Are you a user of Skype or Voipbuster that lets you call from your computers? If you happen to be one, do you use their “premium service” that lets you buy credits to call to regular phones? If you do, chances are you did not know that the credit you purchased would one day expire.
Both Skype and Voipbuster (and I suspect all other VOIP operators too) impose expiry dates on the credits you purchase to make outgoing calls to regular phones. Each recharge entitles you to 180 days of usage. For Skype, the 180-day period is reset everytime you make an outgoing call, whereas Voipbuster requires you to reload to keep the balance active.
To compare the quality, I purchased both Skype and Voipbuster credits some time ago. And they happen to expire almost at the same time. However, the one thing I would like to highlight here is the notification of the forfeiture of the balance.
Skype is nice enough to notify you via email one month before they forfeit the balance. The email advises you to make a simple outgoing call in order to extend the expiry date.
Voipbuster, on the other hand notifies you only after they have taken away all your credit balance with a mail like this:
Dear blewtooth,
Your VoipBuster credit has expired.
Please go to our website to buy new credit, so you can keep making free calls!
Kind regards,
VoipBuster Customer Services
www.voipbuster.com
Update: This is not true. As pointed out by Nigel, Voipbuster does send notification email one month before your credit expires. It was my mistake to miss that mail.
So, if you happen to be using either services, make sure you know when your credit expires.
> Voipbuster, on the other hand notifies you only
> after they have taken away all your credit balance
NOT TRUE!!!!
in the voipbuster application.. the days before expiration are shown in REALTIME! so you get noticed continuously, AND I also received a warning mail about a month before it would expire (maybe you missed it?)
That’s not true. I bought skypeout credits over a month ago and I still have them… Weird…
Nigel,
You are right, I found the mail and I obviously missed it.
Jannis,
They have a validity period of 180 days.
Hiiiiiiiiii,
I’d like to regist VOIPBUSTER, after downloading i cant regist. Please help me
Hi,
I use both skype and although I hear a lot of people complaining about Voipbuster it works great for me! But if I make a business call I still use Skype because I now for sure that program works. Voipbuster has some delay in the conversation sometimes, but it is almost for free so no complaints from me!
If you would like to compare tarifs to call to Europe with Skype, voipbuster, voipdiscount.com, voipcheap, etc etc you can have a look at www.voipproducts.eu
A while ago Brasil was in the list of free destinations of VoipDISCOUNT( the follow-uo of voipBuster), but after I bought some credit I noticed it is not free anymore; how come it’s free again in this other version, the VoipCheap??? And for how long? And the credits that were valid up to 180 days, went to 120 days and now only 90 days??? I was recommending your programs evrywhere around but I think I will hold on for a while, until they become as reliable as Skype for example…
I was using voipbuster and i decided to move to voipdiscount ( both from betamax) because Brazil was in the list of free destinations; as Voipdiscount advertised: “make free calls to any country in our free destination list”. As I said After I bought some credit, Brazil was removed from the list and this is not correct. Finarea ( or should I say Betamax?)should take into consideration that these kind of actions have direct influence on its reputation. Furthermore credit by voipdiscount and voipcheap remain valid for only 90 days! Skype Credit balance remains active for 180 days after every last successfully-connected PSTN phone call. …well i said enough
to all the voipbuster lovers
A week ago they blocked my voipbuster.
I have a 9.6 euro credit and 95 days left.
I have sent messages to customer service, but nobody is answering.
I have used voipbuster for 4 months and this happened after I have bought a new credit.
mine got blocked in a similar way; added some credit and the payment ‘failed’ (i have no idea why) rendering the account blocked.
try to contact voipbuster and tell them their system is not working it is impossible to send them an email so i have found, when I downloaded their latest updates it will not work. this has happened each time i updated once in july again in september and there is no way to contact them to complain and my money is wasting away.