For mobile devices, I think Nimbuzz is the best chat aggregation tool available for mobile devices. Nimbuzz to Nimbuzz is great for chatting, sharing photos, and making calls. For posting to my main Twitter account, it is convienent. While I am happy with Nimbuzz, I am not happy with NimbuzzOut and Nimbuzz's customer support. Plus, I think navigation of their Web site is anything but intuitive.

When I first setup Nimbuzz, I decided to use FastVIOP for a SIP service. At that time, I based my decision totally on price. The problem with using a third-party SIP service is that Nimbuzz does not display the remaining credit. In October, I decided to give NimbuzzOut a try, as I no longer make a lot of International calls, and like to know how much credit I have remaining.

I prefer using PayPal, so I purchased $10 of credit. The transaction processing did not produce any errors. When directed back to the Nimbuzz site, I received a message that I would be recieving an email to confirm the purchase. I never received the email, so was not able to confirm the purchase. I tried again, and got the same message, and never received an email. While my PayPal account was never charged, I wasted a several days waiting to make sure that I didn't make multiple purchases. I sent a message to Nimbuzz's customer support, and after two weeks got a response that they would get back to me. I never did receive another email on this ticket.

In the meantime, I purchased $10 of credit for NimbuzzOut using a credit card. I received a confirmation email, and my Nimbuzz showed that I had $10 of credit. The immediate need to make an International call passed, but I wanted the credit available. A week ago, I needed to make a call only to find that I had $0 credit. I checked the Nimbuzz Web site and it showed no credit purchase history. I sent a message to customer support, and received a robot response that I would receive a reply within 36 hours. This was eight days ago, and still no response. Nimbuzz ripped me off for $10, and has done nothing to acknowledge or correct the error.

So, why not just switch to Skype? First, Skype is a lot more expensive. Second, it does not integrate to my contacts on the phone, which is why I use Nimbuzz. The only choice is to stick to FastVIOP. I am tired of dealing with NimbuzzOut.

The Nimbuzz Web site has a flashy front page, but totally lacks any obvious link to other services. Only by clicking the Download button do you get to a real page. It is stupid. It is not customer friendly. To be fair, the FastVIOP Web site is only marginally better.