Written on: 16/05/2013 by Salonserve
2+ out of 5 is not fair. The magic words are ... "compared to what/who?". The industry is still in its infancy and if you don't understand this then you should not be using VoIP as a serious business solution. We use Gradwell for our VoIP lines and have about five broadband lines with them as well. We have others, Gradwell is far from Perfect but the best. Gradwell has evolved on the brain power of the founders, however this can be a problem as a company grows it can mean they are... (read more)
Written on: 11/05/2013
I'm slowly moving all of our sites to Gradwell's hosted Multi-Voip platform. Hardware orders are fulfilled within the timescales promised. Their number porting works efficiently and again to the timescales promised. Their Multi-Voip platform provides a feature rich and cost effective method of providing a multi-site phone system. To date it has provided a suitable alternative to separate phone switches and ISDN30. (read more)
Written on: 09/05/2013 by DebsB1975
We have used Gradwell for years for our telephone system. The VOIP system, in my opinion is really well set up and the control panel really easy to manage. Our account manager, Fraser, is so helpful and always manages to sort out any niggles and queries along the way! I would definately recommend them as their after sales and customer service is, quite simply, superb. A fabulous choice for a big or small business! (read more)
Written on: 09/05/2013
We are a small business - growing fast - who have used Gradwell since we opened for business in 2012. Their support and service is always of the highest order. From the beginning they were always there to guide and help us through those tricky first few months and we have continued to buy hardware and new lines/telephone bundles from them as we have grown. I always work on word of mouth and personal recommendations and would recommend Gradwell to anyone reading. (read more)
Written on: 09/05/2013
Have been a customer of Gradwell since October last year. The phones came preconfigured, set up for each individual team member with their names etc which saved a lot of time and effectively gave us a plug and play solution to replace our ISDN lines. No complaints with regards to voice quality - we are running our phones on a 20mb/20mb EFM line supplied by Gradwell and quality is perfect with no noticeable delay. We had some initial teething problems, similar to those mentioned below,... (read more)
Written on: 07/03/2013
Have been using Gradwell services for a couple of years and have been very pleased. As an IT Consultancy firm, we recommend Gradwell as the VoIP provider of choice to most of our clients. We are even confident enough to white-label their product to sell as our own. It seems a shame that a recent brief outage has tarnished their reputation so badly - people are all too eager to complain and not to praise. Hopefully Gradwell will recover the reputation they once had as they continue to provide... (read more)
Written on: 27/04/2013
Trying to run a business and having 2 months of on/off voip service is not acceptable and can not be described as a brief outage. Been with Gradwell for about 2 years and gave them every chance( 2 months) to get it right but had to change providers for the sake of my business . I would not describe this as eager to complain!!!! Maybe your service was better than ours but there are a lot of people reporting the same problems on here so may be you should report your experience of gradwell and leave other to report theirs.
Written on: 12/02/2013 by stevecommitted
I have only been with Gradwell since Dec 12 and the service is appaling. I feel stupid not reviewing them before signing up. Just emailed the MD Peter Gradwell but I looked on thier community pages and this has been going on and on for years. They should not be able to sell thier services. My probelems include: I am losing trade/credibility because of the following faults: • Our phone rings and no one can answer the call • Poor quality of calls so that the calls we can answer, we... (read more)
Written on: 14/02/2013
This is exactly, but exactly, the service we have received right from the start. It is appalling and frustrating and they clearly cannot cope.
