OneBox Review
Editor’s Rating:
Avg. User Rating:
| Overall |   |
Onebox Review Summary
Onebox Pros
- 2000 minute plan if all you need is call-forwarding & a few other basics
Onebox Cons
- Executive plan is 1-person only, call-forwarding system
- High priced with extra charges
- No extensions on Executive plan
- Limited Extensions on other plans
Bottomline
Unfortunately with Onebox, we simply feel there are better virtual pbx alternatives available that in turn offer better pricing, better features for the price, and better customer service.
Onebox Features/Benefits
Onebox offers two different types of plans, and that needs to be made clear. They have what they call an "Executive" plan which is really designed for a one-person office. It does not offer you any type of extensions, dial by directory, or automated attendent. It’s basically an answering system with some additional features such as faxing, call fowarding, etc. You can not add a professional greeting to this plan either. In order to get the full benefits of a Virtual PBX, you have to go to their "Receptionist" plan which then starts at $49.95/mo with 2000 minutes, 4 extensions and 2 lines.
| Pricing: | Executive: $16.95/mo, $19.99/mo, $29.99/mo (no extensions, limited features) Receptionist(2000): $49.95 Receptionist(3000): $79.95/mo Receoptionist(5000): $99.95/mo |
| Setup/Installation Fee: | No |
| Disconnect/Cancellation Fee: | No |
| Free Trial: | 30 day Free Trial or 250 minutes whichever comes first |
| Customer Service: | 24/7 poor (out-sourced limited knowledge) |
| Included Minutes: | Executive: 100 / 400 / 2,000 10¢/per min/additional Receptionist(2000): 2,000 4.9¢/per min/additional Receptionist(3000): 3,000 3.9¢/per min/additional Receptionist(5000):5,000 2.9¢/per minu/additional |
| Incoming Lines: | Executive: 1 Receptionist(2000): 2 Receptionist(3000): 2 Receptionist(5000): must call to get information $5.00 ea/month for additional lines |
| Extensions: | Executive: 0 Receptionist(2000): 4 ($11.95/ea/mo to add w/100 additional minutes) Receptionist(3000): 10 ($9.95/ea/mo to add w/100 additional minutes) Receptionist(5000): 20 ($7.95/ea/mo to add w/100 additional minutes) You can not get extenstions with Executive Plan |
| Local & 800 Transfer Fee: | Free |
| 800 Vanity Number Fee: | $30 – one time |
| True 800 Number Setup Fee: | Free |
Likes
Plenty of Minutes: They offer 2000 minutes with their Executive, and also with their Receptionist plan, however we feel that for the price the other limitations of the Executive plan remove the benefits of the big minute push. At the Receptionist level again, the price is high when you take into account the limited extensions, cost for additional lines, and higher cost for features such as international virtual phone numbers ($29.99/mo). When you add up the extras, then they become a high-priced option to get the extra minutes.
Dislikes
Questionable Customer Service: Onebox and eVoice Receptinist are both owned by J2 Global Communications. As we were doing this review we had several questions, and made repeated attempts to contact OneBox to get clarification. In some cases we got absolutely no response to multiple attempts. In other attempts it took multiple connections to their "chat-live" to get someone to answer our questions. We then questioned some of the answers we received, and the knowledge level of their customer service reps.
We question the customer service commitment when we could not get our pre-sales questions answered from either of the J2 Global Comminications companies. It may not be an issue, for you, but it is something to definately be aware of. If you are told one thing in a pre-sales chat and then find out something completely different after you have purchased the product, you may not have alot of options – remember they don’t offer a free trial of any kind.
Previous BBB Rating of "F"(now upgraded to B+): Onebox has a Better Business Rating of “F”. In researching the complaints, most involve billing disputes or difficulty canceling accounts, while others allege excessive customer service hold times of over 10 minutes to up to several hours to speak to a customer service representative. Other complaints allege that the services do not work as advertised and are not billed as advertised and when customers complain the company simply cancels their service. We attribute the upgrade in the BBB rating the their acquistion of My1Voice and MyFax and My1Voice’s previous excellent customer service.
Limited Features on Executive Plan: We find it odd that they market a plan in this space that in our opinion really isn’t a virtual pbx system, but more of a glorified answering system. Without extensions, automated attendent, and professional type greetings, we don’t see how that plan can be considered a virtual pbx.
