I’m thinking of switching our home phone over to Vonage internet phone service. Anybody out there care to give a testimony about it?
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Training For Something Greater
I’m thinking of switching our home phone over to Vonage internet phone service. Anybody out there care to give a testimony about it?
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons
I have no DSL at home
I can’t get Verizon’s wireless account
I don’t have cable internet access…
I have to use a Direcway dish and it is down half the time….So needless to say, I can’t help you!
Vonage changed my life. No, just a joke there – I don’t have Vonage. Most that I do know have generally found a few negatives along the way to counteract the obvious positives – such as – how would it affect 911 service? And, when it goes down – you have no phone service.
Been with vonage 2 years.. no problems! incredible price and features. Look me up at church – 2 pews back
Use Lingo (Vonage’s cheaper and lesser known competitor) for free Canadian, US and European calls ($20/month). Utterly revolutionized our living in London. Friends and family can call our Seattle number and chat with us for free. Recently added a WA D.C. number so I could use a local number on applications for jobs there. Cost me extra $5/month.
Generally happy with Lingo. My box burnt up and they got me a new one pretty quickly. Talked with Vonage first, but found customer service acted like they were doing me a favor. Decided on Lingo then and there.
Of course, the downside with VOIP is when there is no internet, there is no phone. But that is what cell phones are for anyway. 😉
I have been using Vonage for 2 1/2 years now, both for my personal home phone and for our business phone and fax. I am a huge Vonage fan. The price is obviously the greatest, and combined with the features is a hit. I particularly like getting my voicemails as e-mail attachments within a minute or so of someone leaving a message. That is particularly helpful when traveling! While Vonage is having some growing pains with Customer Service, they are also leading the VOIP market in lines installed and governmental lobbying to keep more taxes away from internet phone services.
Let David refer you! You’ll both benefit!
Also…depending on who your high speed provider is, you can get a battery back up that will give you 10+ hours of power when the electricity goes out in Tulsa due to tornados. Having them forwarded to your cell phone is free with Vonage and pretty much cures that question altogether. I say GO FOR IT…just let David refer you. He’ll get 2 months free and you one by doing it that way.
I don’t use Vonage- But I am going to tell you something that will make you healthier- THE JACK LALAYNE POWER JUICER!!
Wade- You want to get things done- well you have to have the energy to do it. My wife and I have been juicing for 8 months now- and the kids are juicing right along with us. Costco $99.00- Buy it and use it everday and let me know how you like it.
(File under wildly random)
Mike in Memphis
I switched to Vonage about 9 months ago. It’s mainly used as the kid’s line. Works great. You can check your voicemail through the computer or over the phone… you can even save any important messages on the computer if needed. Good price with many features and fax line is inexpensive also. I use the 500 min per month plan with free incoming and free vonage to vonage. It’s $14.95 and 9.95 for a dedicated fax line. We’ve never come close to the 500 minutes (my wife and I mainly use our cell phones)but $10 more per month would provide unlimited usage. Enjoy! Hey, tell them I recommended you and I’ll get one month free. Is that ethical?
I did some research into switching about 6-8 mos ago. Talked to a few co-workers, and ended up not taking the risk because of one guy’s experience. He had made the switch to Vonage, had all kinds of difficulties with the call quality and arrogant/unresponsive customer service, and finally ended up switching back to SBC.
BUT, after reading all these comments I’m going to look into it again.
I use Lingo as well, there were so bugs at first, but we are really happy. The cost for VOIP vs Landline phone service just isn’t even close, especially when you throw in Long Distance. The only issues again are: 911 Service, you actually have to regsiter for 911 service and then it is not the “real” 911. For best results there use your cell phone. Also, sometimes people with certain cell phones cant get through to us, we’ve gotten the ones fixed that we knew about but that’s one thing to consider – do you want to deal with the hassle of calling customer service for something like that. Overall it’s good service and for what you pay, more than worth it!
I use VOIP – Zingotel – $9.95 a month. We had Vonage. We had problems with voice quality when we were on DSL. Then when we switched to cable high speed internet- Vonage would not work. We couldn’t get assistance from them and so finally we cancelled it and just kept using our cell phone as we had been for our main phone. Then, I discovered Zingotel. The website is not as end user friendly as Vonage was; but the voice quality is great and it’s cheaper and I had no problems hooking up the VOIP router/converter and it worked on the first try (took me three days and again no help from Vonage to set up theirs). I would choose VOIP over any traditional phone service any day to get away from paying all of those ridiculous fees that double your phone bill!
Wade,
I thought you were someone I went to college with, so looked up your blog. You’re not the same Wade Hodges. C’est la vie.
But I thought I would just let you know that we have been using Vonage for several months. As you know, it saves a lot of money, especially since we make quite a few overseas calls. There is, however, a difference in the quality of the connection. Not enough for me to complain, though. I just pretend I am actually overseas using the phone over there and enjoy the feeling of being not quite so spoiled by modern technology. An odd sort of solidarity.
I’ve enjoyed reading some of your other entries.
Sheila
I didn’t have Vonage but I had an internet provider phone service and I wasn’t happy. The internet is out more often than regular phone service is. Having a separate phone line and computer line (cable in my case) is great. If one is out I have the other to reach out to the world.
We’ve had Vonage for well over a year (with Earthlink cable internet). We’ve had great service with no problems. It’s great having the voicemail deliver all my messages to my email inbox while on the road, too. No complaints whatsoever.
Vonage is the best-known company because they do the most advertising. There are tons of VOIP companies out there all offering basically the same thing, so shop around. We use SunRocket (dot com) and it’s about $17 a month for unlimited domestic calling, three numbers, a plethora of voicemail options, and more.
With any VOIP carrier, the call quality is always going to be lower than a landline, particularly if you have heavy internet usage in your home (we have four computers sharing a Comcast cable internet connection).
The upshot of VOIP is that you can take it with you anywhere in the world – if you take a six-month trip to Greece or Mongolia, and you have an internet connection there, you can take the hardware with you (a regular phone and a box the size of a paperback novel) and make/receive local calls from your area code – that is, your neighbors can call you as if you still lived in the US.
My advice is to look for another company that comes highly recommended in terms of customer service. They all offer basically the same features. If you pay extra to go with Vonage, that money is going into tons of advertising, so my vote is for a smaller company like SunRocket.
I came across the following this morning and thought of you:
http://david.weekly.org/writings/vonage.php3
I’m not sure if you’re still looking. It’s a few months old, but it might be worth a read.