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Update: After 2 months, love the service. No issues to report. Have grown to love the vportal Followup comments:
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Have been using Vonage for some 6 months now, and all I can say is No more ATT. Vonage service has been everything they advertised it so be. Voice quality is excellent. Up time has been excellent; my vonage box did hiccup one time for a couple hours, but just had to power off reset it. Only con to mention is issue with VoIP in general in that if our ISP connection drops, no fone, but it just forwards to my cell anyhow so nothing is lost. I save some 25.00 each month over our previous ATT service. I can save even more money if I decide to pay a full year in advance....but will wait on that until the tax rebate comes thru.... Sammydad1 Followup comments:
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UPDATE: Two problems have surfaced that would prevent me from getting rid of my land line. (a) I'm now noticing that my caller id info does not show correctly. When I call people, they do not see my name. (b) E911 is not working correctly -- despite the fact that 933 tells me that I am enabled for E911, my test 911 call went to the wrong call center and they did not get my address info. This is a serious problem! We'll see if Vonage can resolve it. CompUSA has a special this week where the D-Link Vonage adapter is free after rebates, and then also they have *another* $100 rebate after you've been a customer for 60 days. So basically a free adapter with the activation fee and the first couple month of service free! I decided to try it. After purchasing the adapter I went to Vonage's web site and activated service. That experience is very easy and about 15 minutes later I got an email with my new phone number. Everything I read indicated that installation of the adapter should be a plug and play kind of experience but I need to place the box behind a SonicWALL TZ170 firewall. Vonage's web site is not all that clear about exactly what ports have to be opened and in which direction... so before I did *anything* I assigned the adapter's MAC address a static address in the DHCP server and then created a rule in the firewall to allow all traffic in both directions to the box. So, I can't comment on whether Vonage's FAQs are accurate or exactly what ports have to opened or whatever because I sidestepped that whole issue. I think this *could* potentially be a bit intimidating for the less technical among us. The first time I plugged in the adapter it "just worked" and a few moments later I had a dial tone. I was surprised by the call quality -- in the (admittedly so far somewhat limited) usage I've experienced, there has been not a single sound artifact that would tip me off to the fact that I'm on VoIP. It sounds just like a land line. I'm running over Comcast internet. So far I am very impressed with Vonage. Followup comments:
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I purchased the adapter at BB, installed the device and setup service in just a few minutes. Initially I had some call quality issues which were due entirely to my ISP, once I switched to FIOS those issues were resolved and my Vonage service has been rock solid ever since. Vonage has provided almost all of the options and services I need at a reasonable cost other than the ability to block calls from specific numbers which they tell me is in the works. Good luck finding another phone company that provides so many features and such a wide area of coverage for the price. Verizon has tried repeatedly to get me to bundle my phone with the rest of my services but by their own admission they can't even come close. Based on my own personal experience I've recommended the service to others and they've been very pleased. Give it a try and I think you will be pleased with both the service and the cost. Update: Vonage has recently instituted new fees. See this thread: »Vonage price increase To be fair, many companies use these hidden fees in order to hide total cost in their advertisements all the time. Regardless I like many people absolutely despise this kind of underhanded method to impose rate increases. I've been very happy to support Vonage for several years as an alternative to the current well entrenched and over priced Telco industry but they are pushing their luck. As they seem to become more and more like the companies I fled from I'm now seriously considering other VOIP services. Call quality is still excellent for me personally and value for the dollar is still reasonably good. But the recent rate hikes, "regulatory fees" and complaints from members here on BBR of difficulty canceling accounts has caused me to be much less enthusiastic about recommending Vonage. Update: 9.29.09 Well after 5 years with Vonage I've left for Ooma and the possibility of saving a chunk of change. Rates continued to rise ever closer to standard Telco rates and the feature list had grown rather stale. The Vonage World plan at $24.99 (actually $32.99 with fees) was more than I wanted to pay monthly since all of our phone calls are conducted via Blackberries these days and the Basic 500 plan wasn't enough with two daughters in the house. Other than adding some additional countries to the calling plan the feature list has remained stagnant for the entire 5 years, including a lack of the much requested number block feature which was promised for implementation repeatedly. Would have really come in handy for all of those, "Your auto warranty is about to expire" calls. Cancellation of service was not easy. They begged, they pleaded, they interrogated. The whole process took a painful 15-20 minutes. Truth be told I was actually feeling a little sorry for them. All that being said, the Vonage service was rock solid. Call quality was excellent, never any down time and I never once had to call CS for a technical issue. If their feature set and calling plans fit your lifestyle I'd highly recommend Vonage. Followup comments:
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I've found that the people that complain about bad Vonage service have zero knowledge about networking or how their equipment works. I've never had a problem that I could blame on Vonage. All the problems are usually do to customer equipment, ISPs or lack of general knowledge by the user. Followup comments:
