It seems that the glorious period of Skype is over and this fall from grace is its own doing. There is no doubt that its main competitor, Yahoo! is offering a much better package, that is faster, less expensive, faultless, provides excellent customer service, and is a trustworthy brand, but the main reason for the downfall of Skype is, the large number of defects and complaints, and the poor customer service, which have irritated most consumers. You can find many blogs giving first hand experiences of many consumers, who had a rough time with Skype's customer service staff.

Yahoo!'s Advantages
However, it is unfair to blame the customer support staff as they are expected to deal with an abnormally large number of complaints. On the other hand, Yahoo! is setting up a much more organized customer support service. Moreover, Yahoo! is offering more competitive rates for both national and international calls. The list of prices has been posted on Yahoo!'s website, and it is obvious that with these competitive prices, Yahoo! will soon emerge as the leader in VoIP telephony services.

Yahoo has created a place for itself in the online world, as its chat service is already making waves in the market, and giving tough competition to Skype's VoIP based services. Yahoo! is adding value to chat service and is proceeding ahead at a very fast pace, as it is aware that MSN and AOL are also entering this field of Internet telephony. Yahoo!'s business models are not very different from Skype's products, but the software of Yahoo! consists of many more services.

Skype has lost its credibility because of the large number of incorrect charges and poor customer service that it presents to its consumers. Yahoo! has taken advantage of the anger of Skype's consumers and assured them of much better and faultless service.

Yahoo! has big plans to offer top quality communications service, and they are planning to blend VoIP with other services, like, search and mobile communications. Such integration is the future of Internet telephony services and Yahoo! is going full steam ahead, but Skype seems to be lagging behind miserably. Customers are aware of the wide range of services that Yahoo! is offering and it is obvious that Skype is nowhere near the level of Yahoo!'s services.

If you have also been a victim of the poor performance of Skype and have faced wrong charges, you should check out the services being offered by Yahoo! and take advantage of the competition that is bringing down the prices in all aspects of Internet telephony services.

If Skype wants to survive, it needs to pull up its socks and improve its services. However, until this happens, you can take advantage of what Yahoo! and others have to offer.

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