In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by Fido:

As far as I can tell Sipgate will keep any account balance below £6.00 and they will charge a £6.00 admin fee to give back sums of money over £6.00 as long as you jump through their hoops/obsticles, ie. You must ask for it back and provide your personal info / possible your bank info and a copy of your passport.

If this is true then that is a bad reflection on the company, it always seems some companies are happy to take your money but often make it harder when giving it back, £6 admin fee is unjustified.

Going forward I would personally suggest people don't jump from Sipgate until they have had official word about any timescales for the free monthly version closure as that could be more than a year away and may not happen.

Hi dect,

This is what it says in Section 5.3 of the Sipgate t&c ;


5.3. If the customer still has credit in his / her account at the point of cancellation, sipgate will reimburse the customer on request, to the value of the credit balance, minus sipgate’s processing fees of 6.00GBP. A refund is not issued in the case of the balance not exceeding 6.00GBP.

A prerequisite of a reimbursement, is a written customer request, stating the customer number / SIP-ID, a bank or credit card account and a copy of proof of ID (passport/driving license). The refund of a positive balance becomes time-barred from three years after the date of termination.


https://www.sipgatetrunking.co.uk/terms-and-conditions


As you say there has been no notice to us that Sipgate Basic/Starter has ended for existing customers but new customers cannot siign up for Sipgate Starter and iit seems scheduled to end for existing customers in 2023.

Regards,
Fido

I am aware that some existing customers were not made aware that Sipgate Basic was being replaced by Sipgate Starter so I do hope that they do a better job of notifying people should Sipgate Starter be demised for existing customers.

Edited by deleted (Wed 14-Sep-22 17:08:24)

In reply to a post by ferretuk:

I moved to AAISP when Sipgate announced the closure of Sipgate Basic nearly eight years ago. They backtracked then (or it was a mistake) but the risk of losing my ported number made me jump ship just in case.

AAISP's VOIP service, as with the other products, has been rock solid.

Haha I was the OP of that thread all them years ago. I am still with sipgate basic now and it has been solid. I will await further news but A&A is looking like my preferred option.

As you know there has still be no communication about the withdrawal of Basic/ Starter with any existing UK customers. So like you I'm just happy to wait and see what eventuates.

Who knows they may decide to do a volte-face like 2014. Stranger things have happened.

Just to note that after almost 3 months of this news, there has been absolutely no email or other communication from Sipgate to existing Sipgate Basic/Starter customers about any planned or imminent closure of the service.

So for now it looks like they have just withdrawn it for new customers. Existing customers continue as they have.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Just to note that after almost 3 months of this news, there has been absolutely no email or other communication from Sipgate to existing Sipgate Basic/Starter customers about any planned or imminent closure of the service.

So for now it looks like they have just withdrawn it for new customers. Existing customers continue as they have.

As I posted on another thread; I did eventualy receive an email reply to my query with regard to existing customers and I received the following reply:


"It is true that sipgate has decided to focus on business VOIP in the future. This means that yes, sign-ups to sipgate starter are now closed, meaning no new sipgate starter accounts can be opened. It is also true that sipgate will eventually be closing sipgate starter altogether sometime in 2023. This will be done with lots of notice to existing customers so that everyone has the opportunity to get their telephony in order before their account is shut down."


From that email reply the plan is to get rid of us sometime in 2023 but who knows if they will just leave us as we are.

Due to this uncertainty I changed from being an active user of my Sipgate Starter Account to an inactive user after I openned a Voipify Account as well.

The only real disadvantage with Sipgate is that Sipgate are extreemly hard to contact while Voipify answer their phone and/or reply to emails in a timely manner.

In some ways the completely Pay as You Go nature of the Sipgate Starter was better as Voipify do have a £4.20 monthly fee and the Sipgate phone performance was as good as Voipify. - However, on the whole, Voipify call costs are much cheaper, (eg. 0.6p per minute to most UK landlines and international calls are cheaper), than Sipgate which mitagates the monthly fee but for some reason Voipify landline calls to 03 numbers costs are similar to Sipgate which I don't like.

I like both Sipgate and Voipify but with Sipgate we are at best in limbo.

Regards,
Fido

Thank you for those details about Sipgate's intentions.

I would not object if Sipgate were to introduce a small monthly charge. I have one Sipgate number which I would quite like to keep and so I have asked A&A if the number can be ported to them and if so what the porting charge would be.

See what news 2023 brings from them. For now I’m in no rush to port out. That’s a fairly simple, short order task if/when the time comes (they do have track on changing their mind on these things).

Until that point I won’t bother paying monthly access fees. Can’t see the point really. If it ain’t broke…

As I believe I've posted before, I would happily pay Sipgate a reasonable price for a plan as the previous Basic plan, but I missed by a few days getting on that plan. For a consumer the plans they now have are ridiculously expensive compared to the likes of BT, and the same seems true of all standalone VoIP providers.

Heresy (for this subforum anyway), but here goes…

If you have a mobile with inclusive (perhaps unlimited) monthly minutes - do you really need a “landline”? It’s becoming an expensive luxury in some ways - as mobile phones once were thirty or more years ago….circles within circles.

A lot of us in a residential setting, can do without a landline and that’s the way the world is trending anyway. This conversation will probably be a quaint irrelevance in a few years I dare say.

I’m beginning to think access to a “landline” is more about ingrained ‘generational’ outlook, expectation and force of habit…rather than genuine need. There are exceptions of course. Cue the storming of the landline staunch supporters.

There said it. Heresy mode off. 😂🙈