Vonage? Tell me what your experiences are.

Dulcius_ex_asperis

So my mom is tired of paying 60 or 70$+ for her landline, but she has to maintain one for her alarm system to work. Vonage has a neat little plan for 24.99$/mo right now, unlimited calling. Good idea? Bad idea? Any unseen add-ons besides the 9.99 (or free) little router thing? Any unseen disadvantages?

Kate of Lokys

When you say she has to maintain a landline, do you mean she needs to have a regular, active hardwired telephone line coming into her house? Because if that's the case, Vonage won't do shit for you. It's a VoIP service, not a telephone service. You still use your regular telephone, but it gets plugged into your router (via an adapter), not into a telephone jack. If you switched to Vonage completely and stopped paying for your landline, it would be deactivated.

I strongly suspect that VoIP would not be viewed as an acceptable alternative to an actual landline.

That said, if she's sick of paying $70 per month for her residential phone, here's what she does:

1. Strip every possible feature from her current phone service - call display, call forwarding, any long distance plans, etc. Take it down to the bare bones.
2. Get Skype, and sign her up for the Unlimited US/Canada plan. It's $3 US per month, and as the name suggests, it gets her unlimited outgoing calls to any landline or cell phone in the US or Canada. (Well, not quite unlimited; it's 10,000 minutes per month, which is 166 hours, which is more than five hours per day. Even I have never hit the limit, and I have a long-distance boyfriend with whom I fall asleep with on the phone every night).
3. Pick her up either a Skype phone (I use this one - cordless, good range, good battery life, and you can get it for under $70 new) or a USB phone adapter like this.

For incoming calls, people can still call her landline. For outgoing calls, she can use Skype. By cutting long distance from her regular phone, she'll save a fair bit - I don't know where you are, but a basic landline in Ontario is $30 per month with Bell or Rogers, including one or two features (so hey, she could still have call display if she wanted). Add in $3 per month for Skype, and she will have cut her overall bill in half.

SkyGheNe

My family and a few of our friends tried vonage.

We lasted about two months and canceled after dealing with really poor service. There's a reason you're paying 24.99.

There were times when during the conversation, people would drop - or for instance, the phone would cut for several seconds then come back mid conversation - annoyances like that.

RUNN1NGMAN

I have had Vonage for over two years. It's a great deal. I've never had service problems at all. Customer service is really great and the price can't be beat.

I actually briefly switched to Verizon a while back and hated them, so I switched back to Vonage. When I switch back, they took off $5/month from my bill just as a thank-you. Now, I was going back to them anyway, they didn't have to offer me anything. They are just a good company.

Unfortunately, I'm guessing she needs a physical phone line for her alarm system, and Vonage won't work for that.

Aridhol

SkyGheNe wrote: »

My family and a few of our friends tried vonage.

We lasted about two months and canceled after dealing with really poor service. There's a reason you're paying 24.99.

There were times when during the conversation, people would drop - or for instance, the phone would cut for several seconds then come back mid conversation - annoyances like that.

I had an identical experience. No matter the bitrate I chose I would always have crap calls. I switched to a a digital phone through the cable co. as soon as I was able.

Ludious

she doesn't have to maintain a landline for her alarm system. The alarm company can come install a wireless callbox for the system. It's basically a cellphone that only works to call the alarm company.

It's an added fee but a lot less than $70 a month. I am pretty sure they just go into your existing alarm control box and mount the new stuff inside.

DeShadowC

Some alarm companies won't allow you to use VOIP either. Some require you to get a wireless transmitter if you switch to a VOIP service.

arcath

I used it for over a year.

No problems what so ever.

Scrublet

My parents got it, and for some reason it wouldn't take incoming calls a lot of the time. Never figured it out, but half the time I would call and they wouldn't know.

Newton

I've had vonage for about two years now and I've always been totally satisfied with it. Never had any technical issues, it's really cheap and it has lots of geed features. I like the ability to set up call forwarding from any internet connection. If I want to, I can have calls forwarded to my cell phone or listen to my voice mails from anywhere. You can also set it up so that it will only forward calls when the modem is out. So if your internet connection is lost, a call will just come in on your cell phone instead. I would highly recommend it.

Scrublet

I'm really curious to know if Vonage is like Cable vs. DSL...it varies greatly by area. For instance, where I live DSL sucks balls compared to cable (though FiOS is beating all, of course). However, where I used to go to school, cable was god awful and everyone pretty much got DSL derivatives by default. Instead of this board, you may try finding a way to check with people in your area.