VYLmedia Reviews by Residential VoIP Users

Wow! Canadaian User. Use VOIP for corporate rentals. Chose VYL because they appear to have their stuff together. I prepay for a year at a time. Been with VYL for over 2 years now. Last year they actually "lost" my number, and the phone was cut off for 6 months after I had paid for my year. Never got a refund until almost a year later. It seems customer service, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and Technical service have never communicated to eachother...ever. I have had several phone conversations, and now many of them backed up by email, and I am still having problems with this company. First... they told me they have a signed document requesting them to port my number to another company, but they cannot produce or show me this document which I allegedly signed because it is against some crazy law in america. Then they told me they chad retrieved my number...all in the same conversation. Hmmm... Although very apologetic sounding, they got my number back on line finally and did not issue me a refund for the outage. I finally was told I got one, and it was backed up with an email. Nothing extra for all of the trouble and time I had spent emailing, gathering records, and phoning. I used the refund credit and paid the remaining amount for another year. Less than a month later I have since received threatening emails saying my phone is going to be cut off for a delinquent account. 11 phone coversations with 7 different people, and 14 emails. The SAVINGS ARE NOT WORTH THE HEADACHE of trying to keep your phone working continuously. I do not recommend this company, and like the other guy from Dec 6 2011 says. I highly suspect it is the owner and management. Streamline your company man and get your Accounting Systems Matrixed. Pay the extra $800.00 per year you cheapskate, or it's going to kill your business.

Pros If it were NOT for the quasi Owner, this company would be exceptional. Cons The owner. He is unable to take constructive feedback regarding his staff and when his technology FAILS! Was a customer with VYL Media from December 2006 to mid 2009. Left because the owner instructed his employees to be rude to me because I was complaining about call termination issues, perpetual outages, and extremely rude personnel. Today, Tuesday, December 6th 2011, almost exactly five years since I signed up I receive an Email asking me to PLEASE come back. At first I ignored the Email. Then I got a Follow- Up Email. Decided to act on it because of the nice sales pitch on the ad in my Email. Got Sales on the phone and they were pleasant enough. Told him about the history with VYL Media and asked him if all had improved and if owner is gone? He informed me that things were somewhat better. I told him I would seriously consider his company again as long as the owner would have ZERO contact with my account. Unceremoniously, I receive a Call-Back from the owner and he lit into me. He told me unequivocally that he was not ever interested in having me as a customer and to go elsewhere with my business. All the BEST in securing the BEST VoIP service for your needs!!!

I left Vonage due to service and went to VYL. It is now over 2 years, they started out fine, but then the quality here on the West Coast was spotty! Their customer service and tech support has central time hours and spotty emergency service. Last September, I was not able to dial certain numbers which I had dialed the day before. The numbers varied per day. It was a routing issue from 1-Voip [never got an answer as to why this was happening]. They did tell me to upgrade to their new system, free of charge, but I would lose any voice mails saved on my current account. I needed to find a way to save the messages [some sentimental] - they offered NO suggestions. After constant calls to tech support and a new modem/box from 1-voip, a tech suggested they could set up a 1-voip account and transport my numbers until I could find a way to save my voice mails. THIS WAS GREAT .. but only after 6 months and over 45 calls to tech support. They sent me the new software and box and the quality was astounding compared to the old system. A big plus for me. However, the new system lost some features such as wake up call, still cannot have PST time on calls. Also, the caller id did not work for the first few months. I found that I could record the voice mails and load them onto my computer via a mini recorder and software. Yeah! I told them about it and they transported my numbers to the new account and number. I was to copy the voice mails in the next week. Voila, they cancelled the old number and ALL the voice mails were erased..they cannot retrieve them or the cost was too much on their end. [technology is there folks!]. ALL customer service could do was..SORRY... I got a free month while they corrected the caller id. Funny, while not being able to call numbers for over 6 months, I got NADA or we are sorry. Just an issue they were working on. Again, a 1-VOIP problem, yet I the customer was inconvenienced. LOL!! I then got a bill with the wrong number [correct address] which was not mine. I asked for a corrected bill and was told WE CANNOT REISSUE A BILL...hmmm. and on my website, under billing I get an error message wrong account and password, yet I can access ALL other areas, voice mail, call records, etc. Hmmm! Then, 1-VOIP suspended my account for nonpayment! I called and asked for a corrected bill and explanation so that I can pay and send a letter to them and Better Business. I was to receive it within a few minutes per customer service manager. Now, an hour later and StILL no invoice nor service. Amazed at the horrible customer service and spotty tech support. Am going elsewhere for service!! BEWARE!

