Home > Consumer Reviews > Actiontec VoSKY Skype Call Center ( USB07051C-01 )

The Vosky Call center performs as advertised, but has one flaw. The box will only work with an older version of Skype, 3.2. This Skype is from February 2007, which is 1 year and 3 months old. I am also not impressed with help you can get online on the Vosky website. More on that later. This box let's you use your older digital phone, mine is a Panasonic KX-TG2224W 2.4 Ghz phone with Skype.

I was able to get current drivers for this device. But as I said, they don't test very often with new versions of the Skype software. Vosky has not tested for a year this box with Skype. I call that neglectful support. That is NOT very impressive. They do not provide any tech support for everyday users, except for "forums". One thread referred to a bios upgrade for the Vosky box that is NOT on their website. Pretty stupid...!!! You can get downloads of a year old software and manuals. You have to be a "partner" to get actual tech support, which makes no sense at all. The Vosky software freezes your PC when the phone cord is a little loose, they do not provide time for a "time out" message for when there is a physical conection issue. Vosky keeps trying to connect to the phone line, and keeps looping. Instead of a timeout message when not finding the phone line. Not very good QA or error handling. Same with when it connects to a a newer version of Skype. Instead of telling you it can't connect to Skype and asking you if it wants you to give up for now, it keeps trying to restart Skype over and over, thus putting your PC into a loop. I had to shutdown my PC to stop this and un-install Skype in Safe Mode...!!!

So that is why I gave this device a 2 star rating. It works as advertised, but don't upgrade your Skype software, or Vosky will stop working...!!!! All in all definitely not in my "top ten" of high tech devices...!!! Phil the Tech Wiz in California

I bought this product in the hope to not need a regular landline phone number. The promise of the product is to be your call center including long-distance from your cell by just punching a few numbers. However, the advanced features can only be used with a regular phone line linked in. Even Skype-In, which makes no sense at all, since it comes through the cable line not the phone line. It just doesn't ring for incoming Skype calls. Customer service was helpful. The product supports Skype to version 3.2. No committment by support on when upgrades will be available. I sent it back.

pros: good concept, works with existing phones, once you get past buggy initial setup, it works well... remote dial in is a genius concept (if they can make it work with your ans machine)

cons: PC needed and must be on at all times... software is buggy..(the software that comes with disk defaults to wrong voice driver all the time).. need to d/l new sware from manuf website. Does not work with your existing answering machine... (either PC receives call or the machine).

I really like this product, and was skeptical when buying it. I was looking at the D-link one, but it got some poor reviews so I opted for this instead. You can really benefit from this device if you have a landline too, but I don't so I won't speak on that part. It works well, and shows the caller id in an odd way, but at least it works. If you have the contact named in Skype, and a call comes in, their name will appear in the caller id (and their speed dial number if set).

The only problem I have with the device is actually related to the software that runs it. You have to dial 001 before dialing a number in the US. Not sure why, and it's kind of a pain especially when people who don't know try to make a call. Hopefully that will be fixed in the future, and from checking out their forums they realize it's an issue. That being said, it's reliable, it works well, and I'm not sure what else you can ask for.

It took me nearly 8 hours of hassle and trouble to discover the following problems with the VoSKY Skype Call Center product.

I purchased four (4) of these units and every one of them had the following problems:

1. Annoying beeping noises - Unpredictable and very annoying beeping noises are heard by person on other end of the call. The beeping does not stop and sounds like DTMF touch tones. The source of the problem is a hardware problem in the VoSKY router. I was informed by Vosky that they are aware of the problem and there is NO FIX and NO SOLUTION AVAILABLE. This makes the product completely unusable. You can verify that many users are having this problem by typing the keywords "beeping" and "Vosky" into Google.

2. NO RETURNS ACCEPTED - After technical support informed me that VoSKY was fully aware of the beeping problem and admitting that there was no fix or solution available, the technician said that VoSKY would NOT accept any returns, and that I would have to get a refund from the retailer. I was stunned. I then checked the VoSKY warranty and it says they have the OPTION of repairing a defective product. Apparently, it's also their option to NOT repair defective products, and they've decided to go with that.

3. Cannot be used with Skype 3.0 - I took me several hours to find this out because VoSKY buries this fact deep inside their website. Why are they hiding this fact from the public? Even assuming you can tolerate constant beeping on the telephone line, you will have to uninstall Skype 3.0 and download Skype 2.5 from a hidden place on VoSKY's website. Good luck finding it.

4. Cannot be used in Canada - this according to one of their technical staff. This makes no sense, since Canada uses the exact same digital switches and phones services as the U.S.

5. Cannot be used with any cordless telephone. Yes, you read that correct. You can only use the old-style analog corded telephones with this product! I was informed of this fact by VoSKY technical support.

6. DIAL 001 on every call - In order to make an outgoing call, you will have to dial 001 on your telephone. I see that other reviewers have commented on this limitation. The only way to find this out is by calling and speaking with technical support. It is not published anywhere else in the documentation, and there is no solution or workaround.

7. Software problems - After installing the product and the VoSKY Call Center software, I found that I could not open the software application either from the application menu or the system tray. If you click, nothing happens, no message, nothing. This is very confusing. I thought there was a pop-up blocker or some problem on my PC causing the problem. I later was told by support that you must connect an additional incoming phone line to the router, otherwise the application is programmed to not open. How would anyone figure this out?

8. Poor sound quality - Skype generally has good sound quality. I found that after adding the VoSKY Skype Call Center, the sound quality went down considerably, and this is despite trying various high quality telephones. Note that other reviewers are also reporting problems with sound quality.

9. Did you forget about the unpredictable and very annoying beeping noises on every call? I was informed by Vosky that they are aware of the problem and there is NO FIX and NO SOLUTION AVAILABLE. This makes the product completely unusable. You can verify that many users are having this problem by typing the keywords "beeping" and "Vosky" into Google.

VoSKY makes no effort to inform their customers of these fatal hardware and design flaws. There is NO MENTION of these problems on the website, except for the beeping problem which is well-reported in their forums.

This company is likely to be is headed for a class action lawsuit because they appear to be intentionally hiding flaws in their product rather than conducting a recall and offering refunds to customers.

Some of the technical support staff at VoSKY are friendly and will admit that they are well aware of these problems and that there is no known solutions or fixes.

Do yourself a favor and find another product!