Written on: 23/03/2013
Hi I can switch you to Orbtalk within hours. We are superb provider and we can utilise your current system so you will not incur any physical set up costs. Email me at Darren@rb-im.co.uk
Written on: 29/01/2013 by skooler (1 review written)
I work in the IT department of a company who had over 100 voip lines and 4 internet connections from gradwell. They were fine 5 years ago, but problems have begun to take longer to resolve and more and more frequent. We have since moved to Entanet with a leased line and hosted voip. Faultless. (read more)
Written on: 23/03/2013
Hi I represent Orbtalk, we are currently taking on a lot of ex Gradwell customers. We can switch you over in hours, your current system will be able to run our PBX. Contact me on darren@rb-im.co.uk
Written on: 25/01/2013
It seems that day after day of reporting faults with my voip service that nothing ever improves A phone needs to be reliable be it for business or personal use. Gradwell is not! When I ring they assure me everything is working fine 10 mins later I make a test call to myself and again it doesnt work Its not like this is a one off, Ive been with gradwell and it is a common state of affairs When it works I love the idea of VoiP when it doesnt it is useless We have a second voip number in the... (read more)
Written on: 30/11/2012
We've been with gradwell for more than 3 years and the service gets worse and worse and worse. I've resisted the tempation to write a negative review about them before because we persisted with trying to make it work but we're at the end of our tether. The service crashes at least once a week and you lose inbound and/or outbound call services for up to hours. Their broadband lines are up and down multiple times a week. Their online portal is riddled with bugs. On their feedback site, your... (read more)
Written on: 12/10/2012
Every since we went with this company we have had problems ! We spent nearly a grand on the phones and line rental and were told by Aron that the phones would work,they didn't,days later still not working and then we had to configure them ourselfs which took hours ! 3 weeks on and still not working,very bad support service ! We should of stuck with voip phone who we use in our other company ! (read more)
Written on: 23/11/2012
Why don't you use the Ozeki Phone System XE instead? Their customer service is excellent, the software is reliable and it needs no special hardware.
That's much better than having any other systems that I have every tried.
Written on: 28/09/2012
I run a small IT business and have been recommending and installing Gradwells multi-user VOIP system for a few years now. However, recently my customers have been experiencing very poor service, some with constantly dropping calls, poor outbound and incoming connections, and worst of all, the 'pick up' service just does not function! To my mind that is a fundamental part of any small business PBX so that anyone in the office can pick up a ringing call without it going all around a hunt group... (read more)
Written on: 20/08/2012
We've used Gradwell's VOIP service for over 5 years and have seen varying quality over that time. In the early days (2009), reliability was high and call quality good. Over the last 2 years, there have been some serious issues, including a number of periods where there was no service at all for hours. Gradwell don't publish stats for their VOIP system, because if they did, there would be few business users. I would 'guesstimate' availability of their VOIP services at 85% over the last 12... (read more)
Written on: 24/05/2012 by gbg2010 (2 reviews written)
I have been a customer of Gradwell's now for 4-5 years and yes they are not problem free but the quality of the service is 5/5, the service and supports is 5*, fault fix time is normally very very fast, though I have 2-3 outstanding issues that are awaiting a fix by the Gradwell Engineers! these faults have been outstanding for a while now... I have ADSL, VOIP and Hosting from them, The ADSL Tab is missing from my Controll pannel, the remaining minutes anoucement at the begining of each call... (read more)
Written on: 17/04/2012
Having split our operation to two locations, and with a further move later in the year, as the IT administrator I decided this was the time to ditch our proprietry ISDN based PBX and move to VOIP and an IP PBX. VOIP, whilst I knew the basics, I had little idea of whether I needed things like trunks. Having emailed Gradwell telling them what I had (3CX IP PBX) and what I wanted (6 DDI's), I got a quick reply from Jamie (he's good) telling me exactly what I needed, with clear transparent... (read more)
Written on: 27/10/2011 by HBomb
Terrible service, absolutely everything they do is totally unprofessional. So many problems I can't even remember them all. Pretty much everything they do they mess up: they messed up the setup, they charged me when the phones they setup got hacked, they over charged me with duplicate bills, they suggested services that after 2 years I realised I didn't need and had never used, they messed up with a new istallation when I moved and left my company with no phones or internet for a week. I... (read more)
Written on: 12/10/2012
I have to agree,a total waste of time !! They are a con
Written on: 14/10/2011 by svanscoyoc (2 reviews written)
I joined Gradwell as a customer in 2004/2005. I had been impressed by founder Peter Gradwell's story. It started out well with very good customer and technical support. I currently use several VOIP numbers, two web sites, and fax services. Today it is an expensive, difficult to manage service where online menu items often don't work, calls drop, the faxes still look unprofessional, email servers that reject passwords as often as they accept them, archaic billing practices (including... (read more)
Written on: 26/08/2011 by karlformstone
I have now been a Gradwell customer for 3+ years. Firstly I took up the fax service as I did not wish to have another line put in and the purchase of a machine, the service works well as I am all over the country and my faxes come through to my email. I have subsequently taken up the Multi User VoIP service, this works extremely well and I use it as my primary source of voice calls. The service rarely drops out and I would say that the quality of calls is just as good if not better than a... (read more)
Written on: 17/06/2011 by marcgold
i simply cannot understand why there are poor reviews for Gradwell as I have been with them for over 5 years now and frankly our business success has in part been down to the quality of service that Gradwell has provide both from a support, voice quality and features of the system. I am IT director for a research company and we make and receive a huge amount of calls, in comparison to most businesses, therefore our ensuring our telephone system is operational is one of our critical... (read more)
Written on: 16/06/2011
Overall an above average service, and having a one month rolling contract allows for great flexibility. Very cheap too! (read more)
Written on: 10/05/2011 by Samara James (1 review written)
I tried really hard to make the Gradwell VOIP system work; their technical support is very good and they do try hard but there are three fundamental problems.
