Trying To Purchase XTen Pro

Tim A — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 15:30:00 -0400

Looks to me like SipPhone is a dead end company. Its really too bad. My experience trying to purchase XTen pro as described here was a joke.

Here is a thread that followed when I opened a ticket on the issue. How do companies like this stay in business more than a day when they seem to rather NOT have you as a customer.

Ticket

Last Update:	04 Aug 2005 12:22 PM
Last Replier:	Tim
Status:	Open
Department:	Purchasing / Credit Card
Created On:	12 Jul 2005 07:50 AM

Trying to purchase XTen Pro

Author

Contents

Tim

Posted on 12 Jul 2005 07:50 AM

I'm trying to purchase XTen Pro. After jumping through many hoops I finally get to the point where I can click on the link to purchase and am presented with some message about not testing my softphone. Please fix this so that I can purchase this software.

Tim

Posted on 13 Jul 2005 09:02 AM

I'm still waiting for a reply to this. I would think this would take all but 5 minutes to resolve.

Chris Lawrence

Posted on 02 Aug 2005 10:12 AM

That filter has been cleared on your account.

However, you may have noticed that we no longer sell Xten-Pro...

I would recommend trying out our new (free) software www.gizmoproject.com. I think you'll find that it works far better.

:)

Chris Lawrence
Sipphone Support
http://support.sipphone.com

Tim

Posted on 02 Aug 2005 11:00 AM

I hope it doesn't take another 2 weeks to answer this ticket.

In any event, I tried Gizmo and as far as I can tell it will not come close to meeting my needs. I didn't see any way to have it connect to my OWN VoIP provider which is exactly what I'm trying to do with XTen.

Will you folks be making XTen available for free then if you are not selling it anymore? It is a shame that you're trying to lock people into using SipPhone by not providing the software or means to connect to any VoIP provider.

Sip Phone

Posted on 04 Aug 2005 11:47 AM

Tim,
Before you come to such hasty conclusions you should probably do more research on NAT / SIP / UDP traffic.
First of all we aren't trying to lock anyone in we are guaranteeing experience. There is no telling what will happen when the gizmo software connects to another sip service..
You won't get gizmo alerts, call balance, presence, all of these functionalities are tightly integrated with our sip / back end services..
this is what makes our service work not that we are tying our users in to an open sip proxy.

Anyway please use another solution.

-Digi
SIPphone Support
http://support.sipphone.com

Tim

Posted on 04 Aug 2005 12:22 PM

You haven't provided me with any useful response here as to why you have discontinued use of SipPhone. The only conclusion I can come up with AGAIN is that you are trying to LOCK me into using Gizmo which doesn't solve my needs.

SipPhone solves my needs. The free SipPhone Lite solved my needs and I liked the product enough to BUY the Pro version with the slightly advanced features.

Gizmo does nothing for me just like Skype does nothing for me for this specific purpose.

It is amazing that I'm struggling to become a customer and you folks seem to be going to a lot of trouble to keep me from becoming a customer. It just baffles the mind.

I'll certainly go elsewhere and if/when I do need a solution like Gizmo I'll use Skype instead or a number of more popular ones. You should indicate to your smart business folks that the business model you seem to be following died about 4-5 years ago.

Update: Just read this ridiculous interview by Engaget with CEO of SipPhone Michael Robertson. So much BS being slung around here its unbelievable really.

SipPhone Needs To Buy A Clue

Tim A — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 11:08:00 -0400

I can't believe the hoops I'm having to jump through to order a $7.99 piece of software. Obviously the folks at SipPhone have no clue about ecommerce or web usability. I suggest they start with Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think and go from there.

He is what I've gone through so far. Fumble around their website trying to figure out how to order their Xten X-Pro 2.0 softphone software. Something like "Purchase Now" or "Buy" would be much better than "Available on MySipphone Store". Ok, so I click over there. It takes me to some bogus page advertising stuff I'm not interested in. Nowhere does it explain whats going on. I have to assume that I need to register in order to goto this MySipphone Store. So I attempt to register. It then asks me for all this info from a purchase I've made from them. Um, no, I'm trying to purchase something, not fill in my product info etc. Ah, there is a link at the bottom of the page for us folks that haven't purchased something from them. I almost missed it.

Now they present me with one of these absolutely asinine security images. Look at this crap:

Can someone tell me what that 1st or 5th number is? It isn't a 5, 6 or anything else because nothing I tried worked. What kind of ridiculous crap is this anyway? It took me 6 tries to get past this and I only did because it finally came up with an image without this mystery number in it.

Ok, so I finally get past that and have to wait for an email as a confirmation. At least I received that in under a minute and I clicked on the link to verify the registration. Unfortunately it then said I had to wait for yet another email with my password. Why they can't just display it on the webpage I'll never figure out. That email took about 10 mins to get to me while I stared at the login page like a moron.

Ah, finally I get to login to my.sipphone.com to order my software. I'm presented with all kinds of crap I'm entirely not interested in and have to search for the shop link. Remember, about 20 minutes ago I clicked on a link to buy a specific piece of software. My guess is I'll have to find it again.

Well, at least it was easy to find. Now, I click on the link to purchase and guess what. I get some lousy message saying I haven't tested my account yet. I couldn't care about my SipPhone account. I don't want an account. I just want to purchase this software. What a joke.

I decide I've had enough of this and call their phone number. I'm presented with a couple menu choices and then dropped into a voice mail box before I'm able to make a choice. I hang up after pressing numbers for a while. I suspect some moron will get a voice message with a bunch of tones. I couldn't be bothered to leave a message.

Its pretty simple at this point. I give up trying to purchase this. Problem is I haven't found any other SIP softphone that works. Anyone have any recommendations? It has to support G.729 at the very least and work with any SIP provider I'd like to plug into it.

Update: You'll want to see this entry for the followup to this.

TechnoMagicians Weblog

Trying To Purchase XTen Pro

SipPhone Needs To Buy A Clue