HELLO & WELCOME

[WelshPaul]

I've been using Voicehost for some time now, found them to be just as reliable as Voipfone yet twenty percent cheaper.

Just in case you didn't know, when setting up an account with Voicehost, upon topping up your account by debit/credit card or PayPal for the first time a restriction is placed on your account and the following email is sent to your registered email address:

Dear Your Name,

One or more of the details you used to make your electronic payment to Account 12345 has not been accepted by our security systems.

Please contact a member of our customer support team on 0345 561 0 561 or outside the UK on +44 1603 90 40 90 to hopefully rectify this situation.

Kind regards,

VoiceHost

This isn't a bad thing. Its great to see they take security seriously and that they're doing their best to protect themselves and their customers from fraudulent activity.

I have more than one account with Voicehost, one for business use (direct debit in place), another that is used solely with a fax machine which has minimal use and finally one for home use. Both my fax and home accounts are pay go and get topped up with a debit/credit card or PayPal account from time to time. All of my accounts had this restriction imposed and after a quick phone call to Voicehost support (two were on a Sunday) the restriction was lifted and credit applied to my account. FANTASTIC!!!

This past Sunday I proceeded to top-up my "Home" account with £10 calling credit (I know, I know, I hardly use my home phone) using my Visa debit card and although my payment was processed ok by their merchant I received the dreaded "Top-up pending" email displayed above and noticed that the credit hadn't been applied to my account. Odd, I have topped up this account previously and been using it without issue ever since! Maybe I had used my debit card to top-up one of my other accounts in the past and this triggered their security system? No problem, will give the number displayed in the email a call and speak to support...

Unfortunately this time around things didn't go as smoothly. My call was answered by Vincent, polite and to the point I was told that I need to speak with accounts and that they would have to manually apply the credit but were closed today and to call back tomorrow during normal business hours. Hmm, ok but why does their automated email request that we call support? Not great if you're a business whom trades on a Sunday is it?

I sent the following email to accounts at Voicehost:

Hi,

I proceeded to top up my Voicehost account today (Account 12345) with £10 call credit using my Visa debit card.

I received an email from yourselves shortly after informing me that "One or more of the details you used to make your electronic payment to Account 12345 has not been accepted by our security systems." And that I need to "Please contact a member of our customer support team on 0345 561 0 561" which I did...

A staff member called Vincent promptly answered my call but was unable to help, Vincent informs me that I need to speak to accounts? If that is indeed correct, why does the automated email instruct customers to call and speak to a member of the support team?

Not sure what has triggered your security systems, this isn't a new Voicehost account (I do have more than one) and I have topped up previously. I also received the following confirmation from Netbanx, informing me that my payment was successfully processed:

Thank you for your payment. Your payment has been processed by NETBANX on behalf of VoiceHost Ltd.
Merchant: VoiceHost Ltd
Amount: 10.00
Currency: GBP
Your order reference is: ***REMOVED***
Your NETBANX reference is: ***REMOVED***

Can you please authorise my top-up? If not, can you please let me know exactly what department I need to speak to?

Kind Regards,

WelshPaul

Although my top-up was applied to my account at 9.22am Monday morning, I never received any reply to my email.

If your reading this Voicehost, update your automated email so your customers call the correct department and Voicehost customers, make sure your account doesn't run out of credit over the weekend because should you trigger Voicehost's security system you're not going to be able to make any outbound calls.

[CJT-80]

Hello WelshPaul,

I wonder if VoiceHost will have resolved that by now?

[WelshPaul]

Absolutely no idea...

It didn't cause me any grief and I didn't post the above to have a rant. I just wanted to make people aware that should they run out of credit after Voicehost's normal working hours and proceed to top-up their accounts, should a top-up trigger Voicehost's security systems then one is not going to get that top-up applied to one's account until "accounts" re-open.

Voicehost offer an auto top-up feature, I don't have this enabled though just in case my account is ever compromised as I don't want to risk any further financial loss. If you do use this feature, this may not be an issue for you.

Will post back with an update if I hear anything.

[WelshPaul]

Well here is your update...

I received the following email at 11.24am this morning from Phil at Voicehost:

Hi Paul,

I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to you with regards your poor experience on Sunday.

It's taken a few days for me to come back to you as I needed to understand why Vincent couldn't accept your payment and why he didn't go that extra mile and sort it out for you regardless.

Needless to say processes have now been changed and any member of the Support team can now authorise and accept payments without the need for Accounts to be involved.

I would like to point out that the requirement to call when making the first time payment on an account or when a new card is added to an account [regardless of whether you already have other accounts with us] is to protect card holders and Paypal account holders from potential online fraud.

We used to simply automatically accept an initial top-up up to the value of £50 provided three criteria which we checked all matched [address, card holders details and CVV] However on Christmas Day in 2008 I had to drive back hurriedly from my Parents house just after Christmas lunch to try to stop a fraudster that had managed to run up a bill of around £800 on someone else's card before I got to a computer screen to suspend their account...

It was at that point we introduced the requirement to call us for first time payments.

We then found that only genuine folk would ring and that solved the problem. However over the years as the business has grown and we have taken on many more members of staff some permissions were revoked and I have to admit I was not aware that Support could not see the relevant section in our internal portal to be able to accept payments...

I have also made sure that our Support team know that what they should have done was to go sort this out for you and then call you back when it had been done and definitely not tell you you had to call and speak to someone else...

I hope that explains what the cause was and that you are happy with the changes to processes we have made? I have also, by way of an apology applied £20 of credit to your account too.

If you would like to discuss this further please feel free to come back to me.

Kind regards,

Phil

Well done Voicehost, and thank you Phil for the £20 free credit.