Tell me about vonage

[CyndiLooWho]

Hi all! We have AT&T for our phone service and DSL right now, and I'm looking at other options (at least for the phone service).

Long story short, I'm paying way more than I would like for phone service (basic service + free LD [got the LD b/c all my fam and ILs are LD from home]). I also have issues with some of their customer service policies, which I won't go into now.

Anyway, Vonage seems to be a budget friendly alternative to AT&T. I'd have to keep the DSL line with AT&T or go to cable (we don't currently have cable, DISH instead, but I'd be saving 60% or more over the AT&T charges.

Anyone have specific recommendations for or against Vonage? Suggestions for other types of phone service? And I'd prefer not to use our cell phones for everything, as we're doing prepaid (much cheaper for us than a contract) and do not want to up our cell bills.

Thanks!

 

[Gina]

All I can say about Vonage is... run fast, run far, and don't look back. Seriously, Google "Vonage complaints" and see for yourself. I honestly wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy, and I'm Sicilian -- wishing things on enemies comes natural. lol

I would use tin cans and string before I went with Vonage again. Imagine the worst customer service you have ever ever had, multiply that by some exponent, and you're at least getting close to the circle of hell that Vonage occupies.

 

[sunshinegirl]

I wish that I could say that I had good luck with Vonage, but I didn't. We had so much trouble with their customer service that we never even got ours working right and had to cancel it. I'm sure that there have to be people who have had great experiences with them because they are very popular. But ours was horrible.

 

[StitchandPooh'sMom]

All I can say about Vonage is... run fast, run far, and don't look back. Seriously, Google "Vonage complaints" and see for yourself. I honestly wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy, and I'm Sicilian -- wishing things on enemies comes natural. lol

I would use tin cans and string before I went with Vonage again. Imagine the worst customer service you have ever ever had, multiply that by some exponent, and you're at least getting close to the circle of hell that Vonage occupies.

There has to be a tag in there somewhere! Where is the Tag Fairy when you need her?

 

[Gina]

There has to be a tag in there somewhere! Where is the Tag Fairy when you need her?

LOL!!

 

[WIDisneyFan]

It seems to me that Vonage is a love or hate type of thing. We have had it for a few years now and LOVE it. For us the call quality has been great, as has the reliability.

We do have a cable modem and our road runner service quality is about the only good thing I can say about Time Warner. One thing I would suggest before you do any type of VOIP product, make sure you have a solid high speed connection.

One site you can do this at is http://myspeed.visualware.com/voip/index.html

Please feel free to let me know if you have any specific questions.

 

[CyndiLooWho]

Wow, some very strong negatives there. I'm going to have to think about this a bit more...

 

[ashleyd725@hotmail.c]

I have also had it for about 2 years now and have never had any problems with it. They are cheap and reliable. Much cheaper than I was paying for verizon home service, and just as good.

 

[Redbudlover]

I have a business that depends completely on the phone and use Vonage very successfully. Vonage is a great service for the right people - and a bad service for the wrong people which is why you get positives and negatives. To begin with as the OP said it will NOT work without a reliable hi speed connection which is why I changed from DSL to ATT Uverse cable. If your connection is not continuously hi speed do not get it. Secondly you have to either have it installed or be comfortable enough with computers and hardware that you can install it yourself. I highly recommend it, but only oif the above conditions are met. Personally if I didn't use LD all the time in my business I would just stick with a cell phone - and I wouldn't use prepaid becuz they are a lot more expensive than current family plans....

 

[Brer Shay]

Wow, there have apparantly been some bad experiences with Vonage.

I am not one of them and, for us, Vonage has been wonderful. We've had the service for almost five years now. We've recommended it to friends who have switched as well. As PP said, make sure that you have very good and consistant hi-speed connection. We've used it with both Verizon FIOS and a cable connection and it's been fine. I can't really comment on the DSL.

We cut our phone bill from $75 a month to $30, about $500 a year savings.

 

[luvMickey72]

Wow, we have had for about 3 years, but have high speed internet and only had the phone line down once. Our friend who works in IT hooked it up for us. We actually only pay $14.99 plus tax a month. We can only make 500 minutes of calling a month, if I get close to that I use my cell phone instead. But you can check online how many minutes you have left, we have saved quite a bit of money, with really no changes!

Sandy

 

[Stucas]

Wow, we have had for about 3 years, but have high speed internet and only had the phone line down once. Our friend who works in IT hooked it up for us. We actually only pay $14.99 plus tax a month. We can only make 500 minutes of calling a month, if I get close to that I use my cell phone instead. But you can check online how many minutes you have left, we have saved quite a bit of money, with really no changes!

Sandy

We had this package too for 3 years, it did go up within the last year to $18.99 a month for 500 minutes. It worked for us because we never came close. We LOVED vonage, I never had a single problem in 3 years.

We just moved and left vonage for cablevision (compared to our cable/internet and then phone bill before it was like getting phone free with the tripple play) and we kept our phone number from vonage. A servicce guy with cablevision had to come out to the house to do it (silly) and after being scheduled for 2 weeks he called us the night before he was meant to come and said, Vonage doesn't do # transfers on weekends. I could have killed that guy...didn't they know that when I made the appt? O well. That would be the only problem I had with them..and I wasnt using them anymore anyways

 

[Mom2micayla]

I just got rid of Vonage about a month ago. I had them for 3 years and had quite a few problems. Lots of feedback, echoing, dropped calls. It seemed to happen most when I called family in Indiana. Some days it worked just fine, other days it was sketchy. I guess all in all it was ok. I wouldn't highly recommend it, but I wouldn't be all "omg, don't even consider it!" either. One thing to consider IMO is they do have a cancellation fee if you're not with them a year IIRC. I think it's $40 or so.

