Anyone have Vonage phone service?

[lecach]

We're considering it - want to know the good and the bad. It seems to be cheaper. But it wont support our security system if we decide to have it monitored.

 

[jennyl772003]

We like it. We save sooo much money on our phone bill. The call quality is a bit lower than a standard phone line. I would compare it to a cell. Sometimes I get an echo, but if I call back, it will be gone. I don't have to pay extra anymore to call my mom, so that saves us some money.

I like being able to check my voicemail online. That is convenient.

The few minuses are more then made up by the money we save.

 

[MosMom]

We've had it for years and we keep it for the savings. DH is from Canada so it is nice to be able to call there as much as we want without worrying about the LD costs.

One downside, if you are using your internet heavily (ie. downloads) it will make give you phone problems. The line will be staticky and delayed.

We find that the savings override the problems.

 

[ducklite]

BTW--Our security system DOES work over Vonage...

Anne

 

[WendyDarling]

I love it. I don't have any internet problems, but my DISH receiver is pretty far from my computer and I don't have a long enough phone cord so I can't do things like pay per view movies. Small price to pay for the huge savings I get. I love that there's only one fee on there compared to the tons and tons of fees that are on a regular phone bill. The easy access voicemail is great, too. I can get to it from any phone, online, I get an email when someone has called. You can go online to forward your phone line to any phone. There are lots of nice features.

 

[Charade]

I've had it for about 2 years. No complaints of the service. I did have one problem where my cordless phone was too close to the Vonage adapter and caused interference but since I moved the phone it's been fine.

I just read that they now offer unlimited calls to several European countries under the $24.95 plan. Even though it was really really cheap for my dgf to call her friend in Holland, now it's free. I'm pretty sure that's what I read in a recent email from them.

 

[Charade]

I love it. I don't have any internet problems, but my DISH receiver is pretty far from my computer and I don't have a long enough phone cord so I can't do things like pay per view movies. Small price to pay for the huge savings I get. I love that there's only one fee on there compared to the tons and tons of fees that are on a regular phone bill. The easy access voicemail is great, too. I can get to it from any phone, online, I get an email when someone has called. You can go online to forward your phone line to any phone. There are lots of nice features.

If you disconnect your land line (usually a box outside by your electric meter) you can hook your Vonage adapter to the internal phone line that runs through your house instead of to just one phone by the adapter. This way you can use the phone jacks in the other rooms. I have three phones throughout the house connected that way. Works fine.

 

[WebmasterAlex]

I can see it if you call internationally but I'm confused about where the huge savings are if you don't. In my area Verizon has unlimited calling, local and LD for 39.95 a month and I don't have to put up with the reduced call quality, internet drop outs etc....

 

[KrnB]

We have it and really like it. The features are great, especially for the price - particularly when you compare the same with the phone company!!

We just recently added a second number so that DH's mom can call us on a number that is local for her in the LA area, and it just costs us a little bit extra in a month.

The local/long distance charge from Vonage is cheaper than basic service for our land line. We'd drop the land line if we could, but we need to have it in order to get DSL service from the phone company (how lame is that, we even pay for business class DSL, and they still make us pay $40 a month for phone service ). If we didn't live out in the sticks and could get cable service, we'd drop the DSL and get a cable modem, cutting the phone company out altogether.

The one problem is that our power here is questionable (we've got dirty power for some reason, and the electric co-op can't seem to fix it), so we sometimes lose our broadband service, and therefore our phone. Most of the time, though, we just need to reboot our broadband router and that fixes it. The nice thing is that if our phone isn't available, any calls are redirected to DH's cellphone. He also gets an email when we get a VM.

For a while, we had problems with feedback/echos/bad connections, but DH changed the setting on the Vonage site for the broadband speed, and that made a big difference.

 

[DisneyJen0504]

I can see it if you call internationally but I'm confused about where the huge savings are if you don't. In my area Verizon has unlimited calling, local and LD for 39.95 a month and I don't have to put up with the reduced call quality, internet drop outs etc....

I was thinking the same thing! Why suffer through poor service when VZ has everything that Vonage offers and better service.

 

[KrnB]

I can see it if you call internationally but I'm confused about where the huge savings are if you don't. In my area Verizon has unlimited calling, local and LD for 39.95 a month and I don't have to put up with the reduced call quality, internet drop outs etc....

Sadly, we pay $40 for basic service - no long distance, call waiting, etc. That does, however, include the charge for an unlisted number. We're serviced by Frontier Communcations, which is a relatively small company. We didn't pay that much when we lived closer to the Twin Cities and had Qwest for phone service. At the time, Qwest didn't have the free long distance thing, but I believe they do now. I don't know if we'd have Vonage if we had stayed at our old house.

