I decided to start doing customer service and online sales. This, of course, required me to get off my butt and actually get my Zingotel router working. I spent about half the day yesterday going through their manuals and messing with my Linksys router, but that didn’t do anything but frustrate me.

So, today I got up and fired off an email to Zingotel customer service. I told them how my old router had worked fine until I fried it, but that when I hooked my new box up, it didn’t work. about an hour later, I got a call from India or Pakistan, and the guy on the other end tried to walk me through getting it working.

This guy was obviously 1st tier support, and he just went through most of the motions troubleshooting stuff I’d already done using their user’s manual. After about an hour, he said he was going to escalate it to tier 2 support, and that they would be giving me a call. (I thing that’s what he said, but since he was in India, talking on a VoIP line, and I was in America talking on a cell phone in my basement, he could have just said “htrn mjog, fngkdu nghguf dfbduy brtgfh nhgyteew, htngk loikuj.” and I wouldn’t have really known the difference.)

The tier 2 guy called a little while later, and that was a whole new, cool, experience. I worked tier 2 support in the old days for @Home, when they came out with the first cable internet service, and we had cool tools then, but this guy had even cooler stuff. He sent me to gotomeeting.com, gave me a log in number, and then took over my computer. It was weird watching him take control of my computer and run through my router, my modem and Zingotel’s router box.

But, it took well over an hour for him to get the dang thing working. What he finally had to do was kill the first phone port and run my calls through the second jack. Since I don’t have two numbers with them, that’s no big deal, but it does vindicate me a little that the problem was their box, and not just me being an idjit or something. The only thing that I really wish was that I’d done this 4 or 5 months ago, instead of paying a $100 for service I wasn’t getting. (My fault though, not theirs.)

So, if you need a voip provider, try Zingotel. Their customer service is good, and the phone now works awesome.

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I guess I’m meant to spend the rest of my life paying for VoIP service that doesn’t work. What I don’t get is why my last router from Zingotel worked, but this one is still busted 3 weeks after getting it.

The Zingotel guys hacked into it last week, but whatever they did, didn’t do anything. I still have dial tone, and that’s about it. I still can’t hear anything, leading me to believe that I’ve been transported back to the mid 1990’s when voice over IP didn’t have duplex capabilities and you had to say over-and-out when you were done talking so that the guy you were talking to could reply.

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Zingotel has decided that it wants some of SunRocket’s old customer base, and, since it looks like Packet8 will get those customers who haven’t jumped ship already, Zingotel has gone on the offensive. Zingotel is now offering SunRocket customers 1 month free service and a 30 day money-back guarantee, just like they offer all new customers, but to sweeten the deal, they are also offering a $10.00 coupon. SunRocket customers who switch to Zingotel before the end of July will be able to use the Zingotel coupon code “zingo1007″ for $10.00 worth of additional savings on their initial order.

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