Comments on: Jaxtr’s Challenge: Turn Try It Into Buy It

By: Salam

Salam — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:48:25 +0000

Hi, I subscribed to Jaxtr free service and found it interesting. Then I needed to call some countries not on the free list so I purchased a premium membership for 50$ on May 20th for which I have received a correct invoice.

7 days ago, I received another invoice for another order for the same amount which I have never placed.
I alerted Jaxtr and received a response with a ticket number with ticket ID SJN-683924. They promised that a support personnel will get in touch with me. This never happened
I resent a couple of mails again and no response. Can somebody let me know if it has faced this issue before. I will put an objection on the financial transactions with my bank is this fraud

By: niddi

niddi — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:09:01 +0000

the same thing happens to me!!!!!! is there any thing i can do.

By: niddi

niddi — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:06:52 +0000

i purchased credit from jaxtr once and they charge my account every chance they get for the same purchase. and the worse thing there is no contact number for them and the support link does not work!!!!!!!! i want my money back.

By: Arun

Arun — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:40:57 +0000

They are clearly a fraud.
Ages since I gave it up as a crap, do not use it anymore. Have sent numerous reminders to them and they still keep charging my card every month, sometimes even thrice a month.

This despite their website mentioning they don’t have my credit card details and want me to give another card number.

Have lodged a case with my credit card company, hope they have better luck getting response out. Otherwise I am screwed – since they cannot just block these payments legally.

By: Another VoIP Startup In Trouble - GigaOM

Another VoIP Startup In Trouble - GigaOM — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:26:16 +0000

[...] fired 65% of its workforce. Jaxtr, another VoIP startup recently had a management shakeup and has its own set of issues. Other Fring competitors would include iSkoot and [...]

By: Jaxtr Ends Beta, Begins Selling Ads - GigaOM

Jaxtr Ends Beta, Begins Selling Ads - GigaOM — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:00:46 +0000

[...] Monday, February 25, 2008 at 9:00 PM PT Comments (0) Social voice startup Jaxtr has reached 10 million users, doubling its user base in less than three months. The company has also announced the end of its [...]

By: eM

eM — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 02:21:55 +0000

Hi Konstantin,
Though Skype is free, it gets income by selling skypeout to its users. How is Jaxtr going to monetize its big user base, that’s the question. To give free calling time to 5 million users and expect only 1% of it would be paying users?

By: Konstantin Guericke

Konstantin Guericke — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:29:15 +0000

Jaxtr is about giving your phone a link, and one of the benefits is that people abroad can call you for the price of a local call. But this is only one of many benefits–a lot of our users enjoy the ability to route their calls to the phone of their choice, to allow people visiting their blog/profile/posting to call them without having to disclose their phone number, etc. I think the reason we’ve pulled away from the pack is a combination of a complete set of services and a streamlined user experience. Just like when we started LinkedIn, people didn’t think there was any money to be made, but we always felt that if you provide something valuable that members don’t have a problem paying for it. Even though Skype is free, users spend billions every year on international phone calls because they like the convenience of making calls from their phone–without having to download anything, requiring a phone with Internet connection, etc.

By: Moshe Maeir

Moshe Maeir — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 05:36:19 +0000

Kudos to Anne for exposing the “free calls” scam. Otherwise called – con(vince) investors into giving you millions and then hand then out to your customers as free calls.

What do you do when you run out of money? Why worry? Maenwhile you are having fun! There is a market for easy to make low cost international calls. But free calls? What benefit is there from free calls. Your customers as NO loyalty and will leave you for the next “j” (as in jajah, jaxtr, jangl etc…). I have posted about this many times http://www.google.com/search?rawq=free+calls&q=site%3Aflatplanetphone.com+free+calls&submit=Google+Search
and it is nice to see from the comments here, that I am not so far off..

By: Rocky Agrawal

Rocky Agrawal — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:30:27 +0000

One of the keys to Jaxtr's model seems to be the way they allocate numbers. If they assigned a DID for each user (like GrandCentral does), the math clearly wouldn't work.

Instead the number they assign to you is shared with other users. They look at the incoming number and figure out where to route it based on the number that is "registered" through the Web widget.

