PC World, Phone Home . . .

Hi,
I tried the SKYPEOUT to call various cities in INDIA. I could not conduct any kind of conversation with anybody. When I hear someone, they cant hear me. In some cases nobody can hear nobody. There were some instances where I can hear some people clearly but they cant hear me.
I tried calling phone numbers within US. Quality varied from day to day and today I could not talk to anybody. May be magazines and publications shoud not give any publicity for this not ready for primetime software.

I've used skype for a few months now. I've called across the US regulary to talk to family and have called over seas to Finland, Brazil and Denmark. Every call has been clear and crisp. It does take a little getting used to because you can cancel eachother out if you talk at the same time. I'm very happy to see skype coming of age.

I used a similar service when I first attended college about 5-6 years ago. Same PC to Phone abilities, same two-way radio type of service. The only difference was that it was free. It's really too bad that such an innovative and yet disappointing service that was once free would start charging people when it is clearly not finished working out the bugs yet. Unless you are willing to trade vast amounts of functionality and convenience for a small reduction in price, stick to phones for the time being.

Sometimes it is clear, but sometimes people can't hear clear from me when I made a call from the US to Vietnam.

To follow up on my own blog post: I have had some issues with the software since: I tried making a call through my brother's broadband connection last night, and I got the problem that Dat mentioned of being able to hear the other person, but them not being able to hear me.

Larry: Skype to Skype calls are free. What costs money is calling a normal phone...

I have used Skype to call from a broadband connection in Hong Kong to the Ukraine, and it worked well. Voice clarity was actually better than a regular phone call, though there was definitely a slight delay. I can accept that for paying a fifth the cost of a landline call.

My main complaint is that I have not been able to buy more credits: an over-zealous fraud management system seemed to reject transactions for no good reason. And the weak customer service means that though you can "live chat" with someone, no one can tell you why, or when it will be fixed. "Try again in a week" is not much of an answer.

All said, I want to use the service, but they need to sort out the billing and customer service interaction if they want people to pay real money.

I have used Skype for months now, talking to our development group in Budapest (from Toronto). I call almost every day. 99% of the time I have had clear conversations and no problems at all. Skype works great for me! I have not yet used SkypeOut so I can't comment on that.

I had SKYPEOUT in July. My provider Tiscali.es did something or one of there providers did and after 2 weeks I could no longer get into the Skype Help pages or my account which has credit. Have made so many calls to Skype and our providers and now some 11 weeks later going to change providers because we can access it on a dial up from the same computer. I can still use it pier to pier but no SKYPE OUT Any ideas?

Well, I'm using Skype to talk from Vancouver to Hamilton in Canada and it has been flawless. No lag. I have yet to try skype out. i was actually curious if it's as good as pier to pier... Stricly in Canada that is...

I used Skype some month now and have called from Norway to Romania by Skype Out.Quality has been various,but the problem is that I can not buy more credits and I not get any reason why this happend.Money`s goes out from my account each time I try,but no credit`s.
It`s there anybody who had or has the same problem??

Skype's customer service is complete crap. Their billing department screwed up and has charged my account twice. After waiting 1 hour to talk to someone on live chat (supposed to be 8 min) and waiting another 3 days for an email response...they said someone had stolen my credit card #. The only people stealing are in Skype's billing. Love the technology but customer service and billing are complete schiesse.

I havent used skype, whois says they are in Amsterdam. There is no telephone contact number available for Skype users with software or account problems and the email based help is poor. My personal issue is that Skype is being used for internet based fraud since VOIP can not be listened in on. I also believe it is very hard, if not impossible to trace a call from Skype. My personal experience is from my credit card information being stolen online on two seperate occasions from an insecure site and massive charges being incured twice on my cards with Skype before I could cancel the cards. After several failed attempts to contact Skype concerning the issue I am left to warning others that perpetrators of fraud are using Skype for unlawfull purposes. the only two email adresses I have found are- ets@skype.net admin@skyper.net

I have been using netmeeting for point to point calls for years. The only difference is I do NOT use ILS and that I have my own VPN server on my home network. That way the traffic is inside a tunnel and not visible to outsiders. MSN, Yahoo, and AIM offer VoIP service with their clients.

...and NOT to cause a stir but I have intercepted VoIP calls and reconstructed the voice packets. The truley scarey part is that I was able to "edit" the conversation using Cool Edit (now owned by Adobe).

Skype credits - this seems to be a very big problem, judging by the number of emails on this blog and many others I have found via Google - and possibly amounting to corporate fraud. I have tried many times to have a credit transferred to my new account from my original Skype account. This was 'lost' following a hard drive failure, resulting in a system rebuild, including Skype. Skype resolutely refused to let me use my original account name, forcing me to create a new one. However, the credit is still with the original, and after repeated emails to their customer service people, still nothing. Now that E-bay is buying Skype, it can only get worse. If you live in the UK, switch to TESCO's VOIP. It will be FAR FAR better. TESCO is where it is today because it understands CUSTOMER SERVICE.