Truphone nominated for Macworld Award

Truphone has just been nominated for a 2009 Macworld Award in the category of Best iPhone/iPod touch application.

Macworld describes the award as "most innovative and successful products and companies in the Mac community for their achievements and contributions to the industry."

We are up against some tough competition, including Google Earth. Winners will be announced on June 18. Wish us luck!

UPDATE - We didn't win :( - well done to ConcertVault though, who took away the award.

Comments

[Gilberte Houbart]

I am curious to know about the quality of the service, there is nothing on your web site about it and it's a key differentiator. I have tried many solutions and actually worked on the design of one of them (Skype, Mobivox, and now Vonage). My experience so far is that voice quality can be very random with VoIP, in particular when you call a cell phone. I reluctantly dropped my landline with Verizon for that reason but their international rates were much too high. I am waiting to see how it goes with Vonage. So far solutions like Mobivox are back-ups when you need to be mobile and in different countries.

[Unhappy Truphone Customer]

Hi Gilberte,

Just to give you a quick answer, the quality of the voice calls using Truphone, at least in my personal experience, has been pretty decent. In fact, the voice quality is comparable to one of my old GSM cell phones, if not better.

If you're talking about customer service quality, then that's a different story :D Their customer service is virtually non-existant. If you ever send them an email regarding technical or billing support questions, don't expect an answer for at least 3 days. That's just a minimum.

Also, they might surprise you by randomly downgrading your plan from truunlimited to regular or trusaver from time to time, and call it "goodwill". Again, this is just from my personal experience. Others may have had worse.

But do give them a try. Their VOIP service is one of the best. You won't regret it :D

[julie]

if you have a apple ipod touch, how do people call you from a landline or a non-nokia mobile phone ?
what info do they input on their handsets ?

[Truphone]

@Unhappy Truphone Customer - thank you for your positive comments about our service and voice quality.

Regarding the customer service comments, the reality is that we are a small team trying to answer lots of questions, and we do our best to try to respond to everyone in a prompt manner. If you ever want a quick response, why not try our Twitter account (http://www.twitter.com/truphone). May not be able to provide all the answers via that channel, but is a good start.

@Julie - at this stage, you cannot receive calls using Truphone on the iPod touch, but it is something we are looking to do in the future.

[Unhappy Truphone Customer]

Dear Truphone,

See. What did I say? 3 days minimum for a response =D

Regarding your customer service, the reality is that your per minute rates, and even your unlimited plan at $17, is one of the highest in the VOIP industry.

If other VOIP service providers can offer decent, and in some cases even exceptional, support services for their paying customers while also maintaining lower prices compared to you, I'm sure you can also afford to hire better and more professional customer service representatives than what you have now.

Have you ever considered using a real CRM application instead of email and Twitter to handle customer requests? I can probably hook you up if you want. You have my email. Let me know ;D