Does anyone here have Vonage

[Le Taz Hot]

and if so, (channeling my best Dr. Phil) how's it workin' for ya? My SBC land line has been out for 2-1/2 weeks, made 3 repair appointments and they have yet to show up. I need an alternative and Vonage is the only one I can see at the moment.

Anyway, feedback anyone?

[Le Taz Hot]

1. Kick

in the hopes this will stay on page one longer than 45 seconds and give people a chance to respond.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

2. if my cable is working

my vonage works seamlessly and it's cheap as dirt... i use it to set up grass roots in other states like Col ans Ga that are winnable.

[NNadir]

3. I have it for my business line.

It generally works OK. I do have some hissing and buzzing from time to time.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

5. true

I get a little noise too but SCB was worse and Bell costed lots more.

[Misunderestimator]

4. Good stuff.

Though your cable service has a lot to do with it. The last place I lived, I had lots of problems with dropped calls, static, and the phone interrupting my network connection. Since I moved and have different cable service, I have not had a single problem. Can't beat the price of $25 a month for unlimited national calling.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

6. exactly

i call strangers in just the right area code and if i get a dem they are usually depressed so i tell them about the power of one... and how it becomes the power of ten... it's grass roots... my brother is doing it in his union IBEW.

[Lars39]

7. We have Vonage but we're thinking about going with Sunrocket.

[Le Taz Hot]

8. Can I ask why

you're thinking about switching?

[Lars39]

15. If you pre-pay, it's cheaper.

$199/year.

[Missy Vixen]

9. We love Vonage

Our phone bill is $24.95 per month instead of the $100-300 per month it was before we signed up with Vonage. It works great. The only glitch: No telephone if the power goes out. Also, you'll need to follow Vonage's directions re: 911 dialing. Other than that, we love it.

Julie

[Pithlet]

10. We did have some issues.

But Vonage was pretty good working with us getting it fixed, and it's been fine ever since. They sent us out a replacement fairly quickly.

[politicat]

11. we have Sunrocket, one of the competitors.

Works great! Clearer line (and it makes calling and faxing Washington feasible.)

We've got the gizmo hooked up to the DSL (no dial tone) line, the fax machine and a cordless set to the gizmo, and no problems.

www.sunrocket.com

Our only hitch has been convincing Tmobile to transfer our phone numbers, but that's not Sunrocket's fault.

Once tmobile is done, we'll be off cells for good. (Thank PTB.)

Edited to add: The gizmo and the dsl modem are on a UPS - when we lost power a few weeks ago (due to a water main break + bad digging practices) we had phone service (and wireless service) for 8 hours on the UPS. In fact, the laptops' batteries were down before the UPS was.

[NashVegas]

23. Thanks for the Tip But

I have regular DSL, not a cable modem, so I wouldn't be able to jettison BellSouth. Ugh.

[Fredda Weinberg]

12. I've had it for about a year

Didn't want to pay for new service when I came back to NYC ... so my brother keeps the landline and I've got Vonage on our Optimum Online. I've never had a problem with outages and the quality surprises everyone, 'cept me - I've set up a couple of commercial VoIP systems.

I've got the minimum - $20/mo for more minutes than I need. Wouldn't change it for anything.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. I went with them after Qwest raised my plain vanilla monthly bill

by $11 over a three-month period. That's without long distance. By that time, I was using my cell phone for all long distance calls, and this may have been Qwest's "punishment" for my failure to use their long distance service.

Now I have the Vonage 500 minutes anywhere in the US or Canada plan, which is plenty for my needs, at $15 a month, PLUS a dedicated fax line for an extra $10.

I have had occasional outages connected with cable outages, but I've set up Vonage to automatically forward calls to my cell phone if I don't answer or if the cable system is down.

And the cell phone is always available as a backup if the electrical power or the cable connection goes out.

I'm a satisfied customer.

[no name no slogan]

17. Qwest just plain sucks, don't they?

I've never experienced the levels of poor service they consistently deliver. I know several people whose issues with them have taken YEARS to resolve. Getting rid of them was one of the best things I ever did. :hi:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. Qwest screwed me over in two different cities!

