I loved Skype when it first launched. Although there had been other VoIP websites and software before there was Skype, this nifty little piece of programming worked well and was damn cheap. But over the past years, and in particular since the company was purchased by eBay, Skype has plummetted in my esteem.
First there was SkypeOut: prices were very low _ at least compared to traditional telephony providers _ to call almost anywhere in the world. Now a fixed connection charge (a plus second-by-second charge) make Skype calls uncompetitive, particularly when calling landlines in Western countries. The introduction of the connection charge was not announced to users.
Then there's SkypeIn: For an annual fee you can get a telephone number which people can call to reach your Skype phone with. Initially this number was quite cheap. I don't remember the exact price, but it was something like £15 (25 Euros). That price has now been raised to 50 Euros a year, meaning that just to have a standard number (something any broadband customer already has) you need to pay more than 4 Euros a month. Again, this price rise was not announced.
Recently, Skype has introduced a line of telephones which do not require a computer connection to run Skype. After much bought frustation trying to get the lowest price for the phone from the erratic Skype web shop (the site doesn't accurately recognize where users are located and keeps resetting their preference, so that at one point I was determined to be in Ireland; this is important, because prices vary depending on where you are) I finally had one sent to me, only to find out that I had to pay an additional 15% in taxes and UPS charges which were not mentioned when I bought the phone.
Numerous other Skype 'offers' - such as Skype Pro - have also turned out to be useless, either not doing what they claim in the description or not being available to all users. Add to this the fact that the quality of Skype calls is still poor, more than five years after their launch, and that as a Skype users you are providing free access to your Internet bandwidth for Skype to route other people's calls, and the wonderful new world of Internet telephony promised by Skype doesn't look so rosy anymore.
At the moment Skype is still a useful program for people who travel around a lot, have broadband access all the time and whose friends and family all use the program. But it's time for Skype _ a billion dollar company after all _ to clean up its act and do something for its users, or it will fall by the wayside when someone comes along with an interoperable VoIP service that is cheap and does what it says on the label.
FJ