Fongo powers free calling solutions for a number of brands. This forum includes information and tips on all of those offerings. Note that your specific services may vary based on the specific Fongo product that you're using.
Have a question or problem with your Fongo application? This forum is the place to get help from both staff and fellow community members.
Fongo recommends Fongo Home Phone for a fully supported Home Phone system for only $4.95/mo
Unfortunately our public community here will be unable to address any account specific or billing errors.
Please call into our offices to verify what happened with this transaction and to see if things did go through or not. That error usually signifies that the card was declined by the credit card company.
All right, thank you. The card is an RBC Visa Gift Card, if that makes any difference, and the exact fund has been depleted with pending transaction from freephoneline. (Yes, there was enough in the balance--$60--of which there is now about $3 remaining after the erroneous transaction.) Anyway, I will call in later this evening and hopefully we can figure out what's happened.
Okay, I called in and apparently the only thing they can do is to try again, but as I mentioned in the previous post, the balance on the card has been depleted to three-odd dollars in the original erroneous transaction that apparently didn't go through according to freephoneline customer service. I guess I'll just have to wait and see if the 'pending' on the invoice clears up on the card and the balance is restored, but I would like to know if anyone else has encountered similar problems using prepaid visa in the past. I would hate to try a second time only for this to repeat again and be forced to wait for however long it takes for the invoice to reflect the proper amount on the card.
I know prepaid cards are a bit of a pain like this. Petrol stations are one of the worse situations because they will put something like a $50 'pending' charge on your card to make sure you have funds before you fill up. Then the remainder of the $50 that you don't use are refunded after a few days. In the meantime you are still down the $50 even if you only used $20. I think restaurants do a similar thing because you could decide to leave a tip after the initial request for money is sent.
Prepaid cards are good for somethings, but can be pains for others.
I think if I were you I would call in and but the config file over the phone with a sales rep, rather than trying online again. This would probably maximize your chances of it going through.
Thank you for your advice, Jake; I've had some trouble with Vanilla MastarCards in the past, but RBC had always been fairly reliable for me until this. I suppose I will attempt to phone in next time around and keep my fingers crossed.
Erm, I apologise for spamming the board, but I was just e-mailed an invoice for the configuration. Is this because Customer Support over the phone attempted to perform the transaction for a second time and failed due to insufficient balance on the card? I don't understand, CS told me it failed to go through due to insufficient funds (because of the pending charge from the first erroneous transaction online). Also, the address on this electronic invoice is missing a vital portion of the mailing address, which means neither the bill nor the configuration is likely to be mailed to the right place anyway. What should I do? Ignore it?
As I had suggested earlier, our public community is composed of mainly non-staff members who have no insight into your actual account or your billing transactions.
With any billing issues, please call us and speak to a staff member accordingly.
Not to draw from the point Steve made, as it is true, I'd like to clarify any questions on purchasing having dealt extensively with our billing system in order to hopefully reduce the calls into our contact center.
When a transaction is processed, the invoice is generated at the same time the payment is attempted. If it fails, that invoice has still been sent out to you and the payment will try again.
That being said, you can see how you'd receive an invoice without having your credit card charged; now in the case of pre-paid or gift MasterCards or other CC's, our system will attempt to process them but in some cases cannot as we rely on AVS - Address Validation Service. This means we require the exact address (parsing and all...) as well as the postal code, which is indeed separate from the address. Because of the nature in which these prepaid cards are purchased (cash, and not signed up for), they usually do not contain address information for AVS to verify.
In most cases the errors I have seen relate to "Merchant Override: Declined", in which case we encourage you to look at and compare the billing (not mailing) address on their credit card statement and that of their freephoneline.ca account as well as the name you enter. Remember the name must be what is on the credit card, and not what your friends call you.
Each bank in Canada has it's own address format, meaning 605 Boxwood Drive Suite 1 with TD Canada trust, could very well be 1-605 Boxwood Dr. with RBC. Adding to the confusion, some banks like a space in between their postal codes and some do not - Thus the confusion.
Onto the topic of "Well, you took my money, but still no love on that SIP config file guys".
Some times as I described above, the payment does not go through because of something on our end (like your address not matching) and not always because you have no money on that card. If we block the payment, it is then held by your financial institution waiting to be taken by us. It will be cleared in the next 3 - 10 business days (not our rules, it's the banks). You can either wait that period of time, or call your bank (or CC company) and ask for the charges to be unheld.
Hope that helps a bit, and please for any further inquiries regarding billing please contact our call center 8:00am - 9:00pm as we're not ready to discuss any financial matters on our community support forum.
Kris Logistics & International Purchasing | Fongo
Call us toll-free! 611 from your fongo phone or 1-855-836-3355
Please advise I will no longer be contributing to this forum for the time being. Please feel free to email me.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Samsung Galaxy S2 [GT-I9100] / 3.0.15-I9100XXLPH / Thebyani v3.2
Thanks very much Kris, that was extremely informative and shed valuable insight into how the system operates. Since the invoice is presumably void (as I understand it), I will disregard it and look further into how billing addresses are formatted on RBC cards for future references. That is really all I wanted to know, not anything specific pertaining to my account.
