magicJack is a point of contention for many users who’ve decided to give the low-cost telephony service a shot since its launch in late 2007. While many of have hailed it as a great, low-cost telephone service (including us in our magicJack review), others have voiced numerous complaints. All you have to do is check out the comments section of our What's New With magicJack and magicJack Inventor Q & A posts to witness some of the opinions being shared on both sides of the magicJack debate. Being the intrepid reporters that we are, we decided to contact the Better Business Bureau to see what have been the primary customer issues with the little-telephony-device-that-could. A quick search on the company Web site revealed that the Better Business Bureau has given magicJack a less-than-stellar letter grade. A grade is determined by a number of factors including the length of the time the company’s been in business, complaint volume, complaint history, how the company responds to said complaints, and other factors. So which grade did the Better Business Bureau give magicJack get? A big, fat “F.” The BBB’s summarizes an “F” with: "We strongly question the company’s reliability for reasons such as that they’ve failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law’s licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company’s industry is known for is fraudulent business practices." According to the BBB, the two most common complaints involve consumers being charged the full price of the magicjack shortly after signing up for the free 30-day trial, and that it’s extremely difficult for them to contact customer service in order to receive a refund. Since we’re a fair and balanced crew, we reached out to magicJack creator Dan Borislow for his response to these charges. Here’s what he had to say. Charge #1: Some customers are being charged the price of magicJack during their free 30-day trial. DB: This is not true. You will not find one person who was charged before the 30 day trial was completed. The issue is debit card holders, who were told at least 2 times, that there would be a hold against their debit/credit card at time of order. The issue with debit cards is that a hold may have the same effect as a charge on their debit card, causing overdrafts and the like. We do not accept debit cards anymore for a Free Trial, but offer instead a 30 day money back guarantee now. We have had this new policy in effect for about 30 days, and it appears to have fixed this type of complaint. Charge #2: Customers are finding it difficult to reach customer service for a refund. DB: This is ridiculous; it is everywhere on the site. They do not need to reach customer service. It is completely automated and gives an RMA with a scan line. They will also be instructed by Live Chat when they sign on to it or when they ask an agent. Try it yourself. The real issue is that there are professional bloggers hired by our competition to disparage the company. We get over 100 requests a day to resell the product. We have delivered over 1,000,000 units in 7 months. People are very happy with the service. The customer service answers questions within 4 seconds. I am sure this is the fastest in the industry. The reps all get graded and we cut the ones who are not performing. We give you an escalation path to go to if you are not happy with your Rep. I have never seen a competitor offer this type of service. Call up Verizon or AT&T and wait 3 minutes for a rep to answer, who never gives you a credit. As far as Better Business Bureau is concerned, we agreed to treat debit card customers differently than we used to. This was the overwhelming complaint with them. Further, I have Comcast cable in my house; they are rated an F. I use Sprint on some of our phones; they are rated an F. My bank, who I have been with forever, Colonial Bancorp, is rated an F. The list is endless. But we listen to everybody and make improvements constantly. Our reliability, call quality, and customer service have all improved dramatically in the short period of time we have delivered 1,000,000 magicJack (within a year’s time) .It is an amazing story in itself we have grown this fast in such a short period of time. Give me one year in business and we will surpass all our competitors. Unqualified, we have offered the best price and call quality from day one, and we will soon offer them the most reliable and best customer service. I am very proud of where we are to date.
