SunRocket not looking so good
June 18, 2005 by Mike Wendland
I wrote a couple of months ago about my decision to try the SunRocket VoIP phone service. With a pre-pay deal that works out to less than $17 a month I figured it was worth the try.
I’ve since been getting e-mail every day from people who want to know my experience.
Alas, it’s not nearly as rosy as I’d hoped.
Here’s my answers to the most common questions:
How good is the quality of calls? Overall, pretty good, with only occaisonal whooshes or echoes.
Does it slow down the Internet for your computer? I’m not sure. I’m suspicious that it might add some latency to my clicks. That’s becoming more and more frustrating for me. Then again, Comcast could be acting up. That certainly is not a rarity. The verdict is out on how it affects the rest of the Internet operations.
What about reliability of service? Ah, here’s the really weak spot. I’ve had two outages in the last eight weeks. The first lasted several hours. The second happened this morning and has been underway for two hours now. Two outages in two months is two too many in my book. My landline service hasn’t been out in years.
What do you like best about it?Unlimited local calls and long distance. A great Web interface that e-mails me my voicemail when I’m on the road. A “follow me” feature that rings my cellphone if the main phone isn’t answered after a few rings. And if my cell doesn’t anser, it then rings my wife’s cell. I can turn that on anytime or off, when we don’t want to be disturbed. But no more important calls will be missed again.
How about techinical support? My experience has been that reaching SunRocket’s technical support is extremely difficult. As I write this, I’ve been on hold for 20 minutes. My Comcast Internet service was down this morning for a few minutes and although it’s now back, SunRocket is not. I’ve tried unplugging the SunRocket gizmo to reset the connection but it hasn’t helped. I’ve called once before about a support issue and never did get through. Reputations are won and lost by customer support. SunRocket needs lots of imporvement.
Have you disconnected your landline phone and gone all VoIP? No and I’m sure glad I didn’t. I would not want to depend exlusively on this. I may someday but not yet.
Bottom line: I can not yet recommend this to you, loyal reader. Most of the time it seems fine. But with a phone, most of the time isn’t good enough. I need some more time wuth SunRocket before I can give you a definitive take.
Update I’ve now 11 a.m. and I’ve been holding 45 minutes. Their service tape says “please remain on the line and we’ll be with you as soon as possible” but gives no estimate to how many callers there are ahead of me or my estimated wait time.
Update #2 It’s now 4 p.m. and, finally, I’ve gotten through to tech support. A pleasant enough tech named “Ben” had me unplug the gizmo form my modem, unplug the gizmo, put a regular phone in one of the ports and punch in a sequence of numbers and pound signs that I no longer remember. Plugging everything back in has it working again.
Apparently, when Comcast went offline for a while this morning, the gizmo did, too, and needed to be reset.
So… stay tuned… I’ll keep experimenting with this and let you know how it works. But I’m keeping my traditional landline until this proves itself.
Mike,
I’ve been using BroadVoice VoIP since April. I can echo your comments 100% with this service as well. Tech support that is horribly difficult to get through too; outages (I’ve had at least one a month); and some call quality issues. I will say that my “gizmo” is plugged into my router - and I have that port set as a DMZ - so it can pass through 100%. I have not seen any other latency issues. If someone is on the phone, I also notice no slowdown in my Internet work and browsing. I did drop my land line - but we nearly always have a cellphone in the house as a backup. To date the features and cost have out weighed the drawbacks for us. We hardly ever used our landline phone - and even with outages… the unlimited calling to 21 counties has been a tremendous savings. My only fear now is how the 911 and e911 regulations will be affecting the price advantage of VoIP.
Ive been using Vonage for over a year and like it. I also have removed my land line. I live in Windsor, Ontario and Vonage allows me to have one American number and one Canadaian. Reliability is the major drawback. But the quality is good.
Mike, Mike, Mike… I thought (and had hoped) I would see something like this coming from you, only because I didn’t want to believe the problem was only with me.
