Blueface

Depuy lady

Hi,
Not sure if this is the right place to post this, if not can you move it:

Is anyone joined blueface, the offer seems almost too good to be true:
www.blueface.ie

RangeR

Depuy lady wrote: »

Hi,
Not sure if this is the right place to post this, if not can you move it:

Is anyone joined blueface, the offer seems almost too good to be true:
www.blueface.ie

Probably not the best place for it. However, the deal IS too good to be true. If you read the small print, which you obviously haven't, the deal is for the life of the phone that they supply. Not your life.

It has the potential to be VERY bad value. You can't even use your own phone with it. You HAVE to use the one they give. If that phone breaks, tough. The deal is over and you have to start paying for calls.

neilthefunkeone

Plus its only local and national calls.. Mobiles cost extra.. you have to buy credit from them and add it to your account..

And those phones arent the cheapest.. about 200 euro ish!!

WonderBoy9

Hi guys,

I check'd out 'the life of the phone thing', the girl i spoke to said Its true that the offer is only valid for the life of the phone, if the phone breaks, you'll just buy a replacment but not for €200, thats the price of the offer for life!

Ive had my phone for 3 or 4 years now, Blueface have been grand, and your phones breaks a replacement aint gonna cost that much!!!

Ive used these guys for a while with no major peoblems, cant stand Eircom and the line rental thing, €25 a month, every month for what?:eek: so its not the worst option.

And to be honest, neilthefunkeone, topping up in advance is a far safer bet that letting a mobile bill go through the roof...trust me, you should see my Mobile bill!!!! : P

Im gonna probably get this at the end of the month, ill post a review of it them if you want.:)

calex71

Ha I saw the guys behind this on Ireland Am a few weeks back.

When I saw it I asked myself how is this better than skype? And I'm still wondering that now

Skype is actually a little cheaper to mobiles i think. Remember you can actaully get skype phones these days for home and get an actual number for it too

MunsterCycling

Skype is a closed technology, they use proprietary codecs and nasty spyware, VOIP based technology will always be better IMNSHO

neilthefunkeone

WonderBoy9 wrote: »

Hi guys,

I check'd out 'the life of the phone thing', the girl i spoke to said Its true that the offer is only valid for the life of the phone, if the phone breaks, you'll just buy a replacment but not for €200, thats the price of the offer for life!

Ive had my phone for 3 or 4 years now, Blueface have been grand, and your phones breaks a replacement aint gonna cost that much!!!

Ive used these guys for a while with no major peoblems, cant stand Eircom and the line rental thing, €25 a month, every month for what?:eek: so its not the worst option.

And to be honest, neilthefunkeone, topping up in advance is a far safer bet that letting a mobile bill go through the roof...trust me, you should see my Mobile bill!!!! : P

Im gonna probably get this at the end of the month, ill post a review of it them if you want.:)

No man your right about the pre top up.. but as the op learned they went in to it thinking 200 bills and im done with bills for life!!

I worked for an isp and our voip went through blueface and they are great for dealing with.. Really good customer service..

A similar siemens gigaset(single) is gonna cost roughly 60 or so euro.. had a quick search!

Just wondering if the phone breaks and you buy a new one from say ebay.. do you have to pay the 200 again for the free local and national calls??

MunsterCycling

They will have no way of knowing what equipment you are using on the system, nor should they.

matrim

MunsterCycling wrote: »

They will have no way of knowing what equipment you are using on the system, nor should they.

They can very easily tell what handset you are using, by looking at the User-Agent header in the SIP message. However unless Blueface have custom firmware on them, they probably won't be able to tell one Siemens gigaset handset from another.

RangeR

Before going further into this post, I do like Blueface a lot and have been with them for years. their support department is excellent. However, I detest ANY company who says one thing over the phone and a totally different thing in their contracts. In a general sense, you will be legally held responsible for what's in the contract. Not what some sales person told you over the [non recorded] phone to make a sale.

It begs the question, Why are some of these terms and conditions even necessary? Specifically 6, 7, 8 and 9.


Analysing their T's and C's

1. This offer is available for new customers for a limited time period, and while stocks last.
So you need to set up a new account. That's fine.

4. Usage of the service is governed by our fair usage policy. Blueface reserve the right to monitor your usage. If you make excessive use of your unlimited call service your service may be restricted or you may be asked to subscribe to an alternative service package. Blueface, in its sole discretion will define what constitutes excessive use of the service from time to time. Blueface may at its absolute discretion withdraw the free Irish calls facility from any customer whose use of the service, in the opinion of Blueface either risks degradation of service levels to other customers, puts the Blueface Network at risk or where the usage of the Services is inconsistent with normal residential usage or is for purposes that are not reasonably used by residential Customers.
There is a FUP. To be expected.

