47 replies to this topic

[Stone]

Anyone?
Beuller?

[Ron Johnson]

The ad campaign is eerily similar to home delivery of NY Times.

[omnivorette]

It's da bomb. We use it in the office.

[Cathy]

Really! The quality is good? In its early days, voice over IP had the same transient delay problems as satellite telephone service. (Boy, am I dating myself. :D)

[Orik]

The quality is good, but there are still other reliability issues. I've been using another voip vendor (www.iconnecthere.com) and while it is virtually free, there have been problems with calls being directed to voicemail without the phone ringing or needing to reboot the ip-to-phone device to get a line. I know this is mostly a question of luck - many people enjoy a problem-free service.

btw, RCN are also offering voip to their subscribers and I've heard a similarly bifurcated story about reliability - either it works perfectly or there are many problems that never seem to get resolved.

[Cathy]

Even so, I'm cheered that it's made as much progress as it has. Phone service wants to be free. ;)

[Stone]

I just set up my vonage system and it's great so far. stronger dial tone than verizn home. i love the fact that i can check voice mail on my computer. and it's about 50% cheaper than verizon.

[Rail Paul]

Linksys (div of Cisco) has just committed a bundle of money toward developing new equipment to support vonage and a few competitors. FWIW, the industry expects prices to continue dropping as the major cable companies embrace vonage, primus and other players.

The Wall Street Journal had a detailed article on the plans, benefits, etc either Wednesday or Thursday. Generally quite positive. One big plus is the ability to select an area code unrelated to your current location.

You might choose a 212 for NYC, even though you're actually on the lake in NJ or upstate NY. Or a 617 for Cambridge MA, so it's a local call for your Boston relatives to call you in London or Karachi. You can route calls from your ex straight to voicemail, too.

The big downside is the easy ability of the Feds to impose all the nasty taxes, surcharges, Al Gore fees, etc which now apply to regular phones. Since VOIP is data, rather than voice, these charges currently don't apply...

[Orik]

By the way, the service from iconnecthere has improved to the point where I'm as happy with it as with a land line. Other than price, it has the added advantages of hassle free moving and the ability to do such odd things as using their web site to set up call forwarding to a throw away cell phone in Japan.

[GG Mora]

Maybe this means the greedy-ass bottom-liners at the cable and phone companies in my area will finally bring a digital line as far as my house, which means I can finally get a high-speed connection. But probably not. Fuckers.

[Penguin]

I'm very happy with Vonage so far, but be advised that if there are interruptions in your Internet connection, your phone service is down, too.

Also, Vonage is overwhelmed with new customers. I had some problems with the original installation, and often the customer service department would not accept calls. I dutifully wrote an email via the website and it took more than 96 hours for Vonage to reply.

When you can connect with customer service (fairly easy during off hours, such as after midnight), the support staff couldn't be nicer and helpful.

The sound and quality of connections has been excellent, at least as good as my old MCI service.

[fantasty]

Two frustrations with Vonage:

1. This morning I tried to place an international call and it would not go through. Called Vonage customer service which, like so many, had no clue about the service part. His suggestion? "Can you place the call from your cell phone instead?" Um, how is that relevant? If I'd wanted to pay 20x as much to call, of course I'd have called from my cell. "Well why don't I see if it's a working number." Trust me, it works. He checks it anyway, confirming what I know. Can you simply put my call through for me like operators at other phone services would do? Yes, ma'am, I will try. Instead I'm transferred to a U.S. (rather than India)-based customer service desk. This guy was capable of fixing the problem, at least.

2. We've tried to switch to another voip service. Vonage won't release our number - will only release it to a standard land-line carrier. Which means we'd have to port the number to Verizon or similar only to port it to another voip, at least as I understand it, and I may not. Pain in the ass. Anyone know anything about this?

[cristina]

Two frustrations with Vonage:

1. This morning I tried to place an international call and it would not go through. Called Vonage customer service which, like so many, had no clue about the service part. His suggestion? "Can you place the call from your cell phone instead?" Um, how is that relevant? If I'd wanted to pay 20x as much to call, of course I'd have called from my cell. "Well why don't I see if it's a working number." Trust me, it works. He checks it anyway, confirming what I know. Can you simply put my call through for me like operators at other phone services would do? Yes, ma'am, I will try. Instead I'm transferred to a U.S. (rather than India)-based customer service desk. This guy was capable of fixing the problem, at least.

2. We've tried to switch to another voip service. Vonage won't release our number - will only release it to a standard land-line carrier. Which means we'd have to port the number to Verizon or similar only to port it to another voip, at least as I understand it, and I may not. Pain in the ass. Anyone know anything about this?

Yeah, I think you're stuck with the go-around to keep your phone number. Vonage is becoming more and more problematic and non-responsive to its customers, which it has gone to such incredible lengths to attract.

A lot of people who live in the expatriate communities an hour south of Guadalajara use Vonage, and lots are becoming more and more disenchanted with the so-called service they're receiving.

This long-ish discussion of why Vonage is having so many problems started over a year ago, but the recent posts are pertinent to your situation: http://www.chapala.c...d/webboard.html

IMHO, Skype is the far better service. I use it and love it. I haven't switched to the telephone-type service yet (I'm still in headset mode, tethered to the computer), but I probably will switch in the near future.

[Carolyn Tillie]

We also got Vonnage about a year ago because it was a cheaper way to call Central and South America and yes, we have been having more and more problems with it. One really stupid trick is (if you can believe this), dial slower. When I call Panama, I literally punch one number every two seconds or so. Any speed dialing and their system can't seem to understand it but if I punch the numbers VERY slowly, I can get a better connection.

Also, we had to buy a new router -- their's was completely useless inside of six months.

[24k]

I'm there with you... I have been having to use my cel phone more often than not when folks call and say we have a horrible connection. I sputter and spit and blank-out and get way too pissed in having to say, "lemme call you back on my cel."

Not sure what I'm going to do yet...