enichols
join:2004-05-30
Muncie, IN
| Outages?
Vonage has been extremely reliable for us. Comcast was a bit "difficult" about bandwidth when we initially acquired Vonage. There have been no instances of Vonage being out for us except for ice storms when all power was off. We have cell phones to take up the slack and calls from Vonage are automatically forwarded to the cell phones if service should become disrupted.
Our phone bills went from $200 - $300 a month with AT&T to the price Vonage has always advertised for unlimited service.
Sound quality is excellent, 911 is excellent.
We will stick with Vonage, no questions asked! |
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benc
Premium
join:2007-06-17
Glen Carbon, IL
 ·Charter Pipeline
 ·Future Nine Corpor..
·Callcentric
 ·AT&T Midwest
| $200-$300?? Did or do you make a lot of International Phone Calls?
If you only make domestic calls (within the U.S.) there's no reason it should cost that much.
For about $71 (through AT&T), I get this:
- Unmetered domestic calls for a flat-rate. Calling my cousin in NJ costs no more than calling my parents (three hours away) or even calling my neighbor next door.
- Caller ID
- Voicemail, though I can't use it.
- Call Waiting, though I don't really use it.
- Plus some other features I can't remember.
Once my bill was $92, though I also made some International calls that month. |
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enichols
join:2004-05-30
Muncie, IN
| Quite a number of calls of long duration to CA, NYC, TX, each and every day!
We have had Vonage since 2004, as I recall.
If we got a bill from AT&T that was as low as yours at its max, it was considered some kind of miracle.
When we had AT&T, there were no calls for a flat rate. There was no such thing at that time. EVERYTHING was timed except for local calls. We were charged extra for everything and every service. None of the features you have were included in the price of our AT&T exorbitant fees and bogus taxes.
We have had telephone service for over forty years. AT&T was miserable to deal with. Vonage has been just the opposite.
How much do you ACTUALLY know about Vonage?
Happy Holidays! |
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benc
Premium
join:2007-06-17
Glen Carbon, IL
·Charter Pipeline
·Future Nine Corpor..
·Callcentric
·AT&T Midwest
| said by enichols  :Quite a number of calls of long duration to CA, NYC, TX, each and every day! We have had Vonage since 2004, as I recall. If we got a bill from AT&T that was as low as yours at its max, it was considered some kind of miracle. When we had AT&T, there were no calls for a flat rate. There was no such thing at that time. EVERYTHING was timed except for local calls. We were charged extra for everything and every service. None of the features you have were included in the price of our AT&T exorbitant fees and bogus taxes. We have had telephone service for over forty years. AT&T was miserable to deal with. Vonage has been just the opposite. I'm sorry to hear that. At least nowadays they have flat-rate service. It's great, since probably at least half my calls are long distance. That's because I call my parents a lot.
said by enichols :How much do you ACTUALLY know about Vonage? Happy Holidays! Not much, though I'm biased against VOIP in general (not Vonage in particular) because any broadband I consider affordable tends to be a bit flimsy. It goes out whenever, and even though it usually comes back pretty quickly it's unsuitable for anything real-time (like calls or video).
My experience is that POTS has never gone out on me. Uptime can't be 100%, but of any service, utility, whatever that I have used nothing has been more reliable.
Plus it's great for complaining to the power company when the power goes out. |
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JoeG4
join:2001-12-16
945941 | $71 for something roughly equivalent to what I pay $30 to Vonage for?
LMFAO. Yeah. Bargain. GTFO my internets. |
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enichols
join:2004-05-30
Muncie, IN
| reply to benc
I believe Vonage outages that we experienced were discussed at the beginning of our discussions.
Don't let anyone kid you. Vonage takes bandwidth to have consistent sound. We have Comcast's high-end Internet services, so that is not an issue for us. Also, in the first part of our commentaries, it was pointed out that Comcast gave problems because they were actually lying about the uplink speed. Vonage caught that, and it took many calls and many inept Comcast service personnel to get the issue corrected, and it took some months. Very annoying. However, my wife and I strongly believed in the principle of VoIP, and Vonage has lived up to what we thought it would be.
I tinkered with other VoIP services, but they were not as good.
Comcast and others who offer "digital" phone service that hints at being VoIP, are as annoying and greedy as AT&T. They cost more and nickel and dime as much out of your billfold as they possibly can!
We have friends in England and Germany. All calls to England are free and Germany calls are two cents a minute. (One hour = $1.20...let AT&T top that!) We also call Alaska. Those calls are free. Canada is included as are Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
It's pretty remarkable for us to be able to do that since we can remember when there were no dial phones (you asked the operator for the number) and long distance calls had to be placed and you were called back within a half hour to talk to whom you had called. There were no area codes, etc.
The cost of Comcast and Vonage together averages out to what the basic AT&T bill was without any calls.
Go to Vonage.com and see all the amazing features you get included with the cost of unlimited service.
Perhaps when you can get better bandwidth, you'll give Vonage a try. I am pretty certain you'll like it as much as we do.
Peace... |
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wilburyan
join:2002-08-01
| reply to JoeG4
The difference in price is reliability. Our local phone provider is advertising non stop right now about how reliable their POTS system is. And they are right... it is reliable... likely 99.99% uptime. (Which is less than an hour a year)
whereas Vonage is around 99.9% uptime (about 8 hours a year)
I don't run a business off of my phone... my phone not working does not mean I lose business. So I'll gladdly pay half price for a service that provides more features and is slightly less reliable. |
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JoeG4
join:2001-12-16
945941
·Vonage
| The only reliability issues I've had with my phone were caused by something I did or a little rewiring in my house 
On that note, the phone service here with AT&T wasn't that much better, we have underground wiring and THEY STILL had outages from time to time, it was mostly with the internet service, but it still happened with the phone occasionally. |
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