My experience with iTalkBB technical support

I recently have to move my home to a new place. After I set up my Internet service and connected my iTalkBB phone adapter and phones the same way as I remembered it was, immediately I were able to make calls. It went very smoothly and I was quite happy about it. Only when a couple of days later, did I realize that incoming calls did not work. People dialing my number could hear ring sound but the phone would not ring at all. I decided to call iTalkBB customer service.

I first dailed the 1-877-iTalkBB (482-5522) number. There was no waiting. But following the voice prompt, I reached a voice message telling me I should call technical support line at 1-877-482-5503 instead. Although it was not much a hassle to me, it would be much nicer if it could automatically transfer my call to the new number -- something easy for iTalkBB to do -- after all it is a phone company.

I dialed the new number (using my iTalkBB phone). It was about 8pm and there was no waiting (I selected service in Chinese). Interestingly there is a voice-prompted category for problems "with receiving phone calls", which I selected. There was not much process for authentication either (none of the user name/password/mother's maiden name crap), as the service guy simply read back my number (must be from caller id) and asked me if the problem was on the phone that I was using. He asked me to tell him the color of the different lights on the italkbb adapter and on the cable modem, and then asked for my cell phone number to call me back at. Within a minute, he did so. Then he told me to switch my phone cable to a different port (there are two ports on the linksys 2101 model) and restart the box. I followed his instruction. He then put me on hold and dailed my iTalkBB phone number. This time, it worked. I picked up the phone and thanked him. All within five minutes, problem solved.

Overall, I'm quite happy with the experience. I guess I must have hit a common problem. The line-2 jack on the iTalkBB adapter is not supposed to connect to, something that I overlooked when reconnecting my phones. Still, I'm quite impressed by the efficiency -- nowadays, one may not be able to get through the different automated voice-menus within five minutes at many other customer services, let along getting the problem solved. Good work, iTalkBB.