Skype Vs. Nymgo - Which to Choose

I remember way back in the day, when mobiles were non-existent, and methods of communication were limited to phone calls on a land-line, the golden age of personal time, as now your mobile phone, which is as close to you as your internal organs, rarely leaves your hand, and it is highly possible to find a guy in the john and on the phone at the same time! We used to record tape messages for our relatives back home and send them via any travelling friend! Talk about out-dated information! Although it is rather cool to play those tapes now and hear how I used to sound 14 years ago!

Voice over Internet Protocol, that is the future of telecom today.

Is VoIP costing the Ministry of Communications? Yes. But, I believe in Laissez-Faire, a free market economy, survival of the fittest, and if VoIP provides me with the same quality of calls at a mere fraction of the price, then it has my full support.

But, which to choose? The two leading ones currently, in my honest opinion, are Skype and Nymgo.

A couple of things off the bat, these are not free. They are also not like PC-2-Phone or Net-2-Phone where you go out, buy a card, scratch, dial etc. (i.e. a neanderthal experience, and highly wasteful in time and energy).

So, before you choose a provider, make sure you have the resources to charge your account. Nymgo is now blocked in Kuwait, yet there are ways to bypass that block (not http://www.hidemyass.com/ , but a more professional method, follow me if interested to know :P ) and recharge it. I have a story about that which I will share in a moment.

So, the best way to charge your account is via Internet shopping card (better received through NBK banks as opposed to Gulf, because with NBK you charge it only with the amount you need to make a purchase, as opposed to Gulf requiring a minimum balance be maintained, I have another rant against The Gulf Bank, which is the worst bank in the Middle East, but I am saving that for another time). Using an internet shopping card is safer than using your VISA (Internet Shopping Card is a Visa Virtuon), in the unlikely case your transaction is hacked, the most the culprit can hope to steal is whatever meager amount you have in it, and via online banking and currency conversion, you can always put just the right amount for your particular transaction.

I digress.

Now, Skype Vs Nymgo.

Both sites are blocked in Kuwait, but to the internet savvy, no block can remain impenetrable.

Lets start with Skype. When I started using Skype, it was ok, I miss the opening theme to making a call, it was funny. However, more often than not, I would hear no audible sound from the other side, whilst the meter was running, meaning the call was connected, but the audio was not working. It happened on several occasions. And that was the main reason I decided to jump ship from Skype to Nymgo. Plus, Skype took a long time to connect the call, as in to hear the dial tone, and at times, the dial tone was not heard, and the call was picked up. So overall, it was messed up. Whether they fixed this issue or not is beyond me.

Phishers unfortunately prey on the helpless, and have moved to Skype as well, being a social platform. I did get one woman claim to be the girlfriend of my long lost relative who shares my same name (who incidently also shared my uncles name!), and had passed away, leaving a huge inheritance with no heir apparent. YAWN.

However, one thing I do miss about Skype is the SMS. See, with Skype you could link your phone number to your calling account, meaning when you made international calls your number would show up to your recipient. This worked with SMS as well. You could TXT someone for example, and if they simply clicked REPLY, it would reply to your phone directly (i.e. you do not look like a cheapskate sending messages from a website; and you end up saving on the cost of interational TXTs, a double entente).

Now, Nymgo. Nymgo surpasses where Skype fails, and fails where Skype surpasses. The calls are much faster, the dial tone is instantaneous. Its rates are less than Skype, by almost half, purportedly.

However, the txt messages show as being received from http://www.nymgo.com/, hence, your recipient would have to identify you, go out of message reading mode, and into message sending mode, find your name, type a response, send. Then, lather, rinse, repeat. A rather tedious process.

Now, Customer service at Nymgo is terrible. I recently had a problem with my payments. Reason being, I believe, the fact that my payments were coming in to their system through a Germany Router, via Kuwaiti credit card. They must have suspected theft. And they asked me for a copy of my passport, bank statment and credit card.

There responses are automated, and lacking of proper customer service techniques, of showing you a persons name, so as to atleast refer to that person on any future complications regarding the same issue.

Now, as to which to choose, the choice is yours, and yours alone.

Enjoy.