 

[CyndiLooWho]

Thanks for all the input.

We have had only one problem with the dsl - it is the fastest one and is super reliable - necessary b/c dh telecommutes several days a month. That is on par with cable, which we had at our last house.

Dh and bro are both IT guys, so setting up the equipment would not be a problem, either.

I'm not sure I want a hassle, though, if it has the kind of failure rate I see in the postings. Even if it's 50/50, that's pretty bad from a business standpoint. And part of the reason I want out of AT&T is some of their customer "service" policies. It just kills me to pay $65 per mo and then see the vonage ads for $31 (incl the taxes; I checked them).

I was tickled to lose the cell phone bill ($110/mo for a family plan) in favor of prepaid. We never used the minutes on our old plan, and we had the minimum plan you can have for a family. With TracFone, we pay $100/YEAR for hubby's phone, and about $150-200/year for mine. Then again, we don't text, we don't give out our numbers except to family, and we don't have lines for the kids.

 

[uva185]

Thanks for all the input.

We have had only one problem with the dsl - it is the fastest one and is super reliable - necessary b/c dh telecommutes several days a month. That is on par with cable, which we had at our last house.

Dh and bro are both IT guys, so setting up the equipment would not be a problem, either.

I'm not sure I want a hassle, though, if it has the kind of failure rate I see in the postings. Even if it's 50/50, that's pretty bad from a business standpoint. And part of the reason I want out of AT&T is some of their customer "service" policies. It just kills me to pay $65 per mo and then see the vonage ads for $31 (incl the taxes; I checked them).

I was tickled to lose the cell phone bill ($110/mo for a family plan) in favor of prepaid. We never used the minutes on our old plan, and we had the minimum plan you can have for a family. With TracFone, we pay $100/YEAR for hubby's phone, and about $150-200/year for mine. Then again, we don't text, we don't give out our numbers except to family, and we don't have lines for the kids.

I would not get a Vonage line on a DSL connection. I would get it on a Cable Modem connection but definitely not DSL. The nice thing about Vonage is if for some reason your internet is down you can set it to forward your incoming calls to a pre-designated number (like a cell phone). You can also program it to ring multiple numbers (like a cell phone) at the same time so if someone calls you while you are out you can still take the call on your cell phone.

It's a good service just make sure you have proper bandwidth to operate the Vonage line concurrently with actively using your internet (ESPECIALLY uploading files whether it be your husbands telework connection (does he use a VPN connection?) or uploading photos, sending large emails, etc)

 

[da-winnie-pooh]

I like the fact that you don't have to change your # when you move. Also, we have 2 houses and can make and receive calls from wherever we are staying. Also, free long distance.

I don't love it but don't hate it, but it has worked out well in our situation.

 

[P.I. Squirrel]

Like all VOIP phone services, Vonage is completely dependent on the quality of your DSL connection, whether it is a DSL modem or a cable modem. We had Vonage for 2 years until Hurricane Charley came through Orlando. After the storm, the cable company moved the non working customers to the same equipment as the working customers. In technical speak, our ping rate and packet loss went through the roof! This caused calls to drop, if they connected at all. Also, it caused an echo that made conversations impossible to understand. Until that issue popped up, we had zero complaints with Vonage.

Have your techie family members perform a ping test to google.com. If you're game, go to 'START', click 'run', type in CMD and hit enter. Then, in the window that pops up, type ping www.google.com and hit enter. Look towards the bottom for "Average =" and "Lost =" If your round trip ping is less than about 75ms(milliseconds), with less than 5% packet loss, you're golden. You would do good with Vonage. If either number is higher, your experience will not be as good. If your ping is over 100ms, forget it. You would think Vonage was the worst thing since sliced moldy bread.

 

[nd5056]

We have T-Mobile Family Plan & just added the @home plan for $10/month.

You have to have their cell phone plan to qualify for that & so far it's working great on our DSL line (1.5MB download only). Unlimited calling & long distance, voice mail, call waiting, caller ID, etc. is all included in that $10.

Just one word, if the power is out, the phone is out, unless you have some kind of power back up.

.

 

[Chuck S]

I just switched to Vonage from AT&T CallVantage VoIP service. It took about 15 days to switch my number to Vonage. So far, I'm happy with the service. I do use cable internet (the mid-speed 3Mbps) service from Road Runner on Time Warner cable, so my internet bill is about $29 and Vonage (after the $10 special ends) should be less than $30 with taxes. AT&Ts website for the voicemail was set up a little better, but Vonage's site is OK, just different. The features are almost identical.

The reason I switched is I received a letter that AT&T CallVantage VoIp will be discontinuing service later this year, and I would need to change back to land line or AT&T Uverse, which is not, and will not, be available in our area. Anyway, so I get a Fed-Ex letter today, and AT&T wants their interface box back (they did send a pre-paid Fex-Ex label). Seems odd that they want it back, if they are going out of business. Odd waste of money for a business that is closing up.

My stats are 0% packet losst, minimum round trip 39ms, maximum 48ms, average 42ms

 

[Manda]

I've had Vonage for about 3 years (I think?) with zero problems. I don't even have an opinion on their customer service because I've never had to use it. I ordered the service online and bought a wireless phone set with two handsets, so I could put the phones wherever I wanted them. I received the box, plugged the phones in, and it's been golden ever since. I don't even have to think about it. The only times I've had issues is when my cable Internet service goes down - but, of course, that's not Vonage's problem. Like others said though, I don't know that I'd go for it on a DSL connection. I've got a very, very fast cable connection. Occasionally, if I'm doing a very network-intensive computer activity while making a phone call, I can tell that my call quality is slightly degraded. I'm sure on DSL, it would be noticeable more often.