The first problem is that their technical infrastructure has glitches which means that once a week or so a call will drop suddenly. This wasn't linked to my broadband connection as my brother also switched to Gradwell at the same time and his business is in a different part of the country and he found calls dropping at the same time...
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Written on: 19/04/2011
Long story short, had a bit of problems with Gradwell initially as there was something wrong with my home single-user account. I could initially set up up to 10 extensions which I shouldn't with that account type. Anyway I added 3 with my office extension (we use gradwell in the office as well) designated to my geographical landline number. All worked fine until all of sudden my account was changed by gradwell and I no longer had the ability to add/remove/modify any extensions and I was... (read more)
Written on: 17/07/2011
Just wondered why you put up with the problem for so long, why didn't you contact there support earlier. I have been with Gradwell for nearly 5 years and have always found there support very good.
Written on: 14/03/2011 by lauramorales2010 (1 review written)
I have been nearly 3 months with this company and so far is terrible... The quote was poorly done, they premised me great time frames (connection within 10 working days) and the connection took over two months (so I had to run a business nearly two months without internet, and they didn't care at all), once connection was done, the router wasn't here, so very bad organisation, terrible customer services. They seriously have no idea how much their lack of professionalism can affect... (read more)
Written on: 08/03/2011
Hopeless. Particulary in conjunction with their Broadband partner, Tiscali, who don't seem to be able to provide Gradwell with any service, but are shielded from the end customer. You will wait forever for them to fix one of their frequent go-slows or outages. Years of unreliable VoIP. Their support has become progressively less informed and less responsive over the years. The must be losing customers at a rate. They're certainly about to lose this one. We're off to Virgin for broadband and... (read more)
Written on: 04/01/2011
Gradwell, very bad service, try to provide us with internet and phone system, after 3 month never manage to make it working fully, asked us to change our switch 5 times as excuse for all problems, only to admit that they don't know where is a problem. After connecting phone system true my broadband from BE-unlimited I made it work for a month after which again lots of problems. I have spend now in last 6 month 7 working days of my time including coming on weekend and still no result, so I'm... (read more)
Written on: 30/11/2010 by Novers (1 review written)
VOIP from Gradwell.com is 95% very good. But the 5% bad is a killer. Very nearly brilliant, but too unreliable to count on for anything other than hobbyist use.
The good news is that it is full-featured (voicemail, call forwarding, call transfer, call waiting, hunt groups, recorded messages, 'please choose' switchboard voice prompts, etc). And the setup is as easy as it gets, too. And the pricing is reasonable.
But the bad news is that the reliability is poor. Just one thing after...
(read more)
Written on: 16/02/2011
I was wrong to think it might be getting better. It remains intermittently truly dreadful. Do yourself a favour and avoid this company.