Limited Extensions: As previously mentioned, you can not even get the option of extensions on the Exective plans(least costly), and on the Receptionist plans they are extremely low. Add to that the cost of $11.95 to $7.95 each per month to add them and you are talking some real potential costs as your company grows, or you have separate sales campaigns you may want to track.
Number Porting Issues: Not all vendors are equal when it comes to leaving them and wanting to take your number with you. You may find you have issues porting your number to another provider when and if you leave Onebox.
Summary
All in all, we don’t feel comfortable recommending Onebox to the small business, home office, or traveling professional space at this time. Considering their previous BBB rating and customer service issues, we just feel there are better alternatives out there right now that offer better pricing, features for the price, and better customer service.
However, if you still wish to find out more about them, you can do so at www.onebox.com.
About 
Truly the worst company I have ever come across. I’ve been held hostage now for almost 2years . I wish something could be done legally but it seems that there are to many loop holes.
Put it this way, AT&T has better customer service! Lol
This past weekend was the last weekend i will be using onebox ( phonepeople) , i have decided to start over with a new company name, website, new 800 number and business cards. Its the only way!
DoctoriPhone.biz Coming soon!
This is a copy of complaint I just filed with the FCC re OneBox:
I believe that you should investigate internet based companies that provide phone services. In particiliar a company called OneBox–I am a small business that signed up with OneBox for a toll free number for our customers. No complaint about this…..
After several years I decided to switch to a new, less expensive carrier. I filled out all of the neccessarty forms for number portability. OneBox claimed that they could not transfer the ph number because the number belongs to another carrier called Ring Central–
-I have never heard of Ring Central—all of my dealings–billings, payments, everthing has been thru OneBox. I think this is a dirty and underhanded way for a company to opt out of their responsibility under number portability rules. It is causing a great burden on my small 3 person company, disrupting communications with our customers. The FCC is our only hope in dealing with these crooks.
Thanks for your help!
Owner
JD Shirley LLC
OneBox product sux, run away. Cancel and find a service provider with a better company, with better customer service. OneBox of J2 Global just tried to bait and switch after acquiring the company I was with, they slapped me with over $50 of phony and bogus charges and then would not remove from bill. Cancel and go to any of the many providers that do provide great customer service and don’t “bait and switch” and slap on excess charges.
Beware! they have your credit card information and will use it every chance they get! They just whacked me for 3 months service after migrating from the Phone people and charged me a late fee under their authority onto my paid in full American Express card. They billed me for Feb, and March with a late fee after I paid them in January off my American Express. When I called American Express they had whacked me again for April charges that were not on my invoice (hoping I would not catch that either) Then I was told they will not credit past 7 days. How convenient for them.
I hope American Express will help me out on this and send this Whack back to them with additional charges on their end.
Shame on you OneBox. I am spending the day writing complaints to all….ALL the free live directories. And I have almost 250 of them.
Please call me and lets get this straightened out before I get to 100 of them.
It’s incomprehensible that OneBox is forcing it’s users to load software (MS Silverlight) that’s required for functions they don’t use. For instance there are many OneBox users that need to get to there e-mail remotely where downloading software is prohibited or not allowed and unnecessary. I.e., Workplaces, hotels, motels friends and relatives computers. Also there are other devices and their associated OS’s that do not support MS Silverlight.
OneBox sucked before and now it truly sucks…. big time!
I have cancelled my account.
Onebox is a joke.
They have been sending me “reminders” that my account is delinquent, although my credit card information is *saved* in their system. I can log in, in their own system, and *see* with my own eyes, my credit card information.
Yet they can’t see it.
For three (3) consecutive days, I exchange emails with their tech support “Ashley W” regarding this issue. I explain that all that information is in the account.
No luck.
Onebox disconnects my line.
Arrrgh. I call their “customer support” number: I hear a few rings then a “click”.
Someone hung up on me.
Fine. Take a deep breath. Try again.
I hear shuffling at the other end. Like someone trying to put their headset on in a hurry after being woken up from a deep sleep.
Then a hapless voice with an Indian accent: “hellooooo? this is xxxxx. How may I help you?”
I explain. At length.
Unfortunately, xxxxx asks me to call in “half an hour”, because the system is down.
I am out.
