$50 Costco calling credit - Expiration extended

[Dennis P]

Our relationships with our customers are of the utmost importance to us and we recognize that clarity regarding our programs and promotions are very important to building trust. In response to your posting, we have ensured that the expiration date is now clearly posted on the Costco.com site. We apologize for not making the expiration date more clear and hopefully, we have remedied this.

We chose the 90-day expiration date since the majority of our customers that have selected the $50 international credit use it within 90 days. Your feedback regarding the desire to have additional time to use the credit is appreciated. In response, we have extended the expiration of credits for this promotion from 90 days to 6 months. We hope that this provides ample time to make use of the credits.

[thbjr]

THANK YOU Dennis.
I hope that will put closure to the never ending thread.
Tom

[niknak]

Thanks for putting this issue to rest
(I hope all those who complained will thank you too!)

[dtalwar]

I don't have the $50 international credit deal, but I still thank you, Dennis P. It is good to see a company that you use resolve its customers' issues in a positive and constructive way.

[RN09]

Very impressive. Thank you.

[anant_joshi]

In response, we have extended the expiration of credits for this promotion from 90 days to 6 months. We hope that this provides ample time to make use of the credits.

Thank you.

Now only if you lower India calling rates then I might use $50 credit from Costco. Other VoIP calling cards and post-paid companies are maximum 5 cents a minutes. More often 2/3 cents. Your rate of 15 cents a minute effectively reduces the credit to $15.

[Lola]

Kudos on doing something!! More importantly, thanks for fixing the costco ad to disclose credit expiration, this is huge. But this is not enough, the previous version of the ad was live for over a month and a half, and there are thousands of people that purchased this and are not following this thread. Is ooma planning on doing something to inform them of the 6 month expiration? Can the lounge be modified to display the expiration date? And what does the ad mean by " If the credit has not been depleted prior to expiration date, please contact Ooma for extension." can the credit keep being extended indefinitely?


IMHO the right thing to do is to do away the expiration date rather than deal with the backlash and people calling in to extend the credit, specially if you are planning on extending the credit by request already. So all this does is delay the complaints and returns by another 3 months.

[dr150]

In response, we have extended the expiration of credits for this promotion from 90 days to 6 months. We hope that this provides ample time to make use of the credits.

Thank you.

Now only if you lower India calling rates then I might use $50 credit from Costco. Other VoIP calling cards and post-paid companies are maximum 5 cents a minutes. More often 2/3 cents. Your rate of 15 cents a minute effectively reduces the credit to $15.

1.) I second that the rates to some countries are too HIGH and must be changed if you wish net/tech savvy Ooma customers to use your long distance rates versus some long distance calling cards which are extremly easy to use.

2.) I also second the other comment that 6 months is not enough. $50 is too much credit to be used in 6 months for many of us when making calls that are pennies per minute.


***********AS A GESTURE OF GOODWILL, OOMA SHOULD MAKE THE EXPIRY ONE YEAR OR NO EXPIRY.***********

[wazza]

Kudos on doing something!! More importantly, thanks for fixing the costco ad to disclose credit expiration, this is huge. But this is not enough, the previous version of the ad was live for over a month and a half, and there are thousands of people that purchased this and are not following this thread. Is ooma planning on doing something to inform them of the 6 month expiration? Can the lounge be modified to display the expiration date? And what does the ad mean by " If the credit has not been depleted prior to expiration date, please contact Ooma for extension." can the credit keep being extended indefinitely?


IMHO the right thing to do is to do away the expiration date rather than deal with the backlash and people calling in to extend the credit, specially if you are planning on extending the credit by request already. So all this does is delay the complaints and returns by another 3 months.

Totally agree, won't harm OOMA in any way to just remove the expiration.

Anyway, just switched to OOMA last week in the Costco deal and have had voip services for about 4 years now and have to say ooma has me smiling after every call I make. It's a wish come true for me to be able to make calls around the world and have folks actually hear what I'm saying and vice versa.

[voipdude]

I bought ooma from costco.com with $50 international call credit and I check online the international rate for China which is $0.025 (which should be 2.5c) per minute which is too high comparing to most of the voip providers.. So when I made my first call to China, I would expect 2000 minutes but the system indicates only 1923 minutes. After I made the calls, I checked the log and the log has different rates:
China landline -- 2.8c/min
China mobile -- 2.6c/min
and none of them are 2.5c/min.

If you look carefully, on the rate page, rate to China call rates:
Country Code Area/City Code Country/City Rate Per Minute
86 China $ 0.025
86 13 China - Mobile $ 0.025
86 140 China - Mobile $ 0.025
86 153 China - Mobile $ 0.023
86 159 China - Mobile $ 0.023

In the log, for some calls that were not go through, they were charged 3c (round to a minute?):
86xxxxxxxxxxx China Sep-07-2009 1:27:23 AM 0:01 2.8¢ $0.03
86xxxxxxxxxxx China Sep-07-2009 1:28:37 AM 0:01 2.8¢ $0.03

Are those fraud and cheating?

To me, if ooma wants to stay in business and be competitive, they should have good business practice and be honest with users? I dont know if I should trust them and bet my phone service on them. I probably should hold my home phone number transferring process for a while to see if ooma should be trusted.

I hope some ooma staff give me some answer and solution.