PC Magazine - 2009 04.pdf - Libertad Zero - Blog

About a year ago, PCMag.com’s networking
analyst walked into my office, put a
small plastic box on my desk, and told me
that we had a new Editors’ Choice for VoIP
solutions: the YMax magicJack. The value
proposition was obvious: clear calls anywhere
in the U.S., dead-simple operation,
and, best of all, the box cost only $40 (plus
another $20 a year for service). Sure, it
sounded too good to be true, but after a lot
of testing, we found that the product actually
worked as advertised. Fast-forward a
year, and even though the magicJack’s network
and firmware have been upgraded,
our opinion of the product is considerably
lower. The magicJack’s story should serve
as a cautionary tale for the entire technology
industry.
Truth be told, we started getting complaints
about the magicJack as soon as
we published our review. Not just a few
unhappy users, but dozens of them. There
were also plenty of poor Better Business
Bureau reports. Turns out the primary
problem isn’t with the product itself—it’s
with the company’s technical support. And
for many would-be buyers, the issues that
are coming to light are deal breakers.
My colleague Sascha Segan has already
written about the limits of professional
product reviews in his column. Reviewers
have products for only a short period
of time before they send them back to the
vendors. This makes it impossible either
to perform long-term testing or to evaluate
build quality across an entire product line.
In the case of the magicJack, however, we
tested four different units over the course
of a year. Every time we came to the same
DAN COSTA
The Case of magicJack
conclusion: When it works, it’s great; when
it doesn’t, you shouldn’t expect much help
from the company.
YMax has been very busy since the
launch of magicJack in 2007. The company’s
aggressive marketing efforts have
put its product in the hands of pretty much
every technology journalist I know, and
the resulting reviews have generally been
quite positive. YMax has also blanketed
late-night cable TV with ads—stay up
past 1 a.m. and there’s a good chance you’ll
see a goofy infomercial for the magicJack.
The company even placed units into a
recent TED conference goody bag and
We tested four different magicJack units, and every
time we came to the same conclusion: When it works,
it’s great. When it doesn’t, don’t expect much help.
got its own football game: the magicJack
St. Petersburg Bowl.
All this press has been a boon for
YMax. All told, the company estimates it
has sold more than two million magicJacks
since the product launched, and it’s now
selling them at a rate of 250,000 a month.
At $40 a pop, plus annual revenues of $20 a
year, that’s a lot of cash rolling in. This also
means an enormous user base that needs
billing, technical, and customer support
services. This is where YMax, like many
start-ups, comes up woefully short. YMax
simply doesn’t answer phone calls. The
company doesn’t list a corporate number
anywhere on its Web site and offers no live
voice support, only live chat. And even live
chat is accessible only after you’ve been
repeatedly dumped into the site’s knowledge
base. Although the product often “just
works,” when it doesn’t, you’re in trouble:
Live chat is not an ideal medium for helping
a user adjust UDP ports or reconfigure
firewall settings.
YMax CEO Dan Borislow stopped
by our offices a couple of months ago to
talk about how the company has grown
and what it’s doing to improve customer
support. He even let me peek into its
chat-based support infrastructure, which
consists of real-time instant messaging
with service reps in the Philippines, who
are always on call and are graded based
on their performance. The system looks
pretty impressive.
In our real-world testing, however, the
live chat reps were not helpful. Worse,
we were directed to make changes to our
system Registry to solve routine networking
problems. As tech journalists, we can
handle that, but for the average user this is
a recipe for disaster.
It’s a mistake to think of YMax as only
a company that hawks a $40 adapter on
late-night TV. YMax is a phone company,
and a pretty big one. Yes, it uses VoIP, but
its business model is very different from
those of Vonage and other cable operators
that offer phone service. The magic-
Jack service has a nationwide network
of media gateways and session border
controllers, as well as CLEC (competitive
local exchange carrier) certifications
in all 50 states. YMax is a huge company
with a vast technical architecture to support.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be
spending enough to take care of that customer
base.
Sure, managing the explosive growth
that YMax has experienced in the past year
would tax any company. But YMax seems
to have lost track of its purpose. It isn’t just
selling an inexpensive gadget, it’s selling a
service. And providing a service requires
more than simply placing calls. Sometimes
it requires taking them.
What’s your experience with the
magicJack? We’ve set up a comments section
on Gearlog. Click here.
TALK bAcK To DAn E-mail your thoughts
to dan_costa@ziffdavis.com.
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 29