I’ve had a nightmare experience with SunRocket since I transfered my number and I dropped my landline. After fighting for over a month, I am finally getting my number transfered back to SBC tomorrow and as soon as I have SBC back, I’m cancelling my service with SunRocket, disputing my credit card charge and am considering other possible actions.
After many phone calls and sending several threating e-mails I FINALLY got in contact with Carrie Barr at SunRocket. After several phone calls to SBC and hearing from them that SunRocket was holding up the transfer of my phone number, Carrie Barr informed me that she found my number transfer request in a pile of rejecttions and wasn’t sure exactly what happened. According to SBC, VoIp services can hold on to a transfered phone number for 45 business days. That would have put my return of service to SBC about another month from now.
My feeling is that SunRocket does not really care about customer service. I really have tried to work with them to no avail.
The concept is great, but to me it’s like cellular service back in the late 80’s. A luxury that’s nice when it works, but not something you’d like to have to depend on. Hopefully some day they will turn it around but until then I guess I’ll just have to grin and bear it.
SBC… you never looked so good.
Oooh, this sounds scary–especially after I just switched to sunrocket from SBC. My plan is to use the Sunrocket number for my business line. I will be watching this closely.
I also have noticed a significant drop in download speeds: 400 Kb/s+ to less than 200 Kb/s. I thought it was my new laptop’s Centrino chip all my PCs/laptops are slower. (No more 650MB Linux ISO downloads in 20 minutes…boo!)
Hi,
I have similar problems as most you do.
I called tech support many times and beck them let me talk to second levels to have my gizmo replaced. After talk to 2nd level, the tech guy not able resolved the problems. He help me place order for 2nd gizmo.
After I got new gizmo, it works great except it been up and down once awhile without notice from Sunrocket. I also upgraded my DSL to PRO and connected my Gizmo directly to my router. My internet surfing is much faster and no delay.
For who expieriencing echoing on the phone, I recommend lower the volume on the handset which caused the echo and find which phone can caused echo. I have 3 wireless Uniden phones and one two line phones. All them don’t have echo. There is one slimline phone which I purchased from RS that created allot of echos even the handset not in used. This phone unplugged and resolved my echoing issues.
By the way, second level is not a easy way to reach. I hope they have more techs on the 2nd level support and response quicker on issues.
I too have switched from SBC to Sunrocket, and am seriously questioning that decision. I have had three serious outages in the past month, and the site is currently showing a splash screen stating that they are having service difficulties in ’some areas’. Obviously, mine is one of those areas. This has been going on for over 8 hours now- an unthinkable interruption in service.
As to the service, I have never gotten a tech on the phone- waited an hour on hold once, and my service came back on its own. I guess that is one way to handle customer service… keep people on their cell phone long enough and their Sunrocket service will most likely come back on its own.
Way to much down time. it is insane. the phone has not worked in nearly 24 hours. I had switched from vonage, who was down 5-6 times a week, Sunrocket has been down for 3-4 times a week and now for 24 hours. My biggest suggestion is NOT to do voip it is horribly unreliable and Sunrocket is no exception.
The “Echo” issue is due to the delay time. It can be solved by getting an Echo Canceller installed. Also, if you have a DSL/Cable router–forward the VoIP port to the Gizmo And do not use the the Gizmo LAN port. Basically it is the reverse setup.
It also helps to lower the talk volume down or purchase your own phone and do not use the Uniden phone that they provided to you.
Your echo problem should be solved.
Mike,
Vonage seems to be more reliable
than what your are experiencing,
but their tech support is similarly
frustrating.
I have found one path thru to a
different tech support desk at
Vonage … perhaps this tactic
will work for you. I tell the
Vonage customer service rep that I want to cancel Vonage entirely.