I signed up when they were VOIPyourlife, and originally everything was very good. But there have been numerous problems for quite some time now: not being able to connect with either no ring tone at all or a fast busy signal, or the other person not being able to hear me, static in line, voice quality so abysmal that even a half-decent conversation is not possible, and the list goes on. I have written and phoned in complaints so often, my file should be a yard thick by now. I have noticed a pattern, in that the problems seem to be prominent in approximately 2 months cycles. We are in the midst of a non-performing cycle right now. I am experiencing massive problems. Originally, an eMail would get an immediate response. No more. Phone support is also harder to reach and the techs are useless. The whole thing is just causing more problems then it is worth. I am very disappointed. This service has gone from a 5 star provider to a minus 5! Save yourself the aggravation. I am now faced with the search for a new provider and a new provider it will be. No more of this BS. I have had IT! Useless bunch providing something that in this day and age really should be no rocket science. IF it was all working as it was supposed it WOULD be very good, I like the features (when they are working, which has also been hit and miss in the past such as the find-me-follow-me not working, meaning that my cell does not ring when I leave the house even though it is set up to, the do not disturb not working causing me to get woken up in the middle of the night by overseas callers, blocked numbers getting through anyways, the voicemail suddenly disengaging even though it is always supposed to be on, etc). I have been with them for 3 years now. Over 1 year there has been nothing but problems. There are always all sort of excuses. It is not for the lack of trying on their end, but it means nothing to me if they try and it does NOT produce the desired results. And if something seems to be fixed, sure enough a couple of months later the same problem either appears again, or a new problem does. Enough is enough. I am so frustrated. I urgently need to reach someone right now - I can hear them, they cannot hear me. What good is a phone service if it cannot even provide very basic communication. No reliability. DON'T do this to yourself. And it could be so good, if these guys would only get their friggin act together. Sad! PS - their features rating would be a 5, IF everything was working as it should. The original ordering and ease of set-up were great and would deserve a 5, same goes for the once-upon-a-time customer service. But since they are not longer providing the service of the original provider, the rating is only a 1. My message to VYL: do better, you once did, so you are capable. You just don't want to. Sad!

Many calls either do not connect at all or sound terrible. Frequent disconnects. Tech support couldn't be bothered to look into it.

Don't bother. I had good luck for a long time and then everything changed. Tech support literally ignored all requests for assistance until I gave up and canceled. To top it off they won't issue a RS to return their own hardware.

VOIP Your Life worked fine until I got a new DLink router. Now I can not answer calls. I spent hours on several calls to tech support, then they finally told me there is a known problem with their phone adapter and the DLink router. I still have a Teleblend VOIP account that I use through this router. I can make calls with the VYLmedia phone, but I can't answer any calls. I am going to try another company.

For the past few months, there are numbers that I cannot call with my VYLMedia phone. After multiple service tickets and run around, they've told me "Unfortunately, we are at best route for New Hampshire, the vendor that routes these calls are out of business. At this point we are still working to find new vendors to complete these calls to but we do not have an ETA." Thus, I need a new phone provider.

Ever since we started this service...it has been sporatic. There is one person that we have had contact with in customer service/tech support that has been very helpful. Everyone else is truely questionable. The last time I called they told me that are account was cancelled. It was NOT. They do updates on their system (which brings down our system) and they don't give us any advance warning. Over all, we have been very unhappy with our experince with this company.

VYL's quality is mediocre at best, and often isn't even THAT good. I've often had problems dialing a 1-800 number for another company because they don't allow my VoIP phone to go through. VYL asks for these numbers, and says they'll fix them, but that never happens. Often if I have to press a number for automatic selection when talking to an automated system, the number presses aren't recognized, and I have to call from my cell phone which costs me money. Lastly, VYL only has a few numbers in a few states to be able to check voicemails from another phone. NOT convenient! I'm not happy with the service, and in fact am cancelling it today.

This is by far one of the WORSE services imaginable. Customer Service is OK, tech support is INCOMPETENT! The problem is... they simply do not have their own tech department and the BLAME everything else except their own product. I had services with VoIP Your Life, now named VYLMedia... for more than three (3) years. I was one of their original customers back in December 2006. I live through tooooooooooooooooooooo many of their horrific technical call termination problems. Countless!!! Oh my God! Once a Customer Service person told me that one of the owners told them to give me bad service because they did NOT want me as a Customer anyway. Go figure. This company simply sucks all around. HORRIFIC! Anyone who thinks this company is worth having for VoIP services is either ... not requiring much at all ... or simply have extremely low expectations and standards in a product.