Couldn’t agree more with Adam. We’ve switched to Ring Central; once Onebox stopped losing our numbers and allowed the porting to go through. At a $40 a pop
OneBox has got to be the worst phone service I have ever dealt with. Worse than any other mobile phone carrier or computer tech support from India. Aside for the absence of customer “service” they do not understand or know their product. The entire phone service is down once every 5-6 weeks on average. When I say “down” I mean a busy signal or dead air; absolutely no ringing. This is great for a business… Not to mention, the text notifications are currently out, meaning not working, and OneBox blames the mobile carrier. Therefore, this issue will not be resolved any time soon.
My advise, from being a customer for more than 4 years, DON’T DO IT! Stay far away from OneBox. I am currently looking to change services. The problem when changing services is the time is takes to port a number to a new carrier. A business could have a down time from minutes to days. When we ported to OneBox we lost ALL phone service for almost 24 hrs, not mention pissed off a lot of customers.
Stay away from OneBox.
Stay away from OneBox.
Stay away from OneBox.
I am so angry with Onebox I’m not coherent!
We are ending our use of Onebox. This company is horrendous!
They “lost” our number for three business days.
It takes over a month to allow a phone number to re-port. Meantime you’re still paying for their useless services.
Just today…after calling to rant and scream because they “lost” our number again (for 2 1/2 days!), they finally got that fixed, then charged my assistant’s personal account $74-something.
I called on went nuts on them! “The $74 whatever is your monthly charge”. I PAID THAT ON 8/4! Oh, yes, I see that. Well, that was a mistake. Gee, that shouldn’t have happened.
The first time I got involved was 2 weeks ago. I was screaming then, but not as loudly. I own a business; I should not have to spend one minutes – let alone hours – trying to fix a hemorrhage. I finally…FINALLY! spoke to a supervisor, who really tried to be helpful. He was quite upset when I finally was able to speak with him, again, this afternoon.
I have no problems going to the top to the top to tell j2Global just how bad they are. 5 days without phones; reputation questioned (people received a message saying the phones were disabled), and I will review them on every site possible.
Save yourself heartache, and read these reviews before even thinking about signing up for onebox. I have yet to come across a service where not even one person has anything positive to say.
1) Security. They are the worst. They preach security, but don’t practice it. When resetting my password, it transpired, that their customer service reps in India can actually see my password. This is a massive basic security lapse and total disregard for all users personal identity. It is companies like this that breed identity theft.
2) Tech support. Dont both trying to terminate a call overseas, particularly a cell phone The system randomly decides to send your caller into nothingness, and when you call in to tech support, they claim their logs show everything OK….very frustrating, particularly when you are trying to receive a call when overseas.
3) Owning your number. Onebox are very underhand with regards to who owns your number making it very difficult to switch carriers. If you do decide to go with them, read and reread the fine print.
OneBox is in theory great, but when it goes wrong, it is horrible.
Customer support is all autonotron Indians that speak broken English that will never admit anythign is wrong. They can not thus fix any problems, becuase none exist.
I have used it for years for a personal phone line that I rarely use and the hassle of moving it somewhere else is too much, but used another service for mission critical phone numbers.
I have several complaints regarding the OneBox ‘New was beta’ e-mail interface. In many ways it is not user friendly as the previous ‘Classic’ version and is very cumbersome to use.
- Can’t click on URL’s that are part of a message. I now have to open a new browser window and paste it into the URL bar.
- No next button for viewing messages – it now takes more time to go through my messages. Not very efficient.
- When opening a message (viewing) by double clicking on a row, it automatically inserts a check mark in the left box. This action can result in an accidental deletion of a message.
- The left tab always shows ‘Inbox’ for all folders except ‘Sent Messages’ and ‘Drafts’. If I’m in one of my folders, I don’t know what it is.
- Can’t collapse ‘My Folders’ to reduce clutter. For instance, I now have to scroll down to get to ‘Spam Quarantine’. Whereas before I could collapse the ‘My Folders’ list.
- The loss of separate windows for ‘Viewing’ and ‘Composing’ a message. I’m sorry, but the tab method is NOT the same. I can’t view a message at the same time while composing a response to that message without having to click on a tab. Very inconvenient. I now have to write my response in Notepad and paste it into ‘New Massage’.
- Can’t change the column widths of ‘Message Center’ Inbox to optimize the number of messages I can view on a page. The new interface gives me fewer messages per page than before. I should be able to view a message in a single row.
- The ‘Refresh Mail List’ does not always work. I had to exit OneBox and reenter in order to get an up-to-date listing.
