Star2Star VOIP

Star2Star is a reliable VoIP provider and system. We have sold many systems and use it in our office as well. I would recommend it to you as a replacement to Altigen.

Star2star is a very reliable VoIP system. They monitor your system 24/7 and have multiple layers of redundancy. It is however, completely dependent on your Internet connection and I would highly recommend having two seperate Internet connections to provide redundancy on your end. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.

Call me crazy, but it seems like a subtle marketing attempt.

We have been selling Star2Star now for 6+ months and have not had any service-related problems. I understand the reluctance to doing business with a "start-up", as we were just as reluctant to sell the product/service due to problems we have had with other providers. We have been in the business for 28+ years and have not seen an offering as unique, well thought out and reliable as Star2Star. They are doing it right...slowly and reliably, rather than trying to get something to market fast. They have actually been in business for 5+ years and have only been selling the existing product/service for about 18-24 months, all along the way making great strides. They continue to add features and functionality, as well as enhancing the offering. Please contact me if you would like to discuss in detail.

We are a partner of Star2Star's and I would be willing to set up a meeting with Star2Star representative's to discuss who S2S is and why we think it is the best solution in the market. It is unlike any other product anywhere, and we have been in the telecom business for over 28 years. You can contact me at cs@teleco.com if you are interested to learn more.

Like he entirely missed it or something. I'd think a meeting would have been a good source of info and options.

Hello, I've read some of your comments in the blogs. You mentioned that you have heard about Star2Star horror stories. We are in the process of taking the next step toward Star2Star, and your comments caught me offguard. Can you share any of the horror stories? I'd also like to know if you went with Shoretel and how that is going. I'd appreciate any insight that you have on this subject.

Thanks in advance.
Mikre Reed, CIO, Visiting Physicians Assoc.
248-592-5151

Star2Star's customer service is to say the least - substandard. You can email them and call them and they never get back to you. They may know technology...but they do not know service...and who needs the aggrevation. Unfortunately, I like their system - but if something goes wrong or you need help - their follow through is just horrendous! I am looking for a new system because an issue that I have had for over a year has yet to be resolved and it takes weeks to get anyone to call you back. That is basically telling me that my business does not mean that much to them.

This company has been an absolute nightmare.... 5 months and still major problems weekly with the service. Some phone don't ring for all calls (random), sometimes the phones don't ring at all, servers go down, calls get disconnected, etc etc.
And they make you pay for "live monitoring" which I was told was, "If there is ever a problem with the phones, like even a phone being unplugged, they will call you and let you know and help you fix it right away." That has NEVER happened even though there has literally been dozens of major issues. I even left a phone unplugged for 3 days to prove it to the install company, and Star2Star never contacted me.

And now they are pulling down their fax servers since they realize they don't work. So now I have the joy of trying to get my old PoTs fax line ported back and since it's just a single line I will be paying an arm and a leg for it.

I am not the type of person to go out on the web and leave bad reviews, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but this is so incredibly beyond acceptable, that I need to make other people aware. I promise you, this company is not how they are made to seem!

It has been 3 years and we continue to have a problem - the same problems with this company. The phone system is phenomenal...but the service and the lack of followup and note taking of issues becomes a nightmare. I continue to have a problem with the way my system was set up by my dealer - and 3 years later the same problem pops up every now and then...and the tech support has no history of this problem. And I have to tell my story all over again.

Plus when I have an issue - I am told 3 or 4 different stories on how to handle it and when the problem or issue pops up again - I tell them what I was told and they say..."well our procedures have changed." I want to like this company...as I said the system itself seems to work fine and is very user friendly. But when you have a problem - it is a nightmare. The people are very nice in customer service and tech support but I have a feeling they may be either overwhelmed, not properly trained, or they experience high turn over in personnel. Just a guess - I don't know what the problem is but it makes working with this company impossible. It is not worth the headache.

Great idea and technology - LOUSY service and follow up!

Your dealer should be providing 1st level support. Sounds like the problem you are having over the last 3 years should have been addressed long ago by your dealer. Any reliable dealer will take full responsibility of any issues and will make sure that it's fixed in timely manner. With the reliable dealer you don't really need to call Star2Star support, this is the responsibility of the dealer. But, unlike most phone system providers, Star2Star does provide support directly to any customer and will not turn anybody away. Try this with Avaya, NEC, Panasonic, Toshiba... they won't even take your call and will refer you back to the dealer and that's even if you reach a live person.
As someone suggested earlier, call Star2Star and request a new dealer.

"Your dealer should be providing 1st level support. Sounds like the problem you are having over the last 3 years should have been addressed long ago by your dealer. "

Is this really a reasonable response? As I agree the dealer should be providing 1st level response, there is absolutely no reason at all a problem should exist for 3 years when Star2Star takes support calls. If Star2Star can resolve the issue, how can the dealer resolve it??? If they dont want to deal directly with the customer then they should act accordingly! but dont Say you will support the end user and then push it off as in Mary's case.....