In Portland, they kept sending me bills, even after I had left them for another service provider. (There was a company in town that provided local phone service for very low rates to office and large apartment buildings.) The bills would not stop. After six months of my trying to get them to stop billing me, they put my phone line on "soft dial tone," which meant that I could call out but nobody could call in. From the point of view of an outside person, it sounded as if my phone was ringing endlessly. Even the security system in my apartment didn't work anymore.

Since I could still call out, I learned of the problem only after a worried friend went to the building manager because she couldn't reach me by phone (not even my customary answering machine message) or with the buzzer, even though I was supposed to be home.

It took me four days of getting the runaround in the company hierarchy to fix the problem, even with help from my current service provider, who got the same kind of runaround. I had to explain the problem in full to each person I talked to, and I must have talked to ten different people.

I felt as if I was being punished for leaving their company.

Finally I found a customer service rep who seemed to have some human decency, and I got the problem solved by insisting on talking to her when I rang the customer service department.

I was real uneasy when I moved back to Minneapolis and found that I would have to use Qwest, and indeed, I thought they were okay at first--until my plain vanilla bill went up $11 over a three-month period with a few cents here and a dollar there.

[kclown]

20. Handcranked cellphone charger

I bought a portable radio which includes a hand-crank cellphone charger at Radio Shack for about $40.

Not many know these exist. Could be a lifesaver.

[jobycom]

14. We have it. It's good. I've had some trouble with customer service

It's as good as your cable connection, so if that's solid, it works fine. If you want more than one phone, you'll need a cordless system with one base that broadcasts to however many phones you want. That's extra cash if you don't have it. But the quality is good, you don't even think about long distance charges (I keep forgetting other people have to pay them).

The CS problem we had was after lightning fried our modem. Tech support took an hour to convince that the modem was bad, using up our cell minutes. Then they took too long sending us the new modem, then they tried to bill us for it. We were down two weeks, and it took another month to straighten everything out. But compared to the regular phone company, they weren't any worse.

[no name no slogan]

16. How timely of you to post this

I've had it for several months, and it works great for me. I got the $25 unlimited long distance package and completely replaced my Qwest landline (Qwest, BTW, is possibly the WORST company in America-- they've actually been fined by the gov't because their service is so bad). For the same price as just bare bones local service from Qwest, I also get long distance, voicemail, caller id and some other cool stuff.

The only downside is that you need a reliable cable connection. Unfortunately, the cable to my apt building was cut over the weekend, so I lost not only my broadband internet and cable TV, but my phone as well. :( Thankfully I have a cell phone so I was not completely cut off, but it sucked not having the Vonage for a day.

A cool thing about Vonage is that you can set up call forwarding to any other phone via the web-based control panel. You can also listen to voicemail online, too.

Also, when I signed up, I got the modem converter package for free after rebates ($60 before). It's very easy to set up, too, if you've already got a cable modem and a router.

[AngryAmish]

18. I use it for work

5 stars.

[trogdor]

21. Don't expect cooperation from your telco.

I had Verizon. I was supposed to have my number transferred to Vonage. A month later, I asked Vonage what happened. They forwarded the request to Verizon, who ignored it. Another month later, I told Vonage to cancel the transfer request and give me a new permanent phone number. I then had to cancel Verizon myself, being forced to interact with their nerve-grating, Turing test-flunking, inappropriate reply-making customer service BOT for nearly half an hour to get my land line cut off, which really, really pissed me off.

Of course, none of this was Vonage's fault. They did try, and they even tried again when I asked them to. Verizon was just pissed off because they lost another customer to VoIP, and they took it out on me. Bastards.

[magnetism]

22. Vonage has worked great for me

The only bad things I can say are that:

- sometimes there is an echo
- sometimes the phone answers but the person on the other end cannot hear you (rare)
- call waiting will not stop until you answer it (this is actually both a pro and a con depending on who is on the phone)

Definitely worth the savings.