Gizmo: Total VOIP Fail

I tried, I mean I really tried to love Gizmo (also called Gizmo5, but i refuse to call it that). For a short time, it was a complete telephony saviour for me, with its ability to be run on anything, and have a single phone number point to both it and to any ohter phone I chose: mobile phone, home phone, friend´s phone, whstever. But for the past year, the service has not only stagnated, it has actually become worse than when I first started using it.

What is it?

Gizmo is a Program and Service that will let you talk to people using VOIP. VOIP basically means using the Internet to make telephone calls. If you are familiar with Skype, it is similar to that service.

What makes Gizmo better than Skype is its use of SIP as the communications pathway. SIP is an open protocol, meaning that anyone can write or use software to plug into it. This means you can use your own client to connect to Gizmo, but still use their service. This allows you to access THE Gizmo services in a number of ways, rather than be tied to how Skype will let you use their service. This means that although you can install Gizmo on your phone, you do not have to. If it supports connecting to SIP services, you can just use the built-in functionality, rather than installing more software.

Setup, Use, and Cost

To use the service you need three very simple things: a gizmo account, some sort of computer, and an Internet connection. You then install the software on your computer, Internet Tablet, or mobile phone, sign in, and as long as you have a connection to the Internet, you are good to go.

The basic service is free. At this point, you can either IM or make a call to someone else using Gizmo at no cost. This makes sense because at this point you are only using your own computer and Internet service. You can purchase call-out minutes which will allow you to call practically any number in the world, usually resulting in greatly reduced rtes when you call internationally. Check the Gizmo site for pricing, but last time I used it, it was less than two cents per minute in the united states, meaning that $10 bought you over 500 minutes of talk time. That not only beas international rates, but it is better than pretty much any mobile phone plan.

For people to call you with their regular phones, you need a number. You can get one with an 775 area code for free, or pay a nominal fee of $4/mo. for a number with any area code and voice mail. I used callwave, which has a partnership with Gizmo because it provided the ability to ring multiple phones at once. This means that even if I do not have the Gizmo software running (say, my computer is off) it will still ring whatever phone I specify. Receiving a call does not use up any minutes.

Why Gizmo Fails

Based on the above, Gizmo sounds pretty great. And, as long as everything is working, it is. But Gizmo fails because they cannot provide service to their customers. I have run into a number of problems with the service, some minor, one kind of major, and in nearly every instance, Gizmo has provided substandard service and help with my issue.
For example, a minor issue is that I cannot and have never been able to log into their help forums. The reason I got was that there was a problem with accounts created within a certain timeframe related to some transition and that it would be fixed. That was over a year ago and still prevents me from contributing to the forum or asking questions.

The major problem is that I cannot log into my Gizmo account from my mobile phone. Since I have started using the service, the use of mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets is the preferred way to use the service. Go to Gizmo5 and the first thing you see is a place to enter your mobile number so they can text you the link to download the client. I can use Gizmo on my computer and on my tablet (these are virtually the same) but it fails from my phone. I have tried two different phones, and three different programs, so it has to be a failure on their end. But when I sent a support request to get it fixed, I received a response that basically said they did not know about that problem and it had been sent to the engineers. I reopened the case saying that wsa unacceptible and asking them to at least try to troubleshoot the issue, but never received a response.

This is the problem. To beat an entrenched service, you have to offer something that is superior to what they have. Gizmo ha a better variety of ways to use the service, but this is completely worthless if you cannot get any help when something goes wrong.

Addendum: I finally got my "show-stopper" problem fixed with the Gizmo service. After much troubleshooting (all on my end, without any help from the company) I determined it to be a problem with my specific account and asked them to reset the account. They did so and it is working again.