 Review by rdstoll 
UPDATED: 280 days ago
member for 9 years, 576 visits, last login: 28 days ago
 Des Plaines,Cook,IL
 $54 per month
 about 7 days
 "Great call quality, easy to use, excellent features, cheap"
 "Website reliability spotty at times."
 "A fine alternative to Bells."
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(ratings match consensus)
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**2/2/09 update: Still very satisfied with Vonage service. Sound quality is great and for anyone doing a lot of international calling you can't beat the rates. The cost advantage of Vonage over the regional bells has eroded somewhat as states and municipalities have gotten their grubby hands on these guys are are forcing them to charge more taxes but anytime you can avoid AT&T/Verizon/etc you're doing yourself a favor. PS my $54 all-in cost is with two lines.
**2/13/06 update: I've upgraded the web site rating of Vonage a few spots due to a marked increase in the site's reliability. There were many issues in November & Decmeber whereby the site would be down for extended periods at a time. Rumor was that Vonage was moving their offices, which caused the website outages. This seems to have been resolved as I have not had any issue with the website in four weeks.**
I signed up with Vonage in October of 2005 and would say on balance, I am pleased with the service. It was very easy to set up with my existing cable pipe and wireless connection, and works very well with my phones. I was also able to get TiVo to work. The call quality is just as good as a regular phone line with few instances of a poor connection. The service itself has also been reliable (i.e. no outages).
Additionally, I would say Vonage's offering of services is generous. Their website is very easy to use and all of the features are intuitive and useful. It's easy to forward calls to different numbers on the site, set it up to ring at different numbers at the same time, you can check voicemail right on the internet, and setting up an additional line is a snap.
There are two issues with Vonage that potential customers should be made aware of. 1) The website can be unreliable, going down for extensive periods of time (i.e. a whole day) on a frequent basis (every 2-3 weeks). This is a very frustrating problem for anyone who will be active in using their features like call forwarding, as the internet is the only way to change the settings. It would be nice if Vonage allowed you to change those settings right over the phone like you can with a Bell. 2) Technical support is weak. Your tech support calls get sent overseas and I have yet to find their solutions to be any more useful than what I could figure out on my own. Additionally, they are unable to change your feature settings because they rely on accessing your account through the internet, and if their site is down, they are unable to do so.
Bottom line: Vonage is an excellent choice for those that are strictly looking to save money, and are not interested in all the bells and whistles that would require changing your settings on the 'net. I saved over 50% off of what I was paying SBC and am getting more features that are also more robust to use. If you are a business or someone who would likely use their forwarding or other features a lot, I would caution you about their site's unreliability. It can indeed be frustrating and they are not good at giving you a timeline for when the issue will be resolved.
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