- If I mistakenly delete a message, and then try to retrieve it back to the ‘Inbox’ from ‘Trash’ the message will be permenently deleted.
OneBox claims this is better – for who?
Their e-mail interface keeps getting worse with every revision. As long as OneBox collects their monthly fee they don’t care if it’s good. All you get from the support people is lip service, nothing is ever fixed.
I guess finding useful, reliable inofrmaiton on the internet isn\’t hopeless after all.
HORRIBLE SERVICE. Was charged for two billing cycles even after I canceled. Tried to write a complaint, they would not provide an address, email or give me a phone number. This company also runs EVOICE,, dont use them either!!!!! Wasted 45 mins of cell phone minute just so they could give me no one to speak with regarding refunds and cancellations! and to top if off they never sent me my billing statements so I could prove that I didnt use the account.
I used OneBox for about 90 minutes before deciding to give up on them and go with phone.com. I run a business at ImageFreedom.com and when calling OneBox I was getting errors and they couldn’t get the menu to turn off so it’d ring straight to my cell phone.
The easiest things were hard, and I am glad I canceled rather than futzing with their service.
We have been with OneBox for about a year.
For no reason, things stop working. Phones and fax lines are often out of order. The help desk is a 45 minute wait after a fight to get someone who can understand what you are saying and vice versa. They don’t follow up like they promise, even with level 2 or 3 tech support. All in all, the service and the product suck.
Here is a summary of my experiences with one box over the past year.
9/08: These guys stink. Customer service disconnects you after 30 minutes on hold. It is impossible to stop them from billing you after you close your account. You have to close your account with only one person [who is never there], not just anyone can do it. Im going to go out of my way to let the world what a ripoff this is. Stay far away. The hold your phone numbers hostage until you pay $40 each to port them out. The system hangs up on customers alot, about 50% of the time. The faxes get errors 20% of the time. Customer service is in India and they love to disconnect you after being on hold for and hour. I have spent as long as 3 hours trying to get them to fix a screwup [they lost my main business number and let it go into the pool of new numbers being assigned to new customers, almost making me go out of business!], but ended up having to pay Vonage to save my main business number rom being assigned to some other company. My boss would have loved that! Stay away, i have never bothered to do this before, but i am sure the $100 they have overbilled me so far is gone so i will be sure to expose these thieves.
10/09: Nothing but the trueth. Heres and upfat 10/09. I still have onebox. After paying $120 to get my number, they are still holding it hostage. I will now get the FCC involved because im tired of paying 2 phone companies for the same lines. “Relax!” you day. I just paid $120 again to try and port my numbers again and they took my money and now have denied my request to port out. I will hire a lawyer to get these crooks. Stay far away!!
11/09: I have not escaped onebox but risked loosing my numbers. My new phone company ported the numbers out, but onebox refuses to confirm. I have paid $75 a month for the past 2 months waiting for them. I filed a complaint with the FCC & BBB for this ripoff. After 4 calls and 1.5 hours on hold i was told the port expired and i needed to start it over [2 months @ $75 ea]. I am so tired of these guys that i just turned the service off and crossed my fingers and thank god my numbers have safley escaped. It took many hours on hold and a few hundred $$ but im free!! If you believe on review, please believe me, these guys are crooks. I bet i will still be billed for the service next month. Stay away!
I know the pain Mike is feeling. Onebox has to be the coldest, most alienating company I have ever dealt with and that is no exaggeration. They took over Tollfreeexpress and our account along with it. Our rates increased, service is terrible and worst of all, their policy is such that you cannot port your number away from them which was not the case with the company they took over. They hijacked countless numbers of “customers” who they hold hostage. They are predatory and of low moral fiber. Avoid them at all costs.
My company pays about $100 per month for Onebox pbx service. Our number has been active for 4 years and is the main line that all of our customers have to reach us.
Our number became inoperational early one day and Onebox informed us that they would have it up by the evening which already cost a few hundred dollars in lost revenue.
Onebox failed to have it up and failed to follow up with communication. One week later, and a few thousand dollars in lost revenue as well as lost goodwill from repeat commercial clients, the number was still down.
Virtual PBX is typically used by small businesses. Our phone numbers are an integral part of our businesses and a great deal of trust is put into the companies that manage our phone lines. Onebox violated this trust resulting in significant financial damages.