I have put 'would I recommend' to NO even though everything is great and there is a reason for it. If you know for sure that you are never going to exceed 2500 minutes per month then voipyourlife is great. Their service is great, their customer service is excellent. But their unlimited plan is falsely advertised to be unlimited when there is really a cap on it. They recently decided to (without warning) put me on a basic plan with 200 outgoing minutes only. I am going to be switching to another company in the mean time. A couple of things that are not good about voipyourlife. They don't give you warnings. They just DO whatever they want to do and fire you an email about it. They thought my credit card was fraudulent and cut my service without any warning whatsoever. I could not even call their customer service to rectify the problem. I ended up using my cell phone minutes, which racked up easily since it took a good 45 minutes to sort out the issue. They also, without warning, switched me to a lower plan rather than sending me a warning email to lower my usage (even though the plan is unlimited by the way). Their webadmin page does not have total minutes used. Good luck trying to add up the minutes of all your calls manually. So if you can keep your minutes usage below 2500, go with them, they are a good company. If not, don't expect them to understand that you are calling your family abroad, because they will think that you are reselling their service even if you are calling the same numbers (same numbers = same family members and not the whole of US or UK).

I am constantly having to pull the plug and reboot. The calls take forever to go thru. The line isn't always clear for the person on the other end. I will shortly be switching that line to a new provider.

Don't buy. The voice quality is horrible, despite a very fast and reliable Internet connection. Whether it's their fault or the cable company's fault does not matter. - The voice service is awful.

If we weren't moving shortly, and our local phone provider wasn't so expensive, I would happily change providers now. This hasn't been a good experience for us. I didn't realize you could only have one phone right at your computer. One of the technical support people pointed us to a website that told us how to get phone service through the whole house, but when we had problems, I talked to a different technical support person, who told me it was impossible to have our phones set up the way we did, and that I was wrong, and couldn't help me. He finally just hung up on me. I have only found 1 technical support person who knows what they are doing, and usually when things go wrong, DH has to go online to figure out the problem, because the technical support person can't help. Their regular customer service people are very nice, though. We have problems with our phone every month and a half or so, and are left without phone service for anywhere from a couple hours and 3 days. As I stated before, only one time has their technical support been able to help. Either DH has to figure out what is wrong, or eventually our phone service magically comes back. Every couple months we have a problem with other people being able to hear us when talking to them. I can hear what they are saying, but they can't hear me. We often have problems with messages left on voice mail where it cuts out in the middle of the message, and is dead for a few seconds, and then you can hear the person talking again. That probably happens about 50% of the time. When we move, there is no way I will ever consider using this service again. We had our phone through Comcast for about 5 months, and never had any of these problems. I would have stayed with them, but we are in some odd area where a small phone company has a monopoly, and Comcast was forced to give us up as a customer. The local phone company would be about $75-80 a month, and there have been times I almost went over to them and paid so much more, because we have had such bad quality of service.

Voice quality is good, features are good, no problems with billing. The difficulty is with support, which is contracted through RNK Communications. If the problem has a simple solution, the first level tech is generally helpful and will fix it on the spot. If the problem cannot be not solved at that level, it goes into the round file, and you not be given the courtesy of any feedback. Technicians apparently use nom de phones, I have never been able to follow up with anyone who said they would do something. They do not return calls. There seem to be problems when their phone adapter is used with a router. They want the phone adapter first after the cable modem, but that causes router problems. Linksys, which makes both router and phone adapter says the router should be first, but that seems to cause phone problems, and at times RNK will refuse to address a problem unless the phone adapter is placed first in line. Neither RNK or Linksys are willing to address the compatibility issues between the two pieces of equipment or any solution thereto.

Expensive service. They messed up my invoice. Sent to wrong email address. blocked few international calling card toll free numbers. Paying a hefty service fee per month decided to switch to viatalk. The same number blocked in VoIPYourLife worked great with ViaTalk. Got my own device. With 8MBps downstream, 412KBps, Viatalk is flying. It took me a day to set up my device with one third of the service fee and 3 times more feature than VOIPYourLife. What best do you expect from Viatalk ? What more trouble do you expect from VOIPYourLife ?

I tried them for 3 weeks and had daily crashes of voip and network when ATA was before router. Calls lost my voice after 2 minutes of call regularly. I gave them 3 weeks to adjust and reboots almost daily. Service was very unreliable. Found this site looking for an answer to who has good service. Do not shop for the cheapest provider (voipcom) they are worse. You pay for what you get!