6. Free calls for life refers to the lifespan of the Siemens Gigaset phone provided with the offer. This phone is supplied without guarantee or warranty other than the manufacturer's guarantee and/or warranty.
7. The offer is specific to the device supplied with the offer, and may only be used with this device. Use with any other device will be deemed an abuse of service.
8. The free calls for life offer is contingent on the operation of the phone and its continued compatibility with the Blueface IP service. As the IP Telephony industry changes rapidly, customers with the free calls for life plan may be required to upgrade their hardware, at their own expense, at any time in the future to ensure continued compatibility with the Blueface network.
So it's not free calls for your life, it's free calls for the life of the handset that they supplied. You can't use it with any other device. I read this to mean any other device, including another Gigaset. they said device, not make of device. And even if your phone doesn't break or malfunction, if Blueface change the way they do VoIP, you may need a different device hence you have voided your contract.

9. Blueface accept no responsibility whatsoever for any hardware failure, software failure or network failure which necessitates the purchase of a new device by the customer.
Oh, and if the device breaks, you will have a hard time telling them that your statutory rights are being effected by this clause. In the end, they may replace the phone. But seeing as it's now a different device, they may void your free calls for life contract.

10. Only devices purchased from Blueface or its authorised resellers may be used with the Blueface network.
:eek: But SIP is an international standard isn't it? You mean I can't use my own SIP compatible phone or ATA?

14. Accounts which remain inactive for a period of 90 days or more will be closed. Inactive means that no calls were made or received during the period.
Not really for life either, is it?

dudara

Moved to VOIP

dudara

WonderBoy9

Hey, nice to know someone's listening eh?



RangeR, you should go into politics we might get something done around here!:)

In fairness to them, their customer service is very good, never seem to have to wait to speak to someone when i need ta, but its good to see them back up what they said on the phone with an email or post.

see link.

http://forums.blueface.ie/showthread.php?t=1885

RangeR

WonderBoy9 wrote: »

RangeR, you should go into politics we might get something done around here!:)

OK* [in my best Monica accent]

WonderBoy9 wrote: »

In fairness to them, their customer service is very good, never seem to have to wait to speak to someone when i need ta, but its good to see them back up what they said on the phone with an email or post.

see link.

http://forums.blueface.ie/showthread.php?t=1885

IF what they say in that forum posting is correct, then why isn't ANY of it in their listed Terms and Conditions from the offer. You're contract with them is all that matters, not what they may or may not say in other places.

I don't mind a FUP but I DO mind a FUP with no listed upper limit. Many many people have multiple phones in their house. Purely for convenience. I have one up stairs in the home office. One in the kitchen and one in the living room. They all work off the one account and never use more than one phone at once. In fact, we never reach our alotted monthly minutes. According to BF, i can't use this service.

Why can't they mention the FUP limit in the contract rather than putting in many artificial constraints?
And I understand that SOME people will see a FUP limit as a target. But even still, they are sticking within the contract terms.

They say in the forum that if the handset breaks that you can purchase another one off them but you don't have to pay €199. Did you notice that they didn't mention how much you WOULD pay. And why isn't THIS listed in the T's & C's?

* It's not politics I'm interested in. It's fair terms in contracts. I've become cynical over the many years I've been dealing with companies and their VERY unfair, and sometimes one sided, contracts. I've had enough. Actually recently, I wanted to upgrade my packages with a company. They wanted to charge me a "€60 installation / Activation fee". I asked what that meant. they told me and I laughed. I asked them that if their package costs more than they are advertising, just increase the package cost. Anyway, they wouldn't budge so I reduced my package to the minimum saving me [and losing them] over €300 a year rather than them gaining maybe €150 a month from me. As I've said, I've had enough of unfair contracts. Or lazy companies would couldn't be arsed with putting any thought into them.

WonderBoy9

This is getting a little bit hot for me,:o i usually just come on here to talk about rugby and buy stuff from adverts.ie!

RangeR you should send Blueface an email. I dont think they're out to fool anyone, juss might have been an oversight. If you're a customer of theres then im sure they'll want to keep you on their good side right?