To see how this works, try calling a Jaxtr number from the Web widget and give them your home phone number. They'll assign a number for that callee for you to use on future calls. Now take that number and try calling it from your cell phone. It won't work because the system hasn't associated your cell phone with that number.

They also won't let you make calls through the Web widget to the same number twice from the same phone, further reducing the cost. (No inbound leg to pay for.)

By: Kori

Kori — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:42:29 +0000

jax are useless pseudo currency. Why anybody would want to buy jax – pure imposting.

By: Gremlin

Gremlin — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:13:15 +0000

Come ‘on. Jajah, Jangl and dozens of voip startups I’ve read about give away free calling, but none are growing nearly as fast, so Jaxtr must be doing something right! I don’t get many calls from my Jaxtr button…quality has been excellent tho. Not sure how much to trust Alexa these days, but Jaxtr’s page views are a lot more than any voip startup I typed in, so if anyone can become the next Skype, Jaxtr is a good bet! Hope they give me some choice of buttons coz orange is pretty garish . . .

By: spg

spg — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:52:15 +0000

i like jaxtr a lot. by i can not understand why they do not let me buy additional jax. i can't start attaching a widget to every email and posting on blogs and than run out of jax and its useless. they could start making money today if they only accept it instead of limiting me to 100 jax a month. also 100 jax is completely useless if you take your calls on a mobile phone in europe. you only get about 4 minutes.

if they no want to sell jax than please let me forward to a SIP URI for free in place of a phone number.

By: Jack Straw

Jack Straw — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 02:09:35 +0000

At first blush, 5,000,000 users sounds really impressive. Taking a look at their Alexa traffic and where these users are coming from tells me they will NEVER monotize these guys. Nearly 14% of traffic from India, Egypt in second with 6.1%, Morrocco and Malaysia in the top 5 (US traffic and Western Europe is less than 10%). The UK comes in less than Palestine, Jordan and Pakistan! Only the US, UK and Canada make the top 25 as countries where Jaxtr may actually be able to convert 1% of their users to paying users!!! OUCH. I’m betting tons of those accounts are just the same guys signing up for millions of accounts to get their free 100 minutes per month. Watch you wallets!!! This traffic will kill them over time. When they do start charging, these same users will drive Jaxtr’s fraud rates through the roof. DFJ…you’re about to lost a TON of money.

India13.7%
Egypt6.1%
United States5.4%
Morocco4.5%
Malaysia3.6%
Dominican Republic3.6%
Jordan3.5%
Palestinian Territory3.3%
United Arab Emirates2.8%
Pakistan2.8%
Kuwait2.5%
Saudi Arabia2.4%
Algeria2.4%
Tunisia2.1%
Philippines2.1%
United Kingdom2.0%
Qatar2.0%
Bahrain1.8%
El Salvador1.7%
Singapore1.6%
China1.4%
Colombia1.2%
Canada1.2%
Sweden1.1%
Oman0.9%
Other countries24.4%

By: Howard

Howard — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:20:35 +0000

Hmm...If I stood on a street corner in NYC with a sign that said "Free iPhones", I could take that title of "fastest growing communications service" away from them in a hurry. Hell if I did it for a week I bet I could get more than 5M users.

Ohh..wait..but how would I pay for those iPhones. Damn.

It's called a revenue time bomb, and it will go off. They are giving away service to get users. And their services have real costs associated with them, as Anne points out.

Also, I can't imagine they grew this quickly and I don't know anyone actually using it. When Skype was Skype, every other person I ran into in the Valley mentioned Skype.

Looking past the PR B.S., the real test will be if this claim of 5M users holds up under VC scrutiny, because at the rate they are giving away service they likely have burned through their $10M and are about to raise. Convenient timing for questionable PR claims...

By: Made

Made — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 09:47:12 +0000

Still, 5 million is a BIG number. And to achieve that from 500k in 140 days, that’s very good. Jaxtr wants to convert 1% of its 5mln users into paying ones. The question then, is 1% enough?

@Rawat
For asia, you might want to try http://www.myhometone.com