Vonage

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

After posting a few helpful comments, I would like to ask a question. I am tempted to get Vonage [http://www.vonage.com/] for telephone service in my new place. How can I pass up $25 a month unlimited local & long distance, with all the normal features included. Heck, even a virtual number so the family is calling a local number for $5 a month.

No longer waiting until my nights & weekends on my cell phone (at 7 pm here) to make my long distance calls; possibly waking up family that live on the East coast. Or, having to wait until the weekend to call & then forgetting. Hell, this is $15 to $25 less than I was paying in my old place & town for Cox Cable phone.

Hmm.....


But enough of me trying to convince myself to get it. Now, I need some hard facts & feed back from those that have it or have used it. Has anyone used them and can give some feedback/constructive criticism? A mention yesterday to a friend brought up a concern that there was a 2 second delay - true or not?

TIA!

Comments

[kyndig.livejournal.com]

You might want to check out Broadband Reports (http://broadbandreports.com). They have a ton of reviews of various VOIP providers.

[zig-mover.livejournal.com]

Beat me to it.

Broadband Reports reviews

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

Excellent! I was not aware they had that resource - thanks for the info. Now, to dig through and find the intelligent reviews...

[(Anonymous)]

Vonage is a house of cards waiting to be blown down.

The employees get no paid vacation (the used to before this year) and when someone breaks down from overwork, the directive of the president of the company is to replace them immediately.

Not a good place to work. (I know some people who used to work there.)

And the infrastructure was built up as cheaply as possible.

So while the service works (and it does most of the time) and the price is great, just how long will it continue to work for?

Anonymous poster

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

How can I rely on the words of a Anonymous poster, with no source documentation?

Re: Anonymous poster

[(Anonymous)]

You have a point there.

However, it does give you definite items to research.

Caveat Emptor

[boredevilperson.livejournal.com]

I had Vonage last year and loved it. Aside from the Customer Service issues that I'll detail before Vonage was a very nice service. My nephew has them right now with no problems. I'm not ready to go with them again due to what happened.

After about 28 days of activating my Vonage service I get home and need to make a phone call. I pick up my phone. Hmmm no dial tone. I reset the box, modem and all that, still no dialtone. I checked my e-mail and there was a note from Vonage thanking me for trying them out and they were sorry I discontinued their service. "Huh?"

So I call Customer Service. They had on record that I called to cancel my order. After telling them multiple times I made no such call and hearing "Are you really sure you didn't call us and cancel?" (wouldn't I remember that??)

I asked them if they could just simply reactivate my account with my phone number etc and I'd go on my merry way. They couldn't. Next question was if they could activate a new account for me in that case with a new phone number etc. They couldn't unless I took the Vonage box back to Circuit City and got a new one. "If you had purchased the box through us rather than Circuit City we could just reactivate it"

With that I decided it wasn't worth my time. I told the rep that I was going to take the box back to Circuit City and get a refund.

I think I know why this happened though. They gave me a number ending in 4100 which is a good number for a business. I'll bet they realized their error and figured a business client was more important than an individual.

[inahandbasket]

Give Vonage the pass, because packet8 is only $20 a month.
;o)

I've had packet8 for almost 6 months now, I love it. My parents have Vonage, they love it. only difference is that I pay less. ^_^