 Review by Boomerang86 
UPDATED: 1.9 years ago
member for 5.9 years, 2624 visits, last login: 1 days ago
 Walden,Orange,NY
 $20 per month
 about 2 days
 "unlimited calling plans, many useful features, low cost"
 "most support is overseas, VERY long hold times on phone"
 "got cable HSI? kick your POTS to the curb!"
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
Vonage has been around for a while now, but I hedged on ordering the service after mixed reviews here and elsewhere. Found out Circuit City was selling starter kits with a $50. MIR, decided it was time to give it a go. I was the first customer to buy the kit in CCs Poughkeepsie, NY store. Brought it home, went to the special website for CC customers (you get two months of free service and activation with the $99.95 kit), and that's where I hit the first snag... the MAC for my Motorola VT1005 was invalid on their system! Called 1-VONAGE-HELP and waited about 10 minutes on hold; the rep (thick accent) told me he'd make a ticket and have a resolution within 24 hours. About 20 hours later he called back and said the MAC would go through. It took a couple of page reloads to complete the registration, but I finally got there. Setup 911 and some features, now it was time to hook everything up (I have Earthlink Cable over Time/Warner BTW).
Followed the wiring instructions to a tee, then picked up the phone... NO DIAL TONE. Adapter didn't seem to boot up properly; tried several reboots with no success, so called tech support for the 2nd time. He had me try three or four reboots that accomplished nothing, then had me download and run Ping Plotter to see how my traceroute was (10% packet loss at one hop, but not bad enough to seriously affect call quality). Magically I now had a dial tone! Placed several test calls that all went through on the first try; incoming calls work too! The people I called told me the call quality was good (default bandwidth saver setting of 90K high), but on my end the level of my voice kept changing frequently. Pretty close to a good wireless phone call, but not nearly as steady as POTS. If you use it long enough, I suppose you get acclimated to it.
I'm keeping this for at least the 30 day guarantee period, and if the wife and I are still happy with it we're ditching our telco. The best thing? We live somewhere that nearly everyone we call is long distance; Vonage will save us $25. or more EVERY MONTH!! Not only that, we were able to select a phone number which is a LOCAL call for most of our family (now it's long distance for our neighbors, which we never hear from anyway; no great loss). If it does go down, we can always turn on a cell phone and make calls from that. Stay tuned, I will post updates frequently.
update 3/16: Service has been working great for two days straight. Got an e-mail this morning telling me that 911 is now ready. Wife is happy with call quality and didn't notice her voice level changing, so we're beginning the process of telling everyone our new phone number. The plan is to disconnect our POTS line at the end of our next billing cycle. I'll pick up a UPS for the modem and ATA later this week. Calls seem to go through quickly enough with no perceptable delay, just an occasional faint echo. I think I'm going to like VOIP, especially with the money we'll be saving!
update 3/19: Yesterday we had a LONG power outage here, lasting 6-8 hours. My UPS kept the ATA and cable modem up without fail but the modem lost sync quickly, perhaps less than five minutes after the power went out. If the CMTS goes down, so does your Vonage. Naysayers will tell you this is a reason to never get rid of your POTS line, but in this age of wireless phones (who doesn't have one among us?) it's a small price to pay for the tremendous savings VOIP provides. I have prepaid wireless phones and rarely use them, so I'm not the typical cell phone user who is constantly connecting to other people and it doesn't bother me. Voicemail will still take your messages if the ATA goes down.
update 4/03: Vonage has been great! I use it as my only home phone now. Voice quality is very good, no noticeable downtime for incoming or outgoing calls! One annoyance is that with most phones you must dial SLOWLY or the ATA doesn't get the whole number and gives a fast busy signal. Voice mail is SO COOL, I get e-mail telling me I have a new message then log in to the Vonage website and play the message from my PC! For $25. a month, I could not be much more satisfied. Haven't needed support since activation, smooth ride so far.
update 6/24: Seven digit dialing is here, FINALLY!! Haleleujiah! The service has performed so well for us that we're recommending it to all our friends with cable internet hookups.
update 7/19: OOPS! Vonage was pushing firmware to my MTA, to try and fix a problem with the device failing to reconnect after a modem restart. The power failed during the download and my device was garbage! After a few quick e-mails Vonage had arrainged to send me a replacement, which arrived quickly and was already provisioned on my account! It wasn't fun being without phone service for a couple of days, but it's STILL a good tradeoff for the savings over POTS.
update 4/20/06: I am STILL using the VT1005 adapter I got almost two years ago and I figure Vonage has saved me over $1000 over my former POTS service. I switched to their Basic 500 plan and now pay only $15 a month plus fees (a bit over $17 total). What would I change? Anonymous Call Rejection and Call Intercept are two services I wouldn't mind seeing Vonage add.
update 10/24/06: There have been a couple hiccups, really minor annoyances with the service when placing outbound calls lately; sometimes the called party hears you but you can't hear them. A second call attempt is usually successful. It's been a good two and a half years with Vonage, but I've decided to cancel since my RLEC lowered their rates substantially and offer a package that will give me the reliability of POTS for about $10 more than I am now paying for Vonage (and the higher tier HSI service that supports it). Also, you should note that (at least where I live) Vonage charges customers ALL THE SAME TAXES the POTS companies do, although to a lesser amount because Vonage is still cheaper. They're still worth a try IMHO.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of Vonage |
|
Vonage
(63)
(110)
·
·
The sales call said it all...