Skype removes service to all VOIP users.

[deiseboy]

Hi.

On 1st June, without warning, Skype-Microsoft withdrew support for every Skype Certified standalone VOIP phone, like the RTX Dualphone, in the world.
None of these phones, whether business or home phones can now receive Skype-In calls. They simply don't ring any more.

The Skype Certification supposedly guarantees that the device will work with Skype
No longer. This is now meaningless for these devices.

People who have paid for Skype Numbers now find them useless, unless they switch to smartphones, tablets or computers. To say nothing of the cost of the now useless equipment which is still, incidentally, being sold online.

There is a thread of complaints about this on the Microsoft Community called "My Skype Dual Phone / ATA is not receiving calls, why?"

This is a world wide problem and Microsoft will do nothing about it.
They are basically saying "Tough, we don't care"

Surely they can't legally do this?

 

[dub_nerd]

Certainly they can do it -- it's unlikely there's any legally binding agreement to support an API forever. Apparently Microsoft announced the death of this one four years ago. If you are changing hardware I'd recommend a SIP phone, rather than using a proprietary service like Skype. SIP is based on actual standards, and has thousands of service providers, not just one. You can run entire open source switchboards like Asterisk or buy a neat consumer handset like the Siemens Gigaset.

 

[deiseboy]

It looks like they did make plans for this a while back but forgot to inform the people who were actually using it and who had spent money on buying the so-called Skype Certified equipment.
There has been no attempt to prepare customers or give a wind down schedule for support.

They just seem to assume that ordinary people follow tech news.
I don't and the first I knew about this was when it didn't work any more, and it would seem from the thread mentioned above that I am in good company.

Some people have actually been still buying these phones since they turned off the Skype-In, only to find they don't work.
Skype have also been continuing to take the annual auto-renew payments for Skype Numbers which are now redundant.

Surely customers have some right to compensation or a replacement when the service they are paying for is just removed like this.