«
»

netTALK Appears To Go Back On Their Promise Of 1 Year Of Free Service [UPDATED x3]

It seems that the netTALK outage saga won’t die. You’ll recall from this story that netTALK was sending out Tweets like this during the outage that cost 75,000 Canadians their phone service for 5 days or so:

But in the same story, they sent me a statement that said this:

In the meantime, Canadian Customers will be offered an additional number and six months of free service.

The tweet came on the 18th of January, the statement was sent to me on the next day. Clearly there was a disconnect there. Now this disconnect is getting worse. Check out this exchange on Twitter:

So it appears that the information, or rather mis-information seeing as I have three different statements from the same company on display above, was not an isolated incident. It seems that netTALK is backing away from from the free year that they promised Canadian customers during the outage. I am reaching out to the user that posted this on Twitter to get their side of the story. But I’d be interested in hearing what netTALK has to say as well. But I have to say that the optics of this situation suck for netTALK. And keep in mind that this is not a company that can not afford to have any PR fails going forward if they wish to survive.

More info as it comes.

UPDATE: The reaction from the Twitterverse has been quick:

https://twitter.com/teel1931/status/690878651349516288

https://twitter.com/MrsCrules/status/690762364807954432

This is sure to come back to haunt netTALK:

And from the person who started it all:

I have not seen any reaction from netTALK as of yet though. But this is not going well for them.

UPDATE #2: A Twitter user sent me a screen shot of an e-mail from Anastasios “Takis” Kyriakides who is the CEO of netTALK which shows the promise 1 year of free service.

Over to you netTALK. This seems pretty clear cut to me.

UPDATE #3: It seems that the deal has been altered. A Twitter user has forwarded me this screenshot:

So it looks like the length of the free service depends on what you do with your phone number. None of them are the year that they originally promised. I’ve reached out to other Canadian netTALK customers and they are seeing similar offers in their netTALK account management portal. And it is clear that they want you to move to a new number. I’ve said it before and I will say it again. A number change for most people is a non-starter. Oh yeah, you need to make a choice by February 1st. Charming.

While this deal fits what they sent me in the statement from the 19th of January, it contradicts the tweets from the day before and the e-mail sent by netTALK’s CEO. None of this really inspires confidence in netTALK at this point and the optics truly suck for them.

This entry was posted on January 22, 2016 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “netTALK Appears To Go Back On Their Promise Of 1 Year Of Free Service [UPDATED x3]”

  1. Voipish Says:
    January 26, 2016 at 2:57 am

    I think Nettalk wanted to do the right thing, but I get the feeling they got over zealous in the heat of the moment as I thought 1 free year was too rich for a struggling company. I’m not surprised that it changed quickly to 6 months.

    In my case, the offer showed up in their “Nettalk Connect” Portal, and I was offered 3 choices. Keep the free temporary number they gave me (6mo free), choose a new number (6mo free) or keep my original number (2mo free). I chose to keep my original number and I am satisfied with 2 free months of service.

    The selection was easy and trouble-free.

    I think you really need to consider that the outage wasn’t Nettalk’s fault. The CEO of Iristel made the decision to pull the plug on his ex-employer (yes, he used to be the head honcho at Nettalk).

    For a company that is struggling financially and given the competitive landscape in voip, Nettalk isn’t so bad. There are lots of horror stories out there especially amoung the biggest players in the telecom market.

    Rogers just announced 200 job cuts. That should improve service!

    Reply
    • John C Says:
      January 28, 2016 at 9:23 am

      In my opinion, and in response to the poster in the comments section above, they have lost credibility big time. Not only because they didn’t manage their money properly but also because they have been deceptive, have lied and treated customers poorly. I would highly advise people to avoid Nettalk as a provider. The worse customer service experience I have ever had.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Discover more from The IT Nerd

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading