TeleBlend and the VoIP Blues

When I’m not on my cell, I use a VoIP line from a company whose name begins with V. Some days I think it’s great, and sometimes I pine for the days of the rotary dial and good old Monopolistic Ma Bell. And it seems I’m not alone.

After SunRocket crashed to earth last month, Cringe fan M. K. switched over to TeleBlend. But when TeleBlend’s voice service went AWOL for several days last week, he was furious. He writes:

I have several projects in the works for which I should be getting calls. My clients are contacting me by cell and they are very, VERY angry. I could easily lose business.

Worse, TeleBlend tried to pass the buck to its own backbone provider, Global Crossing. That apparently didn’t go over too well with Global Crossing, which b*tchslapped them so hard the VoIPers put their tails between their legs and posted a public apology:

TeleBlend, a nationwide provider of broadband phone service, experienced a disruption of service for part of its customer base earlier this week. During the service disruption, the company inadvertently made public statements that incorrectly implied the outage was due to an issue with Global Crossing’s network. TeleBlend would like to state definitively that the cause of the service disruption was in no way, shape or form due to any issue or outage with Global Crossing’s network, which continues to serve customers with industry-leading performance and 99.999 percent service reliability.

Meanwhile, it seems, the “V” in my own voice over IP provider may soon stand for Verklempt, as it battles patent suits and problems with spotty service. But it could be worse. At least I haven’t been hit with a phone bill for $218 trillion, like that poor sap in Malaysia.

Are you a fellow VoIP sufferer? Send me an email or post your tales of woe below. But please don’t call — my line isn’t accepting calls right now.