Anyone use Vonage?

bigmackloud

Active Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2005
Location
Raleigh, NC
Hey,

just curious if anyone was using Vonage phone service. how do you like it?

in my condo the only cell phone company that gets service is Nextel and i'm paying a lot of $$ each month for it. i'm kicking around the idea of getting something like vonage for home, and getting a cheaper cell phone plan for when i'm on the road. then i could get one of those fancy smancy phones that takes pictures and video. nextel phones are ridicuously expensive. plus with vonage, you get free call forwarding, so i could just give people my vonage number, and then if i'm not home, set it to forward any calls to my cell.

i really wish sprint would put their stuff on the nextel towers. then i could atleast switch to sprint and get a decent phone with more than just a color display.

that said, i did drop my i710 down half a flight of stairs this morning and it didn't even flinch, lol. touch phones.

later,
bigmac
 
We have packet 8 www.packet8.net Vonage did not have a local number for us. We have 2 numbers, one local, and one Asheville so her kids and sister can call us at no expense to them. No LD charges, use as much as you want, about $26 a month. Sometimes have to reset, all in all glad we did it, had it over a year now.
 
only thing I wonder about w/ the misc digital phone deals - what happens when its snows/ gets icy and the power goes out? How do you call anybody? (AKA, the power company to tell 'em "Hey, come fix this")
Wait, before you say "use the cell phone", the cell towers run off power too, (duh) when it's out around town, often no cell either.
Good ol' land-line has its own juice.
 
This is true, and the selling point ma Bell is using now. But living out in the country and 15 miles from city limits, it just don't happen that often. IF real worried about it, I could always run a cord out to my inverter.
 
RatLabGuy said:
only thing I wonder about w/ the misc digital phone deals - what happens when its snows/ gets icy and the power goes out? How do you call anybody? (AKA, the power company to tell 'em "Hey, come fix this")
Wait, before you say "use the cell phone", the cell towers run off power too, (duh) when it's out around town, often no cell either.
Good ol' land-line has its own juice.
Click to expand...

Put yer cable modem and phone device on a UPS, and make your call. The switching station also is on a UPS, as are cell towers, they just don't work forever.

Besides, I'd bet you 80% of households now don't have a wired phone anywhere... Your cordless doesn't work without power, either.

I've had to do a reset on the phone/router thing every so often (POS Linksys), but all in all, it's good, and we only pay $17.xx a month (on the 500 minute plan)
 
upnover said:
IF real worried about it, I could always run a cord out to my inverter.
Click to expand...

True, but chances are if the power is out at your house, it's out at the lines along the way too so that won't make any difference.
If the cable LE's don't get power, you don't get cable, hence, no phone.

One of my support items at work is digital phone and I see these issues every.. single... painful... day.
 
My parents have it. Sounds like shit. Every time they call, it's like talking to someone on a bad cellular signal. Drops out, highly-compressed, etc. Vonage says there's nothing wrong with their stuff, cable company says there's nothing wrong with theirs. They just point fingers back and forth, and nothing gets fixed.

Considering our phones have never gone out, but the cable goes out at least once every couple of months, it's pretty clear to me that any cost savings isn't worth the hassle or the low quality signal.
 
I work at Bellsouth in the advertising group. I talk with about 70 businesses per day and one of the issues is that the cable companies/Vonage are not reporting the listings to the phone book publishers i.e. BellSouth. That means listings are not available in the phone books. Also if the company does not report it to the Business office of Bellsouth, it will not be available on 411 (caller assistance). Good luck having anyone get a hold of you in case of an emergency!

I'm not sticking up for my company (I do not even use them, I only have cell) but if I ever got a land line it will be with the local carrier (Sprint in my area)
 
andysleds said:
I work at Bellsouth in the advertising group. I talk with about 70 businesses per day and one of the issues is that the cable companies/Vonage are not reporting the listings to the phone book publishers i.e. BellSouth. That means listings are not available in the phone books. Also if the company does not report it to the Business office of Bellsouth, it will not be available on 411 (caller assistance). Good luck having anyone get a hold of you in case of an emergency!
Click to expand...