The local LA phone number is also a big plus for us, since DMIL can't really afford to pay long distance to call us.

 

[jennyl772003]

I can see it if you call internationally but I'm confused about where the huge savings are if you don't. In my area Verizon has unlimited calling, local and LD for 39.95 a month and I don't have to put up with the reduced call quality, internet drop outs etc....

We pay $29.29 TOTAL. Are you paying $39.95 after taxes, fees, etc, or before.

 

[BelleBoo&AmisMum]

I was thinking the same thing! Why suffer through poor service when VZ has everything that Vonage offers and better service.

Because Vonage has never double or triple billed us to the tune of $350 a bill and then NOT returned our money like Verizon did. Our call quality is just as good through Vonage as it was through Verizon, we pay less than $30 a month, DH can call his family in France all he wants without paying extra, and we don't have to give any money to the screw-ups at Verizon.

 

[WebmasterAlex]

Because Vonage has never double or triple billed us to the tune of $350 a bill and then NOT returned our money like Verizon did. Our call quality is just as good through Vonage as it was through Verizon, we pay less than $30 a month, DH can call his family in France all he wants without paying extra, and we don't have to give any money to the screw-ups at Verizon.

I guess I have just never had a problem like that.

 

[Charade]

I can see it if you call internationally but I'm confused about where the huge savings are if you don't. In my area Verizon has unlimited calling, local and LD for 39.95 a month and I don't have to put up with the reduced call quality, internet drop outs etc....

$15/month is enough savings for me. Most people have zero problems. The call quality I have is on par with a regular land line. In fact, I've heard land line calls (most likely a crappy phone) that sound awful. My dgf talks a lot on the phone. Believe me, if she wasn't happy with the quality, I'd hear about it.

Plus, in my area, that service is more like $54.95 IIRC.

One of the great advantages of Vonage is that you can have virtual numbers. Say your Grandma lives in CA and you're in MA. You can have a virtual number in her area code so when she calls, it's a local call.

In addition to that, you get all the bells and whistles like caller id, call waiting, 3 way calling, call forwarding and voicemail (with internet and email retrieval). Plus you can have your Vonange number and any other number you want ring simultaneously.

If you move, you just take your little adapter with you and tada, you have instant phone service (of course you have to have broadband internet).

 

[Jpgirl]

We didn't have Vonage but another system. It was ok but we sometimes have problems with our internet going off line and then we couldn't use our phone. The biggest reason we went back to the land line was Hurricane Rita. We lost power and there went the phone. Thankfully we had cell phones. I thought the land lines would be out too, but when we went outside to survey the damage the neighbors told us that they had phone service. Our power was out for less than 24 hours but the cable co. didn't get back on line for days-thus we had no phone service. So we cancelled and went back to a land line. It was nice to have free long distance though.

 

[Shagley]

I got Vonage in January because so many people think so highly of it. It may just be the area I live in, but it was nothing but problems for me. Out of the 6 months that I had Vonage, my phone went out at least 12 times, and at least 6 of those times I had to spend at least 2 hours on my cell phone trying to get through to tech support. Tech support had me return my router 3 times because they kept telling me it was faulty. The last time my phone went out was in April, so I decided to go back to SBC. It took Vonage almost 2 months to release my phone number back to SBC (but I couldn't cancel my Vonage service until they had released the number or I would lose the phone number that I have had for 10 years). Out of the 6 month I had Vonage, my phone was only working for about 3.5 months of that time. Then, because of all the problems, I called and cancelled Vonage - and they charged me the $40 cancellation fee.

Many people do have great service with Vonage, so maybe my horrible experience was just a fluke. But, if you do have bad service, their customer service is horrible to deal with.

 

[WendyDarling]

Knock on wood, my phone service with Vonage has never cut out or had a bad reception. I am on the 500 min. plan, so I pay $14.99 a month - so the savings over Verizon are really big. I had the basic Verizon package, but after all the taxes and fees my bill was always over $50 each month. I would think, why so much if it is $39.95? But the taxes and fees on Vonage only put me up to a final monthly charge of $17 something. I just don't use the phone that much, so it has been nice.
And for internet service, I do Verizon FIOS so I don't have to have a landline. I've had really good luck with that so far...

 

[powellrj]

a couple of weeks ago, I would have said how great Vonage is because DS has had it for a couple of years with no problems. He tried to cancel it, and they make AOL look like a cake walk. He finally had to threaten legal action to get them to cancel it.

 

[Quinn222]

There have been 911 issues with Vonage. I see you have small children so you may want to research that. Also in a lot of cases your basic broadband speed isn't enough to support IP phone so you end up spending more boosting your internet speed and there goes the phone savings. Also, as has been mentioned, if there is any kind of weather event or anything else that affects power or internet service, your phone is out.