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"One of the best around" on by eastcoast21157
Pros: Great clear service, portability, Good fair price, online account & voicemail access...lots more
Cons: Customer service, trying to get in touch with reps, no call block ability, no video phone...yet.
Summary: I'll start with the pro's first. I've been a customer of Vonage for over a year now and overall I'd say that I'm very satisfied with the service. It very rarely goes out on me and if it does it's usually because of my cable provider here in the mid-atlantic region...Adelphia. I have an excellent plan, can access my voicemail and account information online whenever I want too. I can take the phone adapter with me to hook into a friends cable or dsl modem anywhere in the U.S. I had NO trouble at all getting my phone adapter. It came from New Jersey and got to my house in Maryland via UPS.
Cons, well I guess my biggest problem with Vonage is that they don't take the time to train their associates to say something as simple as "Thank you for calling Vonage, have a nice day" when they're done talking to you on the phone. I do think that they need more associates in their calling center too but the last time I spoke with them (around mid March 2005) they told me that they are hiring more people and expanding into a bigger call center somewhere else in New Jersey. I would also like it if they made customers aware of new features being added. I just found out after being a customer for over a year that there is something called "click to call" and I think that this has been out for quite sometime. It's hidden VERY well in the Vonage website and no one from Vonage ever told me about this when I activated my service.
Now my next part...Cons of the other bad reviews from other Vonage customers. Most of what you will find or see is someone saying something like "my connection keeps dropping in and out" or some other issue related to connections. More than likely these people have NO IDEA that you have to have a certain amount of bandwidth to have a good quality connection. I have mine set at 128 kbps which is the best quality for these phones from Vonage. I'm a die hard online game player and get calls all the time from my phone and I have no problem AT ALL !!..probably because I know how to set up my internet connection/cable modem PROPERLY !!!. Most people do not realize that when you put in just 1 splitter to your cable line, that it drops close to 25% of your signal. So if you have 3 or more splitters in your house and your cable modem is connected to the tail end of that line, then no wonder people can not get a signal. A cable modem needs to be connected to the 1st splitter(if you have to use one). Or for those of you who have a ped and have both drop lines connected (Like me..woo hoo) then you should be fine.
Also, most people do not know a thing about packet loss over your cable line. I don't know of to many programs that can detect packet loss other than the command prompt and pinging a certain site but I can tell you that the popular program "Teamspeak 2" DOES detect packet loss when and if you might be talking to someone on a voice conversation, similar to a voice conversation on yahoo, aol or msn messengