When Shopping for VoIP Service Providers Like Magic Jack How Can I Get an Honest Review?

When you are researching something like the Magic Jack and you run across comments and reviews in the way of blogs and forums, does it mean that it is a piece of junk? The answer is no, like it has been said before it is a whole lot more likely that a unhappy customer will seek out any and every place where he/she can voice their disappointment, especially if they think they have be scammed.

Even though Magic Jack (the best deal amongst VoIP service providers) does carry a percentage of unhappy customers, it’s just a small percentage of the total customer base. There are plenty of people who are happy to ecstatically happy with this VoIP internet phone service.

Here’s How I Researched The Magic Jack to try and Come Up With a Reasonable Percentage in how many people who are – Very Happy to just happy – can take it or leave it – very un-happy. First of all I looked into the history of the Magic Jack as a VoIP service provider.

Basic History:

Magic Jack became a VoIP service provider in the late part of 2007 selling the VoIP unit through their late night infomercials by taking phone orders and though there website. Between this time and towards the end of 2009 they had earned an F rating from the Florida BBB because of the complaints about the business practice of taking money for customer’s bank accounts before the 30 day trial was up. This rating changed to an A- where it stands today after it was established by the Florida BBB that Magic Jack had satisfied in correcting and making good on the customer complaints.

This was the first equation I looked at – Magic Jack after almost two years as a VoIP service provider, which there had been millions of Magic Jack units sold there was only a little over 2700 complaints to the Florida BBB. Most of these complaints were about the cost being taken from bank accounts before the thirty day free trial was up and not about how it worked. 2700 complaints out of millions in not something any company wants but it is a good indication that there are more than plenty of happy customers also.

The next thing I looked at was more history – like stated before Magic Jack became one of many VoIP service providers in late 2007 and they are not slowing down in growth. They continue to sell more and more of the Magic Jack VoIP units by the thousands every day. It is now at the time of this post August 2, 2011 more than three and a half years and has a customer base in the millions. No business could stay in business with such a cost effective product like the Magic Jack unless it was on the up and up and offer a product which gives great value to the customer.

The next thing is I wanted some real estimates on customer satisfaction – blogs and forums is not a great place to get a realistic customer satisfaction count, so what I did was I went to the five top retailers that offer the Magic Jack phone which was Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Walgreens, Sears, Kmart and of course Amazon. Here i got a real feel of how real customers really feel about this product. This is a much better gauge because you get responses from the happy to un-happy and in the middle customer through the customer reviews.

I took all combined customer ratings of 5 and 4 and added them together to get a happy count.
I took all combined customer ratings of 3 and added them together to get a take or leave it count.
I took all combined customer ratings of 2 and 1 and added them together to get the unhappy count.

Then I took these counts and divided them by the total reviews combined of all retailers.
Note: I have two sets of results here – one is all retailers together and one is without Amazon because for some reason Amazon un-happy count is much higher than with the regular retailers. I know that the regular retailers get their Magic Jacks direct from the magic jack manufacture and I am not sure where Amazon gets their units.

This is what I got: Three Classes

With Amazon:                                       Without Amazon:
Happy –                   57.59%                  Happy -                      70.35%
Take or Leave it –    6.40%                    Take it or Leave it -       6.06%
Not Happy -             36.93%                  Not Happy-                   25.76

There you have it some real numbers to go by. I know that these numbers don’t seem that great but if you get your Magic Jack directly from the Magic Jack website or a major retailer like Wal-Mart or Sears you have a pretty good chance of not having a problem.

All the major retailers were all very close in their review results and there was an obvious drop off with customer satisfaction with Amazon customers so all though you may save a couple of bucks at Amazon I don’t think it worth it.

The people who took a chance (part of the 70%) and spent $40.00 to try this VoIP service Provider Magic Jack are now saving hundreds by not having a monthly phone bill anymore.

For the people who can’t make this very cost effective VoIP device The Magic Jack work for them all I can say is if you get in a position where you can try again you may have better luck next time. This technology is getting better so don’t give up. If you situation changes different computer or different internet connection you may want to give it another try, just remember that you can send it back and get a full refund but you got to send it back before the thirty days is over. Also remember that the free trial does not start when you receive the unit but when you buy it, so do not delay.

Also I wanted to say that there are many reasons that these customers were not happy it wasn’t just trouble making it work, there were still some that still were surprised by the price of the Magic Jack being taken from their bank account – most banks put holds on these types of transactions its not gone it is just waiting to either go on to the MJ account after the thirty days or back into your account if a return is asked for.

Other complaints are with customers dealing with the Magic Jack customer’s service. There customer service is setup as a chat service and are not equipped to deal with the type of technical issues that plague a lot of the unhappy customers. These types of issues are computer or internet related and not the Magic Jack. Because Magic Jack uses the computer there is a whole host of things that may complicate things such as viruses and spyware. Software conflicts are another one that can cause difficult to solve problems.

Some people don’t realize ether that something running in the computers background can affect call quality – updates or a virus scan running can in some machines use enough CPU to cause drag and poor call quality.
If you have a well protected clean computer with high speed internet connection than you have a great chance of being able to be one of many paying only 20 bucks a year for a VoIP service provider Magic Jack.