labratza
Expert Member
use to use freshphone but could not remember login details. It is sad that it has come to an end. Suppose nothing for free lasts forever
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Freshphone closing down
- Thread starter Apogee
- Start date
Dimpie (JIGSAW)
Honorary Master
Don't want monthly fees ... my usage is way lower than the fee.
deweyzeph
Honorary Master
I think this is the problem all of us who use Freshphone are going to have with finding another provider. I can't find any reputable VOIP providers who do not charge a fixed monthly fee in addition to the actual call costs. Like you say, my monthly usage is significantly less than a monthly fee would be.
labratza
Expert Member
fair enough but suppose this is why they closing as they are not making money off all the lines they had. Was used for incomming calls mainly and no outgoing...
This document is required to action the port. We have ported Freshphone numbers if the donor voip network allows or request from telviva.
If you have those documents we can assist with the porting of the voip number to Afrihost Pure VOIP.
deweyzeph
Honorary Master
I'd happily pay something like R10 or R20 a month just to keep my number alive, but when you start approaching R50 or R60 a month it starts becoming a bit much. To be fair though, it still beats paying R250 a month for a Telkom landline rental which was equally unused.
AsteriskUser
Well-Known Member
The issue might occur on an invoice because Freshphone issues an 087 number as an account number then when a Geo number is ported in its linked to that number. So will a letter from Euphoria Telecom stating number ownership suffice?
deweyzeph
Honorary Master
Good point. Another issue is that some people have multiple geographic DID numbers linked to their account which do not reflect on an airtime invoice. So I don't see how an airtime invoice will be of any use in porting as it basically doesn't show anything useful on it to prove that you own the number.
AsteriskUser
Well-Known Member
True, thats where the Letter from the voip provider comes in, maybe @AfriNatic can confirm if that will be sufficient, or give an exact requirement that FF could fulfil?
Tinuva
The Magician
So I think what happened here is, Freshphone reflected on their business model, and decided it is not worth it anymore.
Now, I did some of my own reflection. Paying R50 a month to have a voip number and line, is well not worth it to me. Was a nice to have, but not a must have, not a should have and even the nice to have is starting to water down.
My self reflection says, this was good while it lasted, Time to let go.
Now, I did some of my own reflection. Paying R50 a month to have a voip number and line, is well not worth it to me. Was a nice to have, but not a must have, not a should have and even the nice to have is starting to water down.
My self reflection says, this was good while it lasted, Time to let go.
deweyzeph
Honorary Master
I think you may be right. Once I assess how hard this whole porting business is going to be I may just give up my landline number once and for all. I suspect like most people I'm just keeping it around for sentimental reasons seeing as it's the same number I've had for almost 15 years. But honestly I hardly ever get phonecalls on it anymore and I make even fewer outgoing calls from it. I'm still using R400 of prepaid airtime that I topped up in 2021. Haven't had to buy any airtime since then.
AsteriskUser
Well-Known Member
I actually think it was more a support issue, if it was completely autonomous, IE you can sign up and support yourself, no payment issues or billing enquiries then it would have run fine, the actual system doesn't take much to maintain. But you can only offer a certain level of customer service for a "free" product and it comes with issues. Non-technical people trying to use the system and logging multiple tickets daily etc. It becomes a do you support the free product at the cost of paying clients?
W@P
Honorary Master
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I cannot remember. But it was a couple of docs.
One issue was they wanted an invoice stating the account is paid up, FFS its prepaid, and it must not be older than 3 months. The numbers I ported to AH did not have any airtime purchased within the last 3 months at the time. So, no invoices.
Motherfsck what an issue that was. The more I keep on telling AH there are no invoices available the more they ask for it. Working off a script. It got done in the end.
Tinuva
The Magician
Yup, I summed it up as they did reflection on their business model.
Completely understand the issue and can't blame their choice at all.
If that however is really the technical reason, that is easily solved. You just work paying customer tickets before working on free customer tickets, aka only do work on free user ticket if you have nothing better to do. If that is not good enough, ask a fee for support.
Anyways, its probably more than that. Its a business, and in the end, a business is in it to make some money. If I could, I would run a voip provider for myself, but the effort required is where I also say, not worth it.
AsteriskUser
Well-Known Member
Well that coupled with most people sign up to what receive inbound, they make 15c a min on inbound from another network? a lot of people sign up to port numbers for them and their families to call each other, on net calls are free, so really they only making money on outbound calls, as I have seen in this thread alone 90% of people don't even call out so now you have server hosting costs, IPT costs, support staff costs, marketing campaigns, the app that is free costs a lot per month too (actually there's a per unique user cost for the push notifications) so really there's no margin for any profit, it was a great idea and helped a lot of people and small businesses in Covid and to get away from Telkom but in the long run remaining free was never sustainable.
The move to Euphoria would be easier than having to port as its a number move and is instantaneous but it comes with a monthly cost and since the land line is kind of dead now, its only really small businesses that would benefit from it.
The move to Euphoria would be easier than having to port as its a number move and is instantaneous but it comes with a monthly cost and since the land line is kind of dead now, its only really small businesses that would benefit from it.
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Hi.
Yes, a letter of account confirmation will work. We have received confirmation from Telviva that we can port prepaid numbers as of today.
deweyzeph
Honorary Master
One thing I will forever be grateful for from Freshphone was that porting my landline number to Freshphone was literally the only way I could cancel my Telkom account. This was in the bad old days when Telkom made it almost impossible to cancel a landline. After numerous attempts to cancel my Telkom landline failed, I read on this forum that there was a loophole whereby if you ported your landline number over to a VOIP provider it would automatically cancel your Telkom account without you having to do anything. So that is exactly what I did, and lo and behold 2 months after porting I received my final Telkom invoice and my account was automatically cancelled, achieving something that I had tried to do myself for almost a year.