Written on: 19/08/2011
reinstalling audio drivers into voip phones? phones being loaded with firmware version so how installing audio drivers without uploading new version of firmware? Is making no sense! System is seeming more stable for me since January about time,Gradwells now have some NOC that is watching system to help stopping issue from what customers services say.
Written on: 03/02/2012
Reply to Vladimir: Absolutely - they made no sense at all - only served to show that the people at the other end had no grasp of the issues involved. We gave up contacting tech support in the end - no use at all.
Written on: 03/02/2012
UPDATE: Gradwell VOIP continued in its unreliable way. In summer 2011 we gave up and decided we could probably run our own IP PBX better than they run theirs. We went for a system based on our own 3CX PBX running on one of our computers in a data centre, and a SIP trunk from voiceflex. It was a bit of a learning curve for us, but we have had perfect telephony ever since (6 months now, and not a single problem anywhere) - which just goes to show that all that stuff from Gradwell tech support over the years about our broadband and our phones and audio drivers and wild port-forwarding suggestions (for multiple phones behind NAT, with STUN??) was all nonsense. The own-PBX solution isn't for everyone, but it has really worked for us. Now we have a reliable business-class phone system and can concentrate on our core business rather than worrying about phones.
Written on: 04/10/2010
Gradwell VOIP service is good on features and options for connection (they offer IAX2 as well as SIP), however their call and rental charges are high, and the quality of service unfortunately does not match the price.
We have used them to provide an IAX2 trunk for over 3 years, and have had varying levels of voice quality and over the last 12 months, many outages.
I would not recommend using Gradwell as a primary VOIP provider due to their service being unreliable. Not that they do not have...
(read more)
Written on: 23/09/2010
Issue after issue after issue. Do not use this company!!! (read more)
Written on: 19/08/2011
Nice to be knowin issues that been seen with system to know what avoid.
Written on: 14/08/2010
Maybe I have ever so slightly overstated my rating in offering Gradwell maximum stars but feel it's only fair to compensate for all this negativity on here! I have been a Gradwell Voip customer for 3 years now for my business, during which time my business has grown substantially and Gradwell has offered us all the telecommunication tools and services required.
To be totally honest, things didn't used to be so great. There used to be real connectivity issues and trying to get basic support...
(read more)
Written on: 28/01/2011
I found this review not helpful because, it's completely at odds with almost every other review on the site and also with my own experience of the company. If it's not written by Gradwell themselves then whoever wrote it got a nice payoff from Gradwell...
Written on: 11/03/2011
Straight from the brochure!!!!!!!!
Written on: 26/07/2010 by badg3r (1 review written)
It would appear that some of the issues expressed are not directly the companies fault.
From experience when using VoIP the one way audio issues and call drops need to be configured the customers end as it is caused by the routers firewall.
Seems like the call wait has decreased as they do not have the triage system so you do not have to wait for a call back and get to speak to someone opposed to leaving a message all of the time.
(read more)
Written on: 02/06/2010
I don't agree with all the comments made here.
From the telephony side of it, because we can route calls to home numbers if we need to and route calls to overflow call centres and it's seamless from the customers' points of view, and we can do all that without investing really heavily in quite an expensive switch system in the office, so the system helps our business.
All that is taken care of by Gradwell and their servers and all we need to do is access the web interface it's done in...
(read more)
Written on: 31/05/2010
My comments relate to my Webhosting package. Every day there's a new catastrophe.
On Tuesday, the control panel stopped working. On Friday, the fileserver "flathead" went down and we suffered a 12 hour outage. Today, we had a "Virtualisation SAN outage" which caused a lack of FTP access. We also have frequent Email server connection problems. Don't take my word for it, see for yourself at www.gradwellstatus.com. They've got so many problems, they needed a whole website to record...
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Written on: 19/08/2011
They had big problems being at christma time with servers which be causing many problems!!!!!!
Since platform update which fixing this issues not happenings
Written on: 30/05/2010
Difficult to set up - quite expensive for a single domain and simple website.
Needed 2 attempts to set up.
Support is very slow and mon to fri office hours only.
Server seems slow at times.
It was disturbing to be advising tech support who knew less than I did.