I had really bad experience with voipyourlife.com. I had to call technical service to set this up (which I didn't have to for my previous provider - I am quite familiar with these hardware and computer in general). That was acceptable. But the killer was when I tried to port my number, which they promised initially was maximum 2.5-3 weeks. I waited for 6 weeks with multiple calls and emails to follow up with customer service on the status of the number porting. They rarely reply to your emails, and when they do the answers are not good. The call quality started OK but my friends soon started complaining that they cant hear me (despite a 5Mbps internet connection - which I frequently test for speed). After 3 months, it was getting worse, so I thought enough was enough and discontinued the service. I got a complete bill though I disconnected after 20 days of the month. Then I thought what's the point in dealing with that customer service. The shocker was a month later, when they charged me again!!! I call them up again, and the rep agrees to not charge it again and sends me the confirmation mail. Now the confirmation mail reaches me with the next surprise - I have to ship the adapter back to them at my expense in 14 days or they will charge me another $100. How about that? I have been a tech guy all along. I have used just about everything internet offers and have dealt with various dealers and service providers. To be frank, this was one of the worst experience.

Could never get my other phones to work with the service and wanted me to pay for an electrician to come out to find out why.

So Im a fan gizmos and like to try other things out from time to time. I am a Vonage user currently (over a year), but wanted to try something else out there. I was looking for someone who could give me softphone free and save me a couple more bucks a month. Well I tried VYL based on reviews here. I guess I jumped the gun... First, as many have stated, the Admin panel is HORRIBLE. If you are going to sell a technology, it at least needs the appearance that the company is all about technology. I haven't seen a such a dry webpage since 1995. Moving on... Features were lacking in two areas for me. First, they don't support Caller ID with NAME. Just Caller ID. What's the difference? Well Caller ID displays the phone number. Caller ID with NAME displays the phone number AND name of the person or company. To me, Caller ID is useless. I want to know WHO is calling me. I called VYP to see why the name was not displaying (10 minutes on hold waiting) and the agent told me they were having problems with their system and its their top priority. So I replied and said "So when you system is working, I will have caller ID with name and number" He replied again "We are having a problem with our caller ID system and it is our top priority" So its obvious this guy is ducking my question with a general reply. That he knows something I don't know. I go out and google some, and find out that Caller ID with Name is not supported with VYL, nor is a second line or fax capabilities on that line. Well, all the important features I needed, dont exist with this service so I cancelled 2 days later. Guess I shouldn't have jumped the gun by looking at all the 5 star ratings at this website. During the two days I used the service, the audio dropped out often, and people on the other end often said It sounded like I was talking in a tunnel. I can't blame myself or my broadband for this because I have been and continue to be a Vonage subscriber for over a year and never experienced audio problems. I am a fan of companies who have a website that contains documentations, how-to's, faqs, and forums, and VYL didn't have any. A very cut and dry service. I just wanted to try something else, and am sorry I did. I'm still with Vonage and won't bother with any other.

Service was fantastic for the first month or so... Then every 3-5 days the service would be dead... trying to make outgoing calls would be met with fast busy, people trying to call in would be met with "This number is temporarily out of service" recordings. Tech support constantly blamed Roadrunner. Finally the service went dead and would not come back to life... They tried to access the VoIP adapter and found it was fried... sent a new one overnight... every 3-5 days, you have to power it off then back on to clear up sound quality... Starts cutting in and out, like chopping the conversations Severely. Contacted their support, and AGAIN they blamed roadrunner... ran their speed and jitter tests, Just shy of 14Mb down, and 1.3Mb up, less than 2% jitter... called RR out and had them replace the modem, drop from the pole to the house and the line from their external termination to the modem... Speeds are the same, same issue with VoIPyourlife... They are clueless. If you want a phone, go with a local carrier and forget VOIP... seems no one has it right yet and it's a gamble... When you need 911, you might not be able to get them.. .and that could mean life or death!

Quality was horrible. Even though my DSL is high speed, I wasn't able to hold a meanful conversation - it was like a cell call in a low coverage area. As a result I let my service lapse and they turned off my ability to make calls. After 2 months, VOIPYOURLIFE tried to make me pay 2 months of service to reinstate it when their customer service said they could improve my quality. Since I was unable to make calls during this period I refused and they insisted that I return the equipment. I tried this service because of the Customer Service Rating. Seems to me those ratings MUST be over inflated.

I love the people who work for this company. Their customer service is stellar, and their VoIP phone service sounds as good as my land line. They have one deal breaking problem, however. They have a very poor implementation of caller ID. I was surprised to lose my caller ID by name feature when I converted to VoipYourLife; numbers only on caller ID are pretty much useless. In addition, the people I call are not getting proper caller ID information. They usually get a city and state name only. To make matters worse, I am identified by a city that is far from my actual location. When caller ID is properly implemented and includes name information, I may come back to this company, but in the meantime, I am forced to find a new provider, and cannot in good conscience recommend this company to others. To be fair though, if you can live without caller ID, and you are willing to pay their price, you won't find a better VoIP provider.