The Status Regarding Instant Call Blast.Com Website

Instant Call Blast would like to inform its clients and potential customers that the current status surrounding the website http://www.instantcallblast.com is temporary as the webhosting company that illegally obtained the domain is sorting out it’s financial obligations. The company in question did not pay it’s bills which in no way should be held or reflected against Instant Call Blast.

As it stands, Instant Call Blast is up to date on all it’s financial obligations and is currently retained legal counsel to obtain the rightful ownership of instantcallblast.com and antmoretechllc.com.

Instant Call Blast would like readers to note that we are currently still doing business and that we can be found on our mirror site http://www.instantcallblast.net for the foreseeable future.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We are working to rectify the situation, but again let me remind you that it is a legal matter and the billing issue is out of the control of Antmore Technologies, LLC, the company that manages Instantcallblast.com.

The only advice we give to readers is that you do business with a reputable firm who always pays it’s bills on time. It is embarrassing to Instant Call Blast as it should be just as embarrassing to the company in question that cannot run it’s own site.

Instant Call Blast will post updates as more information becomes available. Thank you again and feel free to contact Instant Call Blast if you have any further questions.

Worst Provider Award Goes To…

The worst provider award goes to Nufone.Net for taking 3 weeks to get back to me (today) on a help desk ticket. I had my 800 number with that company since I started in this industry. Well not exactly, the company I was with previously was a Nufone number. All the same, I am not sure what the problem is these days with VOIP providers and resellers.

This guy, “Admin Jeremy” proceeds to tell me about how it was my fault his company was duplicating tones on my 800 number. He proceeds to tell me that I had to upgrade my software and a whole slew of things to make the problem go away. He went so far as to tell me that it was not possible for his company to be at fault…except the part where it took 3 weeks to answer my help desk ticket. Even then the guy never expressed any type of apology for his company’s behavior.

Apparently according to “Admin Jeremy” I had to be a post paid customer and not a prepaid customer in order to receive support. What this dufus doesn’t understand is that he never responded to the help desk ticket. So what difference does it make? There is no Customer Support or Help Desk phone number on their website and they sell phone numbers! Real shady!

Either way, Nufone.Net is the worst company and I don’t care that they don’t refund my money. I am tired of these VOIP Providers and their “company of one” mentality. It just goes to my theory that just because you have a background in IT, IS, Telecom, and a mixture of them all, you still have to be able to deal with your customers. Unfortunately you can’t learn customer service in school. You can’t learn this gaming 18 hours a day in a Warcraft expansion game. It involves you actually talking to people and dealing with their problems. You can’t just open up a company because you have the expertise in the industry. It takes many other factors that go into building a company. Most importantly, you need to be able to take care of your customer’s issues.

JP at Binfone.com has been my saviour. He took care of me when I ported my number from Nufone (which took a week to get ahold of…another reason I knew I was not at fault). I was up and running within 3 days, the minimum amount of time it takes to port a number. I hopefully have distanced myself from everyone that is incompetent and I can move ahead. Best part of all, I didn’t have to upgrade anything. That’s because there was nothing wrong with my setup because it was designed by CT Integration Systems with Rochester Institute of Technology telecom expertise.

Here is a link for another guy who thought Nufone went out of business:

http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-biz/2004-November/001082.html

Another:

http://lairds.org/Kyler/stupidity/Jeremy_McNamara

http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t233111-p2-re-is-nufone-going-out-of-business.html

http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/2004-May/039645.html

http://ircarchive.info/asterisk/2007/3/16/1.html

Wow! I didn’t know I could find all this on the first few pages just Googling “Nufone.” Maybe I should have done that before I dealt with them! Reading through most of the dialogue, Jeremy McNamara hasn’t learned his lesson about handling customers over the years. I feel sorry for people who can’t learn for their mistakes. It just shows that these types of people have no capacity to learn, but will probably own another company someday…