My website and email has been down due to server problems and now for 3 day due to yet another technical issue. I'll try not to worry though - Gradwell are on the case which means that at some point in the future - somebody may...
(read more)
Written on: 19/08/2011
Is being sales encouragement for 1 andd 1?
Written on: 28/05/2010
We have been with Gradwell since January 2010. In my experience ALL hosting companies are awful...
You need to be tech savvy to set up the virtual machines and configure the FTP access. With the Gradwell control panel, you get a huge amount of control over domains and emails, so there's no need to contact support as everything can be set up manually. Great for a developer...
Our hosting was a problematic from day 1 as the database access was really slow. A page load would take upto 2...
(read more)
Written on: 05/05/2010
This is a totally unprofessional company. It was hugely time consuming to get everything setup and correct their numerous mistakes. They seem to have no clue what they are doing. Their tech support is hopeless. Their payment system is appalling: if your credit card doesn't go through payment i.e. because of a security alert or an updated credit card etc they will cut off your phone lines completely without warning, and without giving you any time to fix update the security alert/ card... (read more)
Written on: 26/07/2010
<br/>Why not call them? im sure that they could take a payment over the phone.....
Written on: 20/04/2010
Support is absolutely woeful - which is a shame as the quality of the service is such that you find yourself being a regular caller. It is virutually impossible to get through without being cut off which is particularly frustrating if all your business's phones have dropped out AGAIN.
This is fine if you want a portable number for limited use but they have neither the infrastructure nor staffing to be involved in the business telephony market.
(read more)
Written on: 28/01/2011
I found this review not helpful because it's too short and at odds with most other reviews of the company.
Written on: 26/02/2010
Used them for a couple of years until we couldn't bear them any more. I think they may actually take the gold medal for the worlds worst customer service from NTC circa 1995. shocking. The calls in our office dropped out, just cut off, at least once a week. i.e. there is NO WAY THAT THIS IS OF A QUALITY LEVEL THAT YOU CAN RUN A BUSINESS. Clients thought we were a joke, my staff complained all the time. The crowning glory was that they lied to me about portability of numbers - so even... (read more)
Written on: 26/07/2010
<br/>If calls are dropping out this is usually a symptom of port forwarding.
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<br/>Calls cutting off will be a result of your routers firewall blocking the VoIP traffic from the providers servers to your network.
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<br/>By opening the relevant ports this would have allowed the traffic to have routed correctly.
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<br/>You would have also of needed to look to see if your router has DOS Protection enabled or Sip ALG which may have caused the issue.
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Written on: 03/02/2012
Response to Badg3R: Yes, VOIP through NAT and firewalls is complicated, and yes there is always something at the customer's end that can be blamed (and Gradwell tech support will blame it). "If calls are dropping out this is usually a symptom of port forwarding." - if you have STUN and Port-restricted cone NAT you don't need port forwarding - in fact, you shouldn't be using (fixed) port forwarding if you've got multiple phones behind NAT. "Calls cutting off will be a result of your routers firewall blocking the VoIP traffic from the providers servers to your network." *WILL* be? Do you know this user's situation sufficiently well to say that? Let me tell you my *experience*: We were with Gradwell VOIP for 5 years and had weekly - sometimes daily or even hourly - problems. Tech support continually gave us "It's your fault" answers like yours. We moved to a different solution and have had 100% perfect telephony ever since (6 months and counting). Smoking gun.
Written on: 18/02/2010
When I make a call I hear it ring once then it goes silent. After a few seconds I hear the person I called asking if there is anyone there?! Sometimes the call cuts back in just in time for me to hear the other end put their phone down. Useless.
When a call does connect it randomly cuts out for up to 30 seconds. This is used for my business and it's absolutely shocking. As for support, are you serious?! Let's put it this way, if Gradwell actually did support, it would probably be the worst...
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Written on: 26/07/2010
<br/>This is not an issue with the provider but infact your network.
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<br/>If you are experiencing issues such as one way audio or call drops this is due to your routers firewall blocking the VoIP traffic.
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<br/>By opening the relevant ports this would have resolved the issue.....
