Anyone use Vonage??

[floridalaurie]

I am trying to cuts some costs and I'm wondering if anyone has any 1st hand knowledge of how Vonage phone is. I'm thinking it might be a way to save a few bucks each month. I like the unlimited long distance because I live in Florida and my family is in Massachusetts. Would love to hear about anyones experience or opinions.

 

[Gina]

Vonage has it's own circle of hell. I had to actually close my bank account to stop their charges, and that was after never being able to even get the service to work properly. I have dealt with a lot of idiotic companies in my life, but this one tops them all by some exponent.

Do a quick search on "Vonage complaints" -- you'll be amazed. Here's one right here, with the most recent post (which sounds like deja vu to me and my experience with Vonage) is a mere 2 days old. How this company hasn't been sued to high heaven and back is beyond me.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/cell_phones/vonage.html

Don't walk, RUN from this company!!!

 

[jennyl772003]

Well, we've had it for years and have never had a moments trouble. In the begining the call quality seemed a little less then a land line, but now I've either gotten used to it, or it's better. We also started with the unlimited plan, but have since switched since we don't use that many minutes a month.

 

[Toby'sFriend]

yep. Sometimes our call quality leaves something to be desired, but I love the price. I have the $14.99 plan which gives us 500 minutes a month. That is more than enough for us, we mostly use our cell phones.

Actually we were just saying last night that the call quality issues haven't been bad for quite awhile now, keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[disneyaggie]

I called it "VONAGE HADES"! It was horrible! I would NEVER go with Vonage again!

For 6 weeks they messed up my fax line, sent some idiot to "service" the issue, and for 6 weeks all I had was issues. My fax would not work, there were cords everywhere and anytime I called "customer service" (and I use this term loosely) I spent at least 1 hour on the phone.

Oh, and here's the clincher! They "forget" to tell you that once you switch to their system, your telephone runs through the internet . . . so your security alarm (which runs off of the phone land line) NO LONGER WORKS!

After 6 weeks of Vonage Trauma, I called their "customer service" line and told the little snit on the phone I wanted out of their plan. He told me, "Well, we will have to charge you a disconnect fee since you have gone over the 30 days". I am sure his ears are still ringing from the screech that I produced!

And sure enough, within minutes my credit card was hit with over $120 in charges! I lost it! I called the bank and they immediately got every penny I ever spent with Vonage back.

Here was the reason: In the agreement, it states that they will provide "service". When I had issues from day one, that was not "service". I gave them 6 weeks of chances. Therefore, they were in breach of the agreement! I held up my end of the bargain by paying them, but they breached the agreement by not providing the service they promised. I got my money back and have never heard from them again.

 

[disneyaggie]

Don't walk, RUN from this company!!!

 

[Chuck S]

I don't use Vonage, but use a similar service (AT&T CallVantage) and I'm happy with it. Sometimes there are some clicks, when my cable internet service has some problem, but overall, I am pleased.

I was able to keep my old phone number with CallVantage, that was not available for my area code with Vonage.

 

[Mayl]

Horrible would be an insult to all things horrible to describe them.

Worse line quality, lack of support, nothing that passes for for customer service.

Never (let me repeat that) never buy this product

 

[dundee10]

We used Vonage for a while. No complaints. Then we moved out of the BellSouth area into Windstream territory and we could not get a local number for our Vonage service.

On the other hand, there is something that may be even better and definitely cheaper than Vonage -- MagicJack.

Here's a link to read about it: http://www.magicjacktv.com/8/index.asp

 

[Toby'sFriend]

Oh, and here's the clincher! They "forget" to tell you that once you switch to their system, your telephone runs through the internet . . . so your security alarm (which runs off of the phone land line) NO LONGER WORKS!

um, I'm guessing you didn't understand what VOIP meant?

 

[KristineN]

I have had vonage for a couple of years...overall I can't complain. Certainly not the quality of a land line...but the price is sure right. I have used tech support a couple of times...and did ok.

I also have MagicJack...which truly is rock bottom in pricing. It definitely has a few quirks....and their tech support is horrendous. But for 19.95 a year...not sure what you can expect.

 

[cmp1111]

We've had it for around two years and have no issues whatsoever. We don't run a fax machine, though, and when I did look up adding fax service (for the 3 times a year I need a fax) it seemed pricey and hard to deal with.

But, for the phone, it's been great for us. My DH is a pilot, with a work-paid cell that is long distance from the house. We live in NH and the family is all in IL or TN. We cut our phone bill - even though we had unlimited long distance on the land line - more than in half.

I particularly like the services - for free with the plan - that automatically forward calls to a chosen number, either all the time or when the network is unavailable. When we had the land line, we had all cordless phones that would of course not work in a power outage. The Vonage phones don't, either, obviously (not only cordless, but the modem is powered, etc.) but when they see your network down, boom, my cell phone starts getting all my calls without me having to do a thing about it.

I will say that I think it helps to be a little tech savvy if you're going to do it. I've not had to call customer service for anything, because I know what I'm doing in general on network and computer things.

 

[floridalaurie]

Well, sounds like I have a little more research to do. The MagicJack sounds like a real possibility!

 

[Charade]

I've had Vonage for about 4 or 5 years and except for a few outages because my Comcast connection went down, the Vonage service has worked quite well for $25/month (the unlimited plan). The sound quality is fine for me. No one has complained. My dfi calls her friend in Holland on occasion and it's REALLY cheap!

 

[lilyv]

DD had it, and got rid of it. She'd call and the connection was absolutely horrible. If we needed to actually understand anything, we'd call on the cell. She realized she was just better off with the cell-no garbled sound, with the bonus of static on it.

 

[Mskanga]

I have had vonage for almost three years now and had no major problems , besides I have all my family overseas in Spain and calling them on a landline is free for me. worth every penny.
If I have an outage with the ISP my calls go directly to my cell phone.

 

[GJM]

We have had it for about a year. At first I did not want it, but we really have had no problems at all with it. No complaints -

 

[binny]

so far so good for us.

I love the price, and so far havent had any problems with the faxes or customer service.


We have had it for about 6 weeks.

 

[cinmell]

The top 3 worst companies I've had to deal with due to service and "customer service" are:

RCN-Sprint (Tie for first place)
Vonage-Terrible service and problems disconnecting within the trial period or whatever they called it. The phone line had a lot of static, echos or dropped calls. My ADT didn't work with it either.

The service stunk big time and the so called customer service was even worse. Each took quite a while to finally get rid. Comcast used to be in my top 3 worst companies but compared to the 3 listed above, it's wonderful! I know longer refer to Comcast as ComCrap.

 

[paradyse]

I am trying to cuts some costs and I'm wondering if anyone has any 1st hand knowledge of how Vonage phone is. I'm thinking it might be a way to save a few bucks each month. I like the unlimited long distance because I live in Florida and my family is in Massachusetts. Would love to hear about anyones experience or opinions.

We use TrinitiComm for our home and home office VOIP phone service and it is fantastic! They have true unlimited local, long distance and international calling, great calling features and they’re actually cheaper than Vonage and most other VOIP companies out there. Their customer service and support is top notch in my book. Oh, and they give you the first month for free to try it out. I'm glad we made the switch and we highly recommend their service over Vonage and the other VoIP companies out there. TrinitiComm will be a VoIP heavy weight soon.