I will just name my award the Jeremy McNamara Award for Worst Provider. The saddest thing is that I have a whole list of names of people that could be named for this award. People just never learn anything about customer service. I have found that the largest concentration of customer service violators come from this industry. That is why I wished that the Federal Government licensed these people. That way it will weed out the incompetent people. Man this really burns me…

** As a disclaimer (for a certain someone), I am going through old emails and I don’t see your direct link except that I do know that you were an owner/representative of Plainvoip that has my money and I have no knowledge of any other owner. I think your type is dispicable and I will edit my blog for you, but please note that I don’t buy your “innocent” act when you left a message on my voice mail. Your old employer had quite a few things to say about your behavior at Molten, Inc. This is not a coincidence.

You might fill the Internet with your “I am a cool telecom guy, choose me as a resource.” However I am well aware of your history, whether or not you were directly involved with leadership of these companies, you represented them. To me and the legions of unhappy customers you left in the wake of at least two (that I know of) companies, there is no difference between ownership or representation. If you are truly innocent, then maybe your ability and judgment to work with legitimate businesses really sucks! At the very least, with your knowledge of the operations of many of these “scam” companies, you owe an apology to the screwed customers for knowingly allowing people you helped and doing nothing.

Your name actually causes many other people to NOT do business with that company. I wonder how you live with yourself and get up everyday. I seriously consider your ethical behavior and I hope that you personally don’t open a business in New York because you are a phone call away from the Consumer Protection Bureau. I have mentioned to several ranking politicians here about companies that “set up and fold” only to set up again without criminal charges. I hope to seriously cause some politicians to regulate the reseller industry. I will make it harder for people like you to continuously set up your companies and scamming others; giving companies like mine a bad name. Oh and the whole “I was just following orders” excuse won’t fly with a judge. Ask the guys at Nuremberg.**

Do You Know Your VOIP Provider?

One of the things that I had to deal with during my timultuous time of setting up Instant Call Blast and my previous company was the myriad of VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) providers and resellers that have invaded the web. I dealt with at least 17 different companies to become vendors for my calls before I decided to see what it took to become one myself.

I pride myself on being completely honest. That is something that is a rare commodity in this industry. You want to know who I am? Google “Anthony Morelle.” Of course then you have to figure out if I am the DJ, the Penn State Quarterback, the City of Rochester City meter thief, or some newscaster. I am none of them, but I do hail from Rochester, NY. I do post on other blogs occasionally.

The point I am trying to make, and I cannot stress this enough, find out who you are dealing with. Political affiliations aside, the most important thing to figure out is “are they reputable?” I had a provider in my early days of going solo tell me that he was in business for over 12 years when a background check on his company only showed 2 years. Being in the VOIP Reselling business is quite a challenge. Being involved for over 10 years is unheard of. These companies go out of business faster than you can say “Voice Over Internet Protocol.”

There are other companies that I compete with on the Internet that are less than reputable. It’s important to understand who you are dealing with. I can’t stress that enough. You will see some shady things going on when the prices are real cheap. There is a reason for that folks! I am selling you a pretty reasonable product. If there is only one way to receive payment, then you might want to figure out why.

If a company is affiliated with another, larger VOIP vendor and the reseller tells you that the reason your calls stopped is because the larger company doesn’t like robocalls or voice broadcasts. That person is lying to you and I would highly recommend a refund. Most of the larger companies like Verizon, XO, Comcast, Level 3, Time Warner and many others thrive on these types of calls because they are still making money. One company I dealt with directly told me that they signed up 3 companies like mine last week. Prerecorded phone messages are the wave of the future when getting a message out compared to the cost of postage.

If your provider decides not to answer your help ticket, they joined this place:

http://www.myvoipprovider.com/VoIP_Provider_Graveyard/

The worst part about everything is that the government does nothing. Companies go under, take your money, and set up shop somewhere else under a new name. There was a guy I knew about that owned 3 different VOIP reselling companies in a few years and was still able to operate within the United States. That guy should be in a cell somewhere. Other providers have already been there. Find out who you are dealing with folks.

