Any one have any experience with AQL Telecom?

[british steve]

Has any one here ever had any dealings with a telecoms company called AQL?

It seems that they take your money (eventually) and provide no service…
Over the last couple of weeks we have tried to order some phone numbers from AQL as they had a quantity of very good easy to remember numbers such as 414414 and so on, combined with our local dialling code. We started by trying to order a couple of numbers from them a couple of weeks ago online, we picked the numbers and entered our credit card details – for what ever reason AQL’s system declined to accept our credit card (still using the same credit card with other companies without any problem) Phoned up AQL following day to try and sort things out, ended up speaking to two of the most unhelpful AQL people I have ever had the misfortune of talking to and, soon discovered that customer service is not some thing that they have ever heard of or offer. As the number were ordered on my other half’s credit card they needed to speak to her as the account holder, no problem, got the misses to phone AQL, they then refused to speak to her as they did not believe that she was the account holder!!!

God only know why but we decided to choose another couple of numbers (apparently AQL could not take payment over the phone and suggested that we should try again online) Tried to register another couple of numbers (AQL could not for whatever reason re-list the original numbers we had picked so we had to choose other numbers) same problem, AQL’s online ordering system refused to accept the credit card again (in the mean time we have managed to spend over £600 online with Staples without a problem with the very same credit card)
Using a different credit card we finally managed to register and buy a really good phone number – all went thought without a hitch, or so we thought. We received an email receipt to say they had taken the money from the credit card (just under £15.00) and that the number requested was ours and that we would receive a text message to confirm our account details that would allow us to set up the number and call forwarding, that was two days ago- still no text so still have no account details – still unable to use the number. Have tried to contact AQL a number of times, who now after taking our money don’t want to answer their phones or reply to emails!

If I am honest the plan was to register the numbers and then move them to our own voip provider as soon as we could – that has backfired quite spectacularly.

Curios to know if any one else has come across this company and had the same problems with them? After our experience with them I would seriously have to advise other people to give this company a very big miss, I am staggered that they are still in business with the abysmal service they offer.

 

[SneakSMS]

My experiences with them were generally positive where their reliability was concerned, but their sms gateway was too pricey and the bulk discounts poor.

I agree though that there is something up with their billing systems. Several invoices (pre-pay luckily), remained unpaid because their system would arbitrarily refuse payments.

 

[mintra]

I am in two minds about this, on the one hand, I have had more trouble with them in the three months that I have been dealing with them, than I have with any other supplier in thirty years in business.

Misleading technical support.
Customer accounts getting cut off all the time.
No account manger available in between christmas and new year
The latest thing is 700 minutes of calls racked up in a 36 minute period charged at over 1p per second this is £600 all to one number.

My credit limit as not £600 and the number in Belarus was meant to be charged at less than 20p a minute, I made non of these calls and it seems our system was hacked.

They expect me to pay this and they make a profit, from it.

I not some in in America has had $100k bill kncoked up over a weekend
to the same Balarus crooks

AQL are on a low margin, and the voip industry is a bit choatic, it is clear that they are fighting fraud all the time, be it from credit cards are this wave of sip hijacking and dialing premium rate numbers on your bill.

My advice is, don't use AQL, or any other voip provider for that matter until, the legal contols are in place to allow for international procecutions.

I cant blame, AQL they do their best under the circumstance, it is just not good enough for me.

 

[monkman]

We have just ported two of our company phone no:s to AQL. This was to get IAX connection to our Asterisk. Previously we had SIP with Sipgate and we got just too many lost calls, one way audio etc.

Fortunately, I picked two minor phone no:s as a tester, not our main incoming.

After two weeks, they have still only managed to port one of the numbers (that is 2 weeks AFTER they said we were up and running and sent us invoices). One of the numbers still run with Sipgate, but AQL are happily inviocing us a "line rental" for it.

The other number..... aaaarghhhhh (I haven't given up hope, but as things stand, I can't recommend AQL unless you are suicidal).

They send me the registration details and pointed to an IAX setup for Asterisk. Good so far. Didn't work though.

They kept asking me to check my setup and open for port 5060 in the firewalll etc. 5060??? That is the SIP port. Smell of a rat here.

I pointed out to them that we are on IAX (4569/UDP) and not SIP (5060/USP). It didn't appear to sink in.

Their IAX setup example does not include a "Register" line, so clearly they must enter our IP no in their config, or else their system won't find us. Nobody asked me for our IP no. When I pointed this out, they came back and said "We have entered your IP in our config, try again".

Right. Tried again. No luck.

Port sniffing then. Placed a call, sniffed incoming. Traffic on port 5060 from an AQL server. So they have a SIP account set up for us.

I've pointed out a large number of times to their support that we are on IAX , not SIP. Still they have "entered the IP in our config" but they have entered it in their SIP config!

I get a feeling that their support hasn't got a clue what IAX is, they follow a script:

1) Have you checked your configs Sir?
2) Have you allowed for port 5060 to pass through firewall Sir?
3) Allow the following of our servers through Sir (list of Sip stuff...)
4) If come to here, then GOTO 1.

OK, I will give them another few days. Maybe there is someone there. Somewhere. They do offer IAX and the sample config looks fine. Someone in AQL must know what IAX is. But that isn't anyone in their support.

So - somewhat warning if you want to use AQL. They are not very knowledgeable, they seem to have a call center in India following a script if you contact support and they cannot even spell "voice over IP".

 

[Ozzy]

I'm quite surprised by this as I know AQL very well and have always had a really good service from them (the bought Quick Telecom from me back in 2007 and I remained a customer of theirs since then for my own stuff). Their support guys have always been very good for me and I've never found myself talking to an offshore call centre.
Perhaps but frustrating they don't offer payment by direct debit, but that's been my only gripe.
I've dropped a line through to someone I know there bringing his attention to this thread to see if your issues can be addressed or an explanation given.

 

[aqldotcom]

Hi Monkman !

aql here (or more specifically - Adam - their CEO here!).

Sorry to hear about the experience you've had (IAX vs SIP). We do have a few new starters (who should be trained in all products, but clearly there's gaps!). We're up to nearly 50 staff now.

If you can send through your username details to me, i'll make sure that the team look after you.

In relation to anyone else who's had any kind of bad experience - please use me as your point of contact and i'll ensure that things are ironed out.

Richard - in relation to Direct Debit - this is something we can do and i'll make sure that your account manager gets in touch.

In terms of the post about voip fraud - bear in mind that our wholesale network has over 80 million numbers on it and we have to have very tight fraud controls .. However - we can't protect our customers from having their own systems compromised (but we can offer advice - just ask!).

very best,

Adam