My final word on this would be:

I saw these guys on Ireland AM a week ago i think? They seem to be a fairly honest Irish company, just trying to grow and offer something different. Ive been working in Ireland for (far too long) and its easy to become sceptical about special offers and such, but Im gonna give them the benefit of the doubt, Im on an Freedom World plan and I use it when I like, have had a fair few lengthy calls, call my mates in Australia all the time but they've never contacted me about fair usage or anything like that, I just get charge my €24 a month, im sure this offer has the same kind of deal.


The politics comment was just a bit of a joke. didnt mean to cause any offense or patronization.

Im off to buy some 2nd hand electronics from adverts.ie! Thanks for the Chat, think this is the longest conversation ive had on boards!

drBill

Too good to be true? Yes I think so, for all the reasons mentioned above. I've been with Blueface for almost two years now and I've found them excellent to deal with. Their support in particular is outstanding and I wish them every continued success and I have no plans to move away from them.
But personally what I don't like about this offer is:

• personally I think it's a misuse of the term 'for life'
• free calls only applies to calls of less than one hour, so if you want to stay free, you have to do the old hangup and redial thing. No problem with that although it's buried down in the T+C in 13th place.

flodis79

Yes, the T&C for this offer are much more harsh and stringent than the T&C for their normal call packages. For instance, it seems that we cannot call Betamax access numbers with this free calls for life offer, since you have to call numbers where there is a human being answering.. No automated systems:

5. Abuse of the service, including but not limited to over usage, using for commercial purposes, using to dial call card gateway services, use with auto-diallers and any non-residential use, will render the offender liable to immediate disconnection without refund or recourse.

Nonsense.

gabbo is coming

drBill wrote: »

Too good to be true? Yes I think so, for all the reasons mentioned above. I've been with Blueface for almost two years now and I've found them excellent to deal with. Their support in particular is outstanding and I wish them every continued success and I have no plans to move away from them.
But personally what I don't like about this offer is:

• personally I think it's a misuse of the term 'for life'
• free calls only applies to calls of less than one hour, so if you want to stay free, you have to do the old hangup and redial thing. No problem with that although it's buried down in the T+C in 13th place.

+1.

Great company, immature offer.

conor_mac

Has anyone signed up to this? I've read the t&c, which have been revised since this thread started. The only thing I'm skeptical about is No.6

"6. Free calls for life and the Siemens Gigaset A580 IP phone. Please dont ask about connecting other devices, or substituting the phone with other devices. We’ve designed the plan to work with this handset so please adhere to the regulations of the offer"

This doesn't make any sense other than its a way off possibly getting extra cast from a customer. Has anyone found out if you can just buy a replacement Gigaset A580 from another source? I can't see them using custom Blueface firmwares... Would be interesting to hear some reports on experience with this package.

RangeR

conor_mac wrote: »

Has anyone signed up to this? I've read the t&c, which have been revised since this thread started. The only thing I'm skeptical about is No.6

"6. Free calls for life and the Siemens Gigaset A580 IP phone. Please dont ask about connecting other devices, or substituting the phone with other devices. We’ve designed the plan to work with this handset so please adhere to the regulations of the offer"

This doesn't make any sense other than its a way off possibly getting extra cast from a customer. Has anyone found out if you can just buy a replacement Gigaset A580 from another source? I can't see them using custom Blueface firmwares... Would be interesting to hear some reports on experience with this package.

Very easy for BF to identify what you have connected to their network. They can just end your contract. Simples.

If you don't like the deal [I don't], then don't buy it [I'm not].

It is misleading, shody marketing tactics and I used to think more of BF before this.

lensman

Yeah,..I aggree,..a bit of slick sales talk un-becoming of bluface IMO,..I've been with blueface for over a year now & I never had an issue with them,...any questions I had are answered quickly by someone who knows their stuff,..I have a UPC 30MB BB connection & my blueface VOIP service sits on top of this,..€149 per yr gives me all my landline calls to Ireland/UK, if I really need to make a mobile or worldwide calls or fax I top up my account by €5 & thats it although they also have other packages.
I tried using my normal cordless phones with an ATA box but did'nt like the sound quality so I bought twin Seimens Gigaset IP phones which cost me around £50 shipped from the UK,..it also cost me a once off payment of €10 to keep my eircom phone number,...needless to say I gave eircom the boot once my number porting was complete.

christopher.sm

Blueface used to be the only VOIP provider 7 years ago and they were cheaper compared to Eircom and other landlines provider. Now there are a lot of competition. You can google "cheap VOIP Provider" and compare the offer. The problem with Blueface today is that they do not offer residential plan anymore, they offer only business plans that are expensive compared to competitors.

Mr. G

Christopher: Please do not dig up zombie threads.