It doesn’t matter if they are selling you time for a penny a call or half a penny. You get what you paid for. You may be treated with no dignity, no respect, and have to deal with a person who may not even know the definition of “business ethics.” I am only telling you this because I feel you should know. As a former customer to at least 20 companies, I have the experience to know that you will be ripped off when you don’t do your homework.

Why trust me you ask? Well because I am trying to bring back business ethics and customer service to this industry. You aren’t just a bunch of walking dollar signs and I truly believe that I can be an example and a beacon for many of my customers who have been burned in the past by other companies. This technology is very useful with every day applications. You just have to find the right people to deal with.

A Few Things You Should Know About This Industry

Some Things You Need to Know About Robocalls, Voice Broadcasts, and Emergency Notification

Instant Call Blast understands that there are plenty of other companies out on the Internet that provide similar services to political campaigns. As we speak with potential clients, we have know that many people do not understand exactly what a “Robocall” or automated voice message is. Here is a list of things you should know when doing business with a company like Instant Call Blast!

What is a call blast?

A call blast is a voice broadcast, robocall, or recorded alert that has a message. Using it with a list of contacts, it blasts out that message to thousands of people at once. The message can be compressed into a .WAV file, an MPEG, other recording media, or simply a landline phone.

Do companies charge more for robocalls than others?

The price of a robocall can vary because there are many different reasons that go into the price of a phone call. A company that sells you calls for a penny, may be using phone technology that allows for the cost of the connection to be less than a penny. The provider isn’t telling you what is the quality of the call or whether they are reselling the call to you, degrading the quality.

The entire industry could sell their calls for a penny a call, but not all companies are going to give you the best quality. Price is the least determining factor when making a decision. Everyone price shops for the best product for the price. It is no less different with robocalls.

Is sound quality important for my call blast?

The VOIP industry uses a codec (G.729A and G.723.1) for VOIP that may be between 13 and 15 kilobytes per second for a prerecorded message. Is your message really worth poor sound quality? What does that say about the efforts of your call blast when someone gets a call from a call blaster, hears the message, and it is all garbled?

At Instant Call Blast, we employ the latest codecs that the VOIP industry has invented. It allows us to give our customers 64 KBPS. It will seem like the caller is sitting next to you, speaking face to face!

How many people will hear my message?

Each Call Blast is determined heavily on the list itself. Where did you get it? Is it reliable? Can you quantify the results before you actually blast out calls? These are the important questions you should be asking yourself.

Instant Call Blast has the latest in Answering Machine Detection (AMD) software which will play your message after your call goes to voice mail. Your connect rate will also determine how many “live” people listened to your message. That will determine your percentage. Using more than one call round targeted for different times will also increase the effectiveness by up to 15%! On average, Instant Call Blast has seen lists that were at most 80% effective. The results may vary largely on how relevant your list is and how up to date.

Most companies will only contact a number once before counting it as a call. You might as well hand your money over to the provider and let them keep the money upfront. You want the provider to attempt more than once? Well that is an extra fee.

At Instant Call Blast we attempt contact your list up to and including three times only paying for the additional rounds. We clean your list for free and we will only count the calls that were connected. That’s better than many other companies in the industry!

Will I get a report when the call blast is over?

Every customer will receive a report almost immediately after the call has been made. You will receive a short report with relative statistics as well as a comprehensive report outlining the activity on each call on the list in a spreadsheet format. The report will be emailed to your address on file. If you plan on using the call list again, you can see what information needs to be updated or removed so that you can have an even more effective call blast next time around!

Are there any fees when setting up a call blast?

You should not be charged for anything except the calls themselves. If you are being charged for anything else, you are probably getting ripped off! There should be no reason you are paying for list cleaning, list maintenance, reports, extra rounds. All that can be programmed with virtually no effort at all. If you are getting “pennied” to death by other providers, you might want to make a switch to Instant Call Blast!