help with services or billing the connection automatically drops. Actually, any call is automatically dropped. They have no service and no way to contact them.

After more than eight years with Phonepower, I am giving them up.

1st: Their rates have more than doubled in the past 3-4 years. Almost 50% of the increase is "cost recovery fees" which mean they charge whatever they want because they can.

2nd: Their service has declined to useless -- not absent, but inaccurate, incomplete, and of no value. My OBihai adapter was recently sunsetted, and stopped working abruptly last week. Phonepower provide a code string to insert in the operating parameters, but that killed the second line and made it impossible for me to log into the adapter.

It took more than 8 hours of fighting with the adapter, including internet research, before I was finally able to get it working again.

I am switching hardware and my VOIP provider.

BEWARE: PhonePower is a useless company that will take your money and provide absolutely minimal service.

Absolutely the worst communications co. I've dealt with. Been a customer for 14 years; they will not resolve a problem with service that does not work.

This is a modification of my May 15 review:

I called them in April, a month before our service was set to expire. They said they could not say exactly how much of increase in our yearly rate to expect, and told me to call back 2 or 3 days before it was to renew, but they expected it to be around $109. I decided to cancel last Friday, called them, and canceled (way too many spam calls, etc.) with the link the rep sent me. Nevertheless, they charged my bank account $135 three days later, this Monday. I called them the same day and the rep said they would refund my money. It's 2 days later and I am still waiting, a bit fearfully.
THEY REFUNDED MY MONEY (FINALLY) TWO WEEKS AFTER THEY WITHDREW IT FROM MY ACCOUNT, SO THEY DID THE RIGHT THING, JUST SLOWLY. UPON RECONSIDERATION, THE SPAM IS NOT THEIR FAULT, BUT I DID NOT HAVE SUCCESS FINDING A SPAM FILTER ...

I've been a PhonePower customer since 2009. In the beginning, support was fantastic and the service was high quality for a reasonable price. The cloned line feature allows you to have up to 2 lines/calls active at one time which is nice (your phone adapter must support it). However, it is now 2024.

Over the years the website slowed down and sections of it (like the invoice and payments page) began to fail. It is an old website but still gives you the ability to manage the service. I usually use the website to delete old voicemails. Okay, the site being old technology is a nit.

But let's move on to the BYOD. I selected a replacement device from the list of supported equipment (Grandstream replacing an old Linksys). During the provisioning process, the PhonePower setup process would only activate one of the 2 lines -- the clone line would not get setup correctly. I contacted support and got a live person -- awesome! And they knew what they were doing -- double awesome! However, it became apparent that the only way we were going to get both of my lines active was to do a manual configuration. And since every adapter is slightly different, the best they could do is provide me with a few basic settings. It was enough to get both lines working. But here's the catch: since it was manually configured, PhonePower won't provide support. That means that if you have problems with your adapter or your adapter stops working after PhonePower does periodic maintenance, you get zero help. I've tweaked the settings on the Grandstream several times, each time requesting help from PhonePower and sending in log information to help troubleshoot why my adapter stops taking and making calls after a PhonePower maintenance event -- no reply; no help. I have to restart my adapter to reconnect. So, support has gone downhill. I used to be able to get assistance, even with a manual configuration, but no more.

Then in 2024, got another surprise. My service just renewed. I mentioned earlier that the payment and invoice section of their site doesn't work (at least not consistently). So, my annual service that is about $100 for the service suddenly was over $230. To be fair, my prior years with fees was around $180. When I asked the billing department why my service went up over 33% in 2 years, they replied that it was due to Federal fees. Really? Federal fees went up 33%? Nope. I managed to get a copy of my invoice. The largest fees were not the Federal fees, rather it was a combination of things -- a huge recovery fee, a PhonePower added fee for administrative cost recovery, and an error in sales tax calculation. I compared it to my mobile phone bill -- it had all but the administrative cost recovery fees, but at a fraction of what PhonePower was passing through. The billing department's response was that VOIP vs Mobile isn't a good comparison since the rules are slightly different. Sorry, but it is a perfect comparison. The fees are out of whack on how they are allocated. Oh, and that administrative cost recovery fee from PhonePower -- that was added to help PhonePower cover its various filings, general account servicing, and record maintenance. Um, what? You are tacking on a service fee to cover the costs that are a typical cost of business and should be covered under the service plan!?!

So, to sum it up, support is a shadow of what it used to be, fees and taxes will more than double your quoted phone plan, they tack on extra charges to cover their typical expenses as though they were a co-op or a non-profit instead of a for profit business. I expect 2024 will be my last year with PhonePower.

This company is terrible and I would not recommend doing business with them. My issue specifically is that they were unable over a long period of time to make it possible to update a credit card or form of payment on there website. I stopped using the service and eventually had to mail them a check to settle up.

My question is how bad at running a business do you have to be that you can't manage to collect money on your own website?

I used Phonepower for many years; until recently they were o.k. I did have several periods during which calls would be dropped at random intervals; eventually my account was relocated to another server and service was acceptable. But recently I discovered that their Fail-safe phone number (the number you have calls forwarded to if your internet goes down) simply didn't work. Calls were just sent to voicemail; they were NOT forwarded to the cell phone number that I had provided. Months passed and this problem was not fixed. And I discovered that I couldn't change credit card information on their website; erroneous error messages were generated when I tried. Staff suggested that I call them and do it by phone but for me that is not an acceptable solution. Finally, nothing has changed on their website in years. It is abysmally slow, and not user friendly. So I have changed providers.

Opted not to renew after price jumped about 50 percent. Phonepower warned it would cut off service and did. Fine. But then it sent a bill for almost $200 accompanied by collection threat.

Phone Power is an excellent voip provider. My new order was processed in a timely manner and tailored to my needs. The support staff is very helpful and professional.

LOVE Phone Power and all it offers. Great people to work with when making the change to save money.

The service works great! I’m satisfied…

It has been an exasperating experience. It has taken nearly 2 months to get my numbers ported from ATT. I get a slightly different story each time I call support. At one time I was told everything was good, the numbers were ready to port, and I would have my devices in two days. That was about three weeks ago. It's probably ATT's faulty but I still don't have the service or the devices and I'm frustrated.