vB Easy Archive - Vonage anyone?

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Vonage anyone?
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Posted by: mbkatt

Hi All. I'm in Colorado and I am an avid Qwest boycotter. I gave them the boot from my home and have never looked back. By dropping them and my long distance carrier, I was able to pay for my broadband connection and Vonage and save $40/month.

I've been using Vonage now for over 4 years and have nothing but great things to say abut their service offerings and quality. I could say less than affable things about the internet providers I've used in the past 4 years, but overall my experieince has been great.

I know there are lower cost alternatives, but none of them meet my needs as they do not have the same number of services available.

I currently have 2 phone lines via Vonage (with two different area codes), plus 1 toll-free number that forwards to one of the lines, and another "virtual number" that forwards to the same line as the toll-free... That's basically 4 phone numbers coming in on two lines. And my monthly bill is always only $65, where my work pays for the cost of one of the lines, ($24/month plus sales tax).

The only issues I have ever had were with my internet connectivity. I live in a fairly remote location and we only have internet provider available to us, which is not always reliable. They seem to go through 3 weeks/year, every year, where their connection bandwidth sucks, and then they upgrade. But every year it's the same thing... everything works great for 49 weeks, and then 3 weeks of @#*#!

Anyway, I just thought I'd share...

Anyone else use Vonage?

Posted by: jase88

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8830/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/109)

Glad to hear that you've had good success with Vonage.

Posted by: Molly Mcbutter

I'm another early adopter of Vonage. Switched back in the beginning of 2004 as a boycott to then bellsouth. At the time it was cheaper and to this day you still get some features you can't get elsewhere like simulring.

I use it for small business, 2 lines and an additional fax line.
I even using it for using a credit card terminal but if I were to get a new cc terminal today, I would go with an IP based unit.

Here's the problems that I am now having with vonage.
As of the 6'th of jan, 2009, you can no longer use call hunt and simulring at the same time. I have yet to find a suitable workaround for this and both features are needed at the same time.

There is bellsouth style "price creep" on the bills now with the taxes. I am paying over $20 a month in taxes alone for my two lines + fax. That $20 alone will pay for a year of magic jack or skype.
What started out around $63 a month is now a little over $80 a month. That may be small potatoes for business communications but the fact is there are alternatives. Especially now that the features I want to use aren't available.

I have been one of the most loyal vonage customers but even I will likely scale back.

I haven't had any quality issues with vonage and it definitely is a home phone or small business phone replacement for sure but it is not longer a steal considering local telcos match pricing now for unlimited ptsn lines for around $25 a month.

Posted by: bsharitt

I hade some issues of my serivice not working followed by billing errors all wrapped up in poor customer service. I do skype now, mostly as a backup to cell phones, but when I was doing the full on VoIP replacement for POTS, I used broadvoice, and would recomendthem to others.

Posted by: DaBones

I use Vonage, and have only had minor problems, my ISP is very solid, and I only subscribe to their 1MB d/l service, I can use my Vonage, and stream radio stations and browes sites.. I used to have 5Mb service, and at that time, also had my brother and his friend using the connection with 2 Playstations streaming constant data, always had clear Vonage calls..

my wife moved here (Ontario) from South Carolina, so all her family is down near Columbia, so we have a Virtual Number there.. we use the 500 min plan, our total bill is $31.50/mo, and I dont' have to worry about dialing long distance numbers, since everywhere is local..

I'm happy with my Vonage, I know alot of ppl complain, but more than likely it's their ISP, or their own network setup, not Vonage themselves that cause the quality issues.. as for the cancelling and other CS problems, well, those definatly need to get worked on, but for the price, what do you really expect right?

Posted by: lmcjipo

When I had Vonage, I didn't have any problems with their sound quality. My internet speed was rated at about 5 Mbits/second download and under 1 Mbit/second upload.

My only problems with Vonage was their customer/technical support and one of the services that they offered (SimulRing) which didn't work properly for me.

I was using SimulRing to "blast" my personal cellphone, my company cellphone, and my work phone. What happened was that when I picked up one of these lines when someone called me, all the phones would naturally stop ringing. However in the middle of the conversation (normally after 30 seconds), the phones would start ringing again where the caller was hearing the sound that he/she normally hears when they are waiting for me to pick up the phone whereas if I'm close to any of the other phones, I hear them actually ringing. If I pick up any of those phones, there is just dead silence.

After numerous calls to technical/customer support and the return/exchange of my router, the problem didn't go away so I eventually cancelled.

However, I didn't have any issues with the sound quality and I was a customer of their's for over 2 years before cancelling.

Posted by: alanna08

I hope you have a great time with Vonage.