All Road Communications

The phone was not set up properly when I got it. They have a ²⁴⁄₇ hotline but no one returned my calls for days before I left on my trip. When I did reach someone they were not sure what to do to set it up. It comes with fairly lame and contradictory instructions on how to set up the voice mail box, etc. The numbers on the instructions did not work.
Eventually, I got the phone to dial out, but people couldn’t dial in or SMS. No one at All Road could figure it out. They told me they would not charge me, but they charged me a bundle plus it never worked properly. They were difficult to deal with and didn’t follow through on what they said. I would never rent from them again.

Wow, be careful what you get into with these guys. They are abusive to customers and really don’t care about service one bit! They used to have much better management in the past and performed on a as needed basis, because people that use sat phones are in remote and sometimes emergency situations, and new management does not follow up on phone calls or service needs. I could go on, but look around before you use this branch, and double check service agreements that suit your needs. Good luck

I had a GREAT experience using all road. The office staff was very helpful in getting me the products I needed at short notice! Everyone there was more than willing to help me and walk me through how to use a sat phone. I also feel like the price for what i got was great! very comparable to other places! Thank you to the staff! I’m glad to have used their services!

We signed up for regular monthly satellite phone service from them (we owned the phone, they were providing the connection). They may be okay for pre-​paid minute cards, but they are terrible, terrible, terrible at the monthly service thing. The bills didn’t really explain what we were being charged for, when we called customer service with questions, we’d get no response or a run around. I don’t think they ever solved an issue to our satisfaction. Here is one example of a problem we had with them: We got charged for voicemail services that we’d cancelled months before… when we finally got them to respond to us, we were told it was our own fault for being charged because we hadn’t turned the feature off on the phone itself, but the customer service person who cancelled the voicemail feature hadn’t said a word about needing to turn it off on the phone. There were so many more weird issues like this that I could fill a whole page. Just pick another company.

This company and a spinoff Satellite Phone Depot are locked into some sort of struggle over the ownership of accounts. I received billing from both for the same services. The staff is stuck on rude and the truth seems to be missing from their list of options when you call to work it out.
Move on. Don’t even think about doing business with them or satellite phone depot.

Absolutely the worst company I have worked with in my entire life. I’ve called over 6 times in the last week, simple questions like how much does my data cost they cannot answer then they have to call me back. Ofcoarse, they never call me back. When I ask questions about why I am being billed for certain items they never know.
I’ve never written a review about a company in my life but felt compelled to after working with someone this horrible.
Please stay away at all costs, I do not wish this grief upon anyone else.

Here I am… trying AGAIN to rent from ALL ROAD.
I used to own my own Sat phones, for use in Baja Mexico. I did so for a few years, until I stopped traveling so often. Then, a couple years ago I tried to rent from AllRoadSat (also local to me in San Diego). They were VERY expensive, and had many hidden costs that came up above and beyond the $ 30/​week for the phone itself. At that time, I simply risked using my ATT GoPhone with Telcel service (or lack of service).
Planning another trip to Baja, where I need to be able to make a call (no matter what), I tried again two days ago (to rent from AllRoadSat) and again, was displeased. I asked for a quote to be emailed to me (while I was on the phone getting prices), because the prices the woman was explaining were MUCH different then what the website was quoting when I went through the online rental process. I never received the quote that day, or that night. I called back that night, to see what the deal was and got the «Oh, are systems are having troubles…». All the while, the person on the phone had to turn and ask «Ms.Donna… do you know…» for each and every question I asked. (What ever happened to Susan?! She was the best.)
So the next day I called back and I asked again, for a price and AGAIN got a different total. Never yet had we discussed any minutes, as I planned to get the phone with no pre-​paid minutes and just «pay as I go». I had planned on ONLY using these rentals for emergency purposes, and planned to not even power them on unless needed.
With that, they said I need to purchase pre-​paid minutes. «Okay…» I thought, there was a 60min plan on the website. But before I bring it up, they tried to sell me a 90min bundle. Before she mentioned a bundle, I had clearly asked for the cheapest amount of minutes available. And after her 90min bundle offering, when I said the website shows a 60min bundle, she turned and asked Ms. Donna about it… coming back to the phone and saying: «Oh, we can give you that deal». WTF? I asked for «cheapest» from day one! And it’s no «deal», it’s on the darn website!
I talked to them three times on the phone, and had tried to do an online quote. The prices I received were; Online ($ 414.00), On the phone ($ 160, $ 260, and the last of $ 360). All of this for only 2 phones, for 1 week rental.
I have since gone to SatPhoneStore in San Diego, for half the price and have to say I’m MUCH happier.