Does that mean the fawkin horde of telemarketers, sales/"fundraising" scams, etc. wouldn't have these numbers either! :flipoff2:
 
Caver Dave said:
Does that mean the fawkin horde of telemarketers, sales/"fundraising" scams, etc. wouldn't have these numbers either! :flipoff2:
Click to expand...


I have not had even one single telemarketer, not one survey, and only one wrong number since I got mine.
With all the service charges, and crap Bell put on my bill, plus having to pay extra for expanded area, but still paying outside of that, taxes, this charge and that charge. I love mine
 
Diane said:
True, but chances are if the power is out at your house, it's out at the lines along the way too so that won't make any difference.
If the cable LE's don't get power, you don't get cable, hence, no phone.
One of my support items at work is digital phone and I see these issues every.. single... painful... day.
Click to expand...

This brings up my other issue.
I cannot count the number of times that Time Warner Cable has F-ed up our billing, service, double charged, "inadvertently cut", etc etc. If i had a Nickel for every time I've been on the phone w/ them I'd be rich. Biggest problem being odd cutouts between our router and cable modem. Once the modem just up and died altogether, another time it would randomly reset itself.
I'm not thrilled about my phone being dependent on their service.
 
Oh and re: telemarketers - get yourself on the Do not Call registry. We did it and they al lstopped, except for local NPOs that we give $$ to annually anyway.
 
RatLabGuy said:
This brings up my other issue.
I cannot count the number of times that Time Warner Cable has F-ed up our billing, service, double charged, "inadvertently cut", etc etc. If i had a Nickel for every time I've been on the phone w/ them I'd be rich.
Click to expand...

Holy shit. I forgot all about that. We had a running problem with Time Warner for like 6 mos where they fawked up our billing one month, then kept charging us late fees on the charges they told us not to pay. :shaking:
 
Caver Dave said:
Does that mean the fawkin horde of telemarketers, sales/"fundraising" scams, etc. wouldn't have these numbers either! :flipoff2:
Click to expand...

WRONG! All phone lists are available for sale, including the ones with VONAGE and TIME WARNER. People are not getting telemarketing calls yet, but they will be. Typically the list has to be of certain size before a telemarketing group will buy them. Sooner or later they will be getting these numbers:D :lol:
 
I've had vonage for at least 3 years now. The quality is great and I can be kind of picky about that. The price is great and with the way my wife talks, the unlimited long distance was saving us a couple hundred dollars a month.

A few months ago I would have told you it was awesome. However, then we had a problem and had to use their customer service. It's the worst I've ever used from any company in my entire life. It takes 20 minutes to get a person and that person is an idiot in a far away land. Then it's 20 more minutes to get to level 2. That person isn't clueless but he/she can't resolve my issue. 30 more minutes and you're at the top, level 3. At this point you've explained the problem 3 times and your cell phone is almost dead.

I went through that process at least 6 times and they have no issue tracking system so you start from scratch each time. My phone was down for two months and my wife's cell phone bill was almost $1,000! Vonage is great when it works but I swear nobody works there. It's just a bunch of machines with outsourced labor.
 
I recently had an issue. With packet 8. At least I thought it was. The tech was really helpful, found out the IP address in my router some how got changed. Could make any call, but only half would come in. HE got us fixed and no issues since
 
If anyone has Vonage and has any vice quality issues, or other electronic communication problems, there are a number of adjustable options.

The 2 that are the best, and EVERYONE who has vonage should do these
are call ask for TS
change voice quality to HIGH
and packet size to TEN

They do not "like" changing the packet size as this is akin to more bandwidth usage, but you will be surprised the difference it makes, BTW ANYONE who has an alarm hooked to Vonage should change this immediately.


Also as to the power issue, TWC is rolling out new modems, (they are on the ground in Charlotte) that have a buolt in 4ah Sealed Lead-Acid battery good for somewhere around 3 hours of talk time and 72 hours of stand by...
 
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