I had been considering S2S but now I may have to research it more...

Hi, I'm the technology manager of a medium sized nonprofit organization and we moved to Star2Star about 7 months ago. Here is my two cents. The company has always been responsive to support calls. The S2S system is a bit different as it's sort of a hybrid system with one box on the ground and the PBX in the cloud (or that's my way of viewing it) so you really need to do your research before choosing this. We purchased the Snom 320 phones which I definitely would NOT recommend but the service has been fine except for one major hitch. When we purchased the system we were told it would handle faxes and it does not. We lost tons of faxes and eventually had to revert to a POTS line for our faxes a real headache. They claim to be working on this problem but it's too late for us now. Also choose your hardware and reseller carefully!

Hello all, I am a 31 year veteran in telecommunications and hold lots of technical credentials, consulting and programming. We are new S2S dealers, we have found them to be doing SIP over IP correctly, It does matter what kind of dealer you hire to install and support. In the contract Maintenance is mandatory and the Dealer gets paid for this, which is their responsibility to service and take care of problems as S2S does sell only thru telecom dealers and not direct. Therefore it is the Dealers responsibility to resolve and get S2S involved if they cannot. Some dealers that do not do their jobs correctly cause problems in this industry for us professionals all the time and give best products bad names or reviews. I have had personal experience with AVAYA, NORTEL,CISCO, Samsung and other VOIP and hosted VOIP systems and find S2S in the top tiers for quality, innovation, Sip connectivity, reliability, redundancy, system architecture and best of all the total savings. I have talked with other dealers technicians and they say that S2S emails, dealers and customers contacts even if the system burps, this monitoring is 24 hour a day 7 days a week. I agree with the previous comments make sure your installing dealer has the necessary industry credentials and contact their other S2S customers and choose wisely. If VOIP systems are installed and maintained correctly there are very few problems and reliability is close to 99.999% which is what traditional telephony is rated at. If you need help sifting thru dealers credentials let me know and I will guide you thru how to choose true industry professionals.

PS., wanted to add Faxing over IP Industry wide even when using T38 faxing is only 90 percent guaranteed, we still tell our customers if you want 100% guarantee analog faxing ( which in my mind is antiquated given we have email and scanning) you will have to use the old fashion POTS, which alarm systems also cannot communicate over IP so this one POTS line could serve as an alarm line and fax line at the same time. This is how we guide our customers and it is the whole truth about faxing over IP. thanks all

Man, there are a lot of systems sales folks here. I'm 42 days in to Star2Star and this is reality. When you sign with them, you are usually buying from an agent but contracting directly with S2S. You are also contracting directly with a provider for bandwidth; these are separate and independent contracts. That means if you leave one of them, you are still with (or stuck with) the other one.

So far, our experience is spotty.

The sales agent misrepresented / was confused on material aspects of how the system works. That means instead of having dynamically configured bandwidth, we surrender some of our bandwidth to the phone system. Ok...would have been nice to know during the sales process.

Any time there is a problem, the fingers point everywhere but S2S...this is with VP's of the company, not rank and file.

If you exercise your "out", remember that you still have your contract for the bandwidth which was likely sold to you by the same agent that sold you the S2S.

And if you do exercise your "money back" out, it's not quite true. For every piece of equipment you buy you pay for the equipment, shipping, installation, taxes and service...it's a crazy invoice. You get your purchase price back...nothing else. Our experience was for every dollar spent on equipment, you pay around another 30% on delivery, setup and other stuff...you're not getting that 30% back.

And if you do decide you want out and want to surrender 30% of what you've paid, you now have to pay more to re-port your numbers and ship all of the equipment back. Here's the deal folks...that money back thing is complete B.S. It should be called "most of your money back."

Proceed with extreme, extreme caution is my advice. The folks singing the praises of S2S cannot, I repeat cannot, solve all these problems. They quickly wilt and point fingers to the Internet carrier. If reliable voice quality is not important to you, then this type of system is perfect...go ahead and sign the 5 year deal

Star2Star is horrible.

Customer service is non existent!

Tech support is horrible, we have had nothing but issues.

Contracts and Sales tactics are deceptive and lock you in for a minimum of 5 years.

Their rates are twice that of better companies.

STAY AWAY FROM STAR2STAR

Pushy sales people, lack of response to problems with their system. Horrible billing/invoicing system. And you get an additude from them when you have a qestion or a concern.
Would NOT recommend. Poor to extremely poor customer service

We have been a dealer now since July of 2012. Did a large 13-site project right after getting training certification. Overall, its a great product. Really like the portal and its ability to provide status of all the locations very quickly. Working through the Cisco PIX Firewall's was a bit time consuming, but our techs did a great job working with their IT Department to get needed information. Programming changes are a breeze. Biggest issue we have had is getting numbers ported away from Charter! Its been a nightmare; getting LOA's rejected for claims of "address mismatch" when the information was taken right off the Charter phone bills. We are finally down to two locations left to port, which should happen within 30 days.