I share some of Cathy B’s concerns about using All Road Satellite. Please be VERY careful, very cautious about using this company’s products. Specifically, as it pertains to renting an Iridium phone: First, it clearly states on the company’s website that voicemail is free when renting this phone. Simply not true. You must sign up for pre-​paid minutes to obtain a voicemail box (I found out later), and there is a $ 0.99-per-day charge for voicemail. Second, All Road’s website clearly states that it offers «²⁴⁄₇ live support.» Again, not true. While traveling and using one of All Road’s Iridium phones, I placed several calls to the company’s help line – all of which I was charged for, by the way – and those calls went directly into a voicemail box.
When I did finally reach All Road using the Iridium phone, I was told that I was not properly following the instructions to retrieve voicemail messages. It was essentially «operator error,» I was told. Unfortunately, after returning home and returning the phone, I was told by someone else at All Road that I had never ordered voicemail in the first place. If someone at the company had simply looked up my account when I called initially, they would have known I mistakenly did not order voicemail and not accused me of accessing the voicemail incorrectly.
When I asked All Road to remove the charges I incurred from calling their help line, they were unsympathetic and insisted that I pay.
Needless to say, I cannot recommend using this company.

My concerns fall in two categories: problems with All Road and problems with Iridium.
All Road did a good job of getting the phone to me, but there were issues with getting the voicemail working. Their IT guy doesn’t work on the weekends (!), so I had to wait until well into the day Monday to have working voicemail. And I had to send multiple emails to get him to take my concerns seriously. The whole point of having this phone was for people to be able to reach me all week in an area with no cell coverage. Also, I had paid for return shipping in advance, but no label was included, and it took a while for them to send me one. Hopefully they won’t charge me for a late return on the phone.
Then there are the problems with reception. Call quality was terrible on all but one of the calls I made, and sometimes I was not able to make calls at all («try again later») – All Road told me this is what happens when too many people are trying to access the satellite at the same time. So if you have a call at a particular time you need to make, you can’t count on being able to get through. I had prepaid for 120 minutes for a one-​week vacation. I would never do that again, as I wasn’t able to use even close to that.

my email from this company in regards to the billing of 500 MB when the unit i reset at start of use and it currently says 229 MB along with the network logs off the unit itself —
mike
i only set up the unit to check email and then put it away as i was on a houseboat and it could not be left out. i find it hard to believe that all the recent years the billing has been exact that of the units meter.
i have worked with sue in the past and never had this problem unfortunately it seems that things are changing over there.
i also have requested a return label along with my wife that has been prepaid and we have yet to receive the label. I HAVE PERSONALLY EMAILED YOU 4 TIMES WITH NO RESPONSE TO DATE …
please do not charge my card for any late charges and NO OTHER CHARGES ARE AUTHORIZED OR PERMITTED BY ALL ROAD SAT OR ANY OF THERE AFFILIATES
I HAVE DISPUTED ALL AMOUNTS WITH MY CREDIT CARD COMPANY AS OF NOW.
i will send this to my attorney and you guys can resolve as it seems you are not willing to work this out never the less return an email.
Thank You,
Aaron Trevethan
CEO
PPS llc
PHONE (949) 612 0342
FAX (949) 481 8855

Terrible customer service. Took two months to get my security deposit back and even then it was a partial refund. I was told that it was for «minutes used» when in fact those minutes were used by their tech support in order to set up voicemail service on the phone, something that should have been working out of the box.
I should not have to call on a weekly basis in order to get something like a deposit credited back to my account.
Absolutely unprofessional staff and I highly recommend you pursue rental of a satellite phone elsewhere.

Good news… bad news on satellite communications and All Road Communications. Good news — very nice people, good equipment, priced right (not cheap, but it isn’t cheap…) Bad news… Satellite communication has a long long way to go to gain consistency and quality. And All Road didn’t refund what I thought reasonable given the bad experience.
I rented gear for phone and internet access for a week. I was never able to get satellite hookup for the internet very possibly because I wasn’t able to «see» the satellites. I got some phone service, but 5 minutes of talk would produce one minute of communication due to break up, blanks, and drops.
So the bad news is first that I wouldn’t count on satellite communication for anything important and at the price it better be important! Catch 22.
The good news and bad news for All Road communication is that they did refund some, but if you work out the totals for a week I used 72 minutes total phone time and paid $ 400. Of the 72 minutes, about 20 were good, so you can work out the cost per minute. I thought I should have been refunded more, but they said «there is nothing we can do». What does that mean?
So there you are. Buyer beware, as always.

The service is great and the phones work EVERYWHERE