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Update 8/26/09 Over the past couple of months Vonage's quality/reliability has dropped. There have been several incidences of calls being dropped totally or complaints of not being heard. Several of these calls were of an important nature. My research suggests that it was not due to an ISP related issue. I have consequently dropped my ratings of call reliability and quality and I am pursuing service with provider. Update 06/17/2008 I received a "phishing" type of call and contacted customer service in an attempt to identify the origination as the caller id info was obviously spoofed. The customer service number was quickly answered by an native agent in Holdmel NJ and after some brief research on his part, he quickly transfered me to an advanced tech support agent also in Holmdel. The Advanced Tech Support agent checked a variety of tools that he had available but was only able to determine that the call originated in Costa Rica. What a turn around in Customer Service quality. I'm impressed. Update 01/16/2008 I needed to contact tech support several times this past week for issues involving voicemail waiting indicator light reliability, a subsequent audio issue, and then to have my device returned to default settings after a variety of changes by overseas support. A very long and arduos process. The tech support still stinks, with the Advanced Services Group being difficult to contact but effective. Update 10/7/2007 Vonage continues to be rock a solid performer with high sound quality. I am aware of the legal issues they are facing, but I will stick with them until the end if it comes. Update 5/30/2007 I have ported my number back to Vonage from Viatalk. In my opinion, although pricey, Vonage meets my needs best. Update 5/18/2007 I have decided that for me, Vonage in fact supplies the highest quality service. I have decided to return as a customer and opened a new account. I have been pleasantly surprised in that the 4 telephone contacts that I have had have all been with support personnel here in New Jersey. Update 5/2/2007 The port to ViaTalk was completed today and the Vonage account was canceled. The cancellation was handled by an efficient and pleasant customer service representative in Holmdel NJ. The $42 disconnect fee was charged as expected. My only issue with Vonage was uncertainty about their future and concern over retaining my long time telephone number. Update 04/21/2007 I have been very satisfied with Vonage. Unfortunately, with all of the negative publicity and uncertainty surrounding their future, I have decided to port my number and use ViaTalk as my VOIP provider. I wish Vonage well in their battle with Verizon and may be back someday if things stabilize Update 02/27/07 Voice quality went down the tubes yesterday. A call to a heavily accented and hard to understand tech support agent resulted in changes to my provisioning which did not help. Later in the evening, I noticed a thread here involving the issue suggesting it was widespread. I was able to make contact with a tech here in good old NJ later in the evening who returned my settings to their defaults and sound quality returned at once. Initial review: I just moved my Verizon DSL service to a "dry loop" and decided to give VoIP phone service a try. Comparing information about the various providers from the forums here at BroadbandReports.com did not provide me with a clear preference. I went to the local Circuit City and picked up a Linksys/Vonage PAPv2 telephone adapter. It came with 2 rebates that totalled $100. I returned home and signed up for service that included one free month, and then installed the device. For the next 5 hours the power light on the adapter was blinking 3 times a second, an indication that it was obtaining it's configuration from Vonage. My first 3 calls to customer support over that period of time ended up overseas and proved fruitless. After the usual scripted exchanges, I was told that an outage in the Northeast US caused my issue and was told to power cycle the device. This didn't work. My last call ended up in the good old US of A and the tech explained that he could see the device and walked me through a hardware reset. Within 5 seconds I had service. Service has been rock solid since with good sound quality. The web based features are quite impressive to someone who grew up using a rotary dial phone mounted to the kitchen wall. Updates to follow Followup comments:
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What you also get with Vonage is better service and reliability in my opinion. I've traded emails with their tech support folks to resolve problems. They're always very responsive. Their web site kept me informed of my number porting status. I didn't have to call AT&T at all or get as involved as I did with that other dinky provider (wish I could remember their name) I tried. That's why I like Vonage they've been around quite a while doing this and yes you could probably go with some smaller company for various reasons but will they be around tomorrow? Yes people have been predicting Vonage's demise for a long time, but they're still here. In fact I've seen the Vonage iPhone app has been approved and is currently under beta testing. I hope it comes out soon! When I signed up since I was a new customer the $70 fee for the adapter and shipping was waived. I went through my fair share of VoIP routers with ATT CallVantage (lots of problems due to dropped packets from Comcast was ATT CallVantage tech support's opinion) and I really love this router. It has an orange back-lit display and is really nice for being not just a router but also a caller id unit with a lot of functionality. You can use it to dial calls, call your voice mail box, etc. I choose to put my Vonage router behind my WRT54GL running Tomato Linux. Vonage has a help page that was easy to find that documents which ports you need to forward so that set up was simple. I have yet to actually touch the web interface of the Vonage adapter. The only down side I would say there is to Vonage is their lack of developing new features very often or having the ability to block individual callers. Though I use Google Voice now for any of the features I was missing in Vonage. With the new $24.99 plan they did give you visual voice mail for free. I suppose we have the release of Google Voice to thank for that perhaps? (as well as the world calling plan for only $24.99 instead of $50 per month too perhaps) Overall I'm very satisfied with Vonage. The call quality is great. I've heard of others with call quality issues, but I've had none. I do give the Vonage adapter top priority in the QoS settings in my Tomato firmware. I'd highly recommend Vonage as a way to dump your local phone service. Whatever you're paying the local phone company it's too much. Vonage is a better value. Followup comments:
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Vonage
(45)
(65)
Hermitage,Davidson,TN
$34 per month
about 3 days
"nice quality for the money and my price has not changed in 3 years"
"none"
"Better service than my previous (BellSouth-ATT)"
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Vonage - False Advertisement
