COMMUNICATION | Ahmad Humeid discovers the pleasure of cheap internet telephony. But that’s not the end of the story

A few months ago I discovered Skype and it changed my life, for a while. Here was an internet telephone solution that actually worked. I downloaded the Skype software (available for Window, Macintosh, Linux and Pocket PC) from skype.com and installed it without any problem. Then I had to convince one of my friends who lives in Europe to also download the software to test it. Luckily, both of us have DSL connections, which you need if you really want Skype to work well (although it does ‘sort of’ work on dial-up too). Once my friend appeared on my contact list I called him. I had my headphones on. When we started talking, both of us were blown away by the great sound quality. It was so much better than the quality of the sound of a normal phone call! It was more like listening to someone talk on FM radio. And the best part: this international phone call cost us nothing!

When you think that a DSL internet connection is actually carried on a normal copper wire it really drives home the point that voice over IP technology (VoIP) is a revolution. It is a disruptive technology that in the next few years will turn the telephone business on its head.

My experience with Skype even got better when I decided to purchase so-called SkyeOut credit, which allows you to call ‘normal’ phones from your PC. The purchasing process was easy enough on the web site and I started with a credit of 10 Euros.

Minutes later I was calling my relatives in Germany for 1.7 Cents a minute. Again the sound quality was generally great.

Soon enough I was calling clients in the US, associates in Canada and relatives all over the globe. The 1.7 Cent/minute charge does not cover the entire world, but I still was making substantial savings even when calling the UAE (22 Cent/Minute).

Skyping became a family habit! We all became fans of this Scandinavian company (that employs Estonian programmers) whose software has already been downloaded over 54 million times to date and who’s logged on members count over 1.5 million at any given time of the day!

Things turn bad
After running out of credit, I recharged my Skype account twice over the period of two months using my WebSurfer credit card (which I use for all my internet purchases). Then one day, the Skype online store started to give me error messages (card declined) whenever I entered my credit card number. Thinking that this was due to some technical glitch I left the matter for a few days. I tried again but still got the same result. I checked my credit card account, used different browsers, tried and retried but still my card was declined.

The ugly part
Frustrated, I decided to use Skype’s friendly looking customer support online chat system. After waiting for over 20 minutes to get a customer service person to chat with me I had the most bizarre conversation regarding the problem. I felt like I was talking to robot. In fact, that person was simply cutting and pasting standard answers into the chat, instructing me to pay through their partner moneybookers.com (which requires users to send all sorts of identification papers to authorize your money account).

I sensed that Skype seem to have a major payment system problem, not to mention a customer support problem.

I turned to the company’s online discussion forums and soon my suspicions were confirmed. It was horrible. There is nothing worse for company than having its customers (actually fans) explode with anger because the company no longer can CHARGE THEM!! People on the discussion forum were posting really frustrated comments and pleas: Please fix your problems and TAKE OUR MONEY!!

I decided to write an email to Skype’s customer support and after 2 days I got an answer. It seems that Jordan has been included on a list of countries who’s credit cards are no longer accepted by Skype on the basis of wide spread card fraud.

What a bummer. OK, so the software still works and I still make free PC to PC calls. But I can no longer call normal phones. I am now planning to let a friend with a non Jordanian credit card to fill up my account for me. That’s not convenient. It’s a pity that these fraudsters and the inability of Skype to deal effectively with them is robbing so many people the pleasure to make cheap phone calls. This is what I call ‘totally un-cool’.