Written on: 05/01/2010
Our business phones are with Gradwell and we have been beset by problems since the beginning. The worst part is that we are stuck with them as they do not seem to have a porting agreement with any other telcos which enables us to move away from them with our phone number. The line constantly cuts off, the voice clarity is poor and when we call for support, we spend ages waiting to speak to someone. Overall, a poor service for a high price. (read more)
Written on: 29/10/2009
Gradwell are useless!
Do not use this company. The support is aweful and the service is always down.
Phones are currently not working as of the 29/10/09 @10:56 like the last review.
I've had to give them one star but thats being kind.
Don't use this company!!
(read more)
Written on: 28/10/2009
Gone again today 28/10/09 @0700
VOIP service is down or has problems on a regular basis.
You first hear that its down when a customers lets us know by email or mobile saying he cant get through.
You can wait on the support line for ages.
Support does not start before 9.00.
Will need to look at another VOIP supplier.
(read more)
Written on: 26/10/2009
OK when things are working. When things go wrong the support is pretty abysmal. You will find you are "caller number 3 or 4" for an hour or so, but do not be tempted to "leave a message" as you will then be waiting 24 hours or so for someone to get back to you (read more)
Written on: 26/07/2010
<br/>It would appear that when calling Gradwell you are now able to speak to a person who is able to help with an issue.
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<br/>The support team seems to be able to deal with support requests as well as billing and unless there is a massive issue where everyone is calling in at once it dosnt take too long to speak to someone.
Written on: 23/10/2009
GRADWELL NEED BETTER SYSTEMS AND BETTER SUPPORT FACT
Gradwell don't have a month or week going by without issues. I find myself writing this due to a huge outage today on the VoIP front.
Went to their service status page and no report (yet) They only post issues once they have solved them, which is a bit useless if your wondering why 50 phones in your company have suddenly stopped making and taking calls.
They have over the months this year promised upgrades to make the system fail safe...
(read more)
Written on: 15/10/2009
Waste of time, great sales team, awful tech support, very slow like at least 24 hours. Gave up trying to speak to them and cancelled agreement. (read more)
Written on: 02/10/2009
Do not use gradwell unless you are very IT savvy - their customer support is extremely slow and they use IT jargon all the time then get a bit shirty if you dont understand the technical language. They are slippery at times, passing the buck and denying responsibility when something goes wrong. This is based on personal experience - Ive been with them for several years due to inertia but with growing frustration. Ive now discovered what I suspect is overbilling so Im chasing a refund before... (read more)
Written on: 12/06/2009 by visitelmo
Great service and so fast to setup. When I received the starter email from Gradwell Dot Com I was working with VoIP 15 minutes later. I now have a whole host of teams across the UK using the service. If I wanted to speak to a Support member I was able to. Very friendly and a high amount of expertise. (read more)
Written on: 15/05/2009 by DataTrash (2 reviews written)
This is a VERY poor service that randomly decides whether you are a customer or not by insisting that your password and/or user name is incorrect but has been fine for the previous hour!
So you may or may not get mail or even be able to send mail.
The Support has never worked on first attempt. Usually it will take them 3-4 phone calls before you might get someone that actually knows what they are doing.
Navigating your account on the Gradwell Dot Com website is a nightmare, it is really...
(read more)
Written on: 03/04/2010
I found this review very helpful because I was considering signing up to Gradwell
Written on: 06/01/2009 by philipmjones (1 review written)
In my experience the service quality with Gradwell Dot Com is patchy at best and I find that things seem to go wrong at regular intervals.
I think their system could be improved (for example, my VoIP adapter lost power and my phone number didn't divert to voice mail; the (PSTN) number seemed to go dead).
Customer service is friendly and pretty prompt, but like other reviewers said, I find it a bit embarrassing to use as a business phone service.
(read more)
Written on: 05/08/2008 by tomellingham (1 review written)
Gradwell need to try a little harder. (read more)
As rated by real users
"Could do better, but better th..." Read More
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Muhammedkhan's Comment
Written on: 07/03/2013
i completely agree with all of this, some of the Bad reviews do not do this service provider justice.