I’ve been using NuFone for VoIP connectivity since I first turned up Asterisk at home. I’ve been very happy with their service–in almost 5 months, I’ve never noticed an outage–but their support system has been driving me crazy. It’s been taking me 3 or 4 requests before I get a single response from them. Once I get in touch with them, they’re fast and efficient, but getting them to talk to me in the first place is been like pulling teeth. Reading the asterisk-users mailing list shows that some people have my problem, while others enjoy good support.

I think I figured it out. When I send them mail from my home email account, I don’t even get a reply from their automated tracking system. When I send them mail from my work address, I get a reply back almost immediately. Problem solved: their email system doesn’t want to talk to mine, but it’s okay with work’s. Most likely, they found a spam blocking list that puts me in the middle of ISP space, even though I’m really in a business DSL block.

Hopefully we can get this fixed soon.

Update (9/1/2004): It’s been a week, and I still haven’t heard back from them. However, I seem to have acquired a new 800 number–a call to some number I’d never seen before showed up in my Asterisk logs last week. So, my theory has changed a bit: my mail is reaching them, but theirs isn’t reaching me.

Either that or they’re completely uninterested in talking to me.

So, last night I sent a message directly to a couple staff members there pointing out the weirdness. I asked them to call me back on one of my 800 numbers. Tomorrow, if I don’t hear back, I’ll try IRC, followed by a call to their support number.

And if that fails, I’ll start looking for a new vendor. I may be a piddly little customer, but Google likes me. I’m the fourth site returned when searching for ‘NuFone’.

Update (9/16/2004): They seem to have fixed whatever was broken. I sent them two more requests this morning and they were both answered within minutes. This is a great improvement. At this point, I don’t mind recommending their service to others.