They won’t simply act on my request to cancel the service
(and that’s another problem); but
they do transfer me to the “Retentions Desk” … who
always seems to find a knowledgable
tech support person that can
actually fix problems. The typical
Vonage tech support rep seems to
focus on asking you to spell out
your full name and address letter
by letter … multiple times.
-doug
I switched to Sunrocket in Feb 2005 (Verizon for a long while => transferred to Vonage for 1.5 years => transferred to Sunrocket). I basically had no complaints with Vonage but Sunrocket offered a better value for my money, so I switched about 10 months ago. I waited before posting here to have some experience with the service. I must say except for the two major outages, I have been pleasantly surprised with the service so far! Even during the two service outages, CEO sent out emails to the customers clearly and honestly stating what went wrong, what they were doing to fix it and to avoid it in the future, which I found refreshingly nice. Sunrocket even gave free reward points to all the members to owe up to the outage! I haven’t had any other service problems. Sound quality has been excellent (even as per the other folks I call), and even with the 3-way conferencing! I found international calls (India, UK) are much clearer than I ever got with Vonage. Whenever I had called Vonage to complain about choppy India calls, their excuse was about the quality of partners they used in India to route VOIP calls. With Sunrocket, haven’t had to call for sound quality even once. I love having the free extra number they provide. Different area code allows my in-laws to make local call to us across from the other coast => wife is happy => I have more time to do things on my own
And I think currently no one can beat the value you will get with the prepaid annual plan they have (which I think was not binding anyway!) with unlimited US/Canada calling and promotions they have ongoing with free phone system etc … all for about $17/month!
As far as the tech support /customer service is concerned, only had to call twice, both times to switch my free extra number. I don’t recall having to wait more than 5 minutes for either of those calls and the transaction was also rather quick and pleasant… rep tried her best to even find me good sounding numbers
I always try to figure out non-peak hours to call cust.serv. weekends, and mondays are almost always bad… I like something like Tue-Wed-Thur afternoons from work 
But no, I am not in any way related to sunrocket except having been a very satisfied customer so far!
ps: Now that I tried to proofread my post, it seems like a Sunrocket press release
Here are some commands for the Gizmo..Thought you might be interested in.
You can only do these commands during the first 10 minutes after you power up the gizmo.
1. to restore defaults - ##3332858 ( D,E,F,A,U,L,T ). You will hear “Dot” spoken and the “Management” light will turn on. After a few seconds, the gizmo will automatically reboot.
2. to hear the WAN IP - ##47926 ( I,P,W,A,N ).
3. to hear the LAN IP - ##472337 ( I,P,A,D,D,R ).
You can only use these commands if the “Voice” light is on. If you get a busy signal, remember that the commands only work during the first 10 minutes after a reboot of the gizmo. Its easy to forget that.
I experience outages almost every day,lasting for hours. I cannot believe that this company is still operating its totally unreliable serice. I am singig off after trying hard to stay for 4 months. You can recommend it to your enemy; otherwise, spread the warning! Jack, Brooklyn
Sunrocket service has been down for 9+ hours and after 60 minutes on hold waiting for a tech they tell me a server is down and they are working on it.
I’ve had Sunrocket for two weeks. I have a Macintosh and AirPort router. No matter how it is set up, and despite numerous tweaks from customer service, every call I get or make is choppy. I get told I sound like I’m under water. I have 8Mbps Comcast Cable service and all tests OK.
I am one of the people that prepaid the $199 and am ready to call and get my money back. I have just recently been elevated to the next tier of customer service so I’m gonna hold out another day or two.
Would not mind hearing from other users who have this isseu and are struggling with it OR those who have overcome it.
Adam, Federal Way, WA
I am using Sunrocket, and have been out of service for a week and they still have not found the reason.
I am having the same issue with Sunrocket. I also signed up for $199 service for 2 yrs and the service was good only for first 2 weeks. Now i am left with choppy voice and lousy customer service.
I am just about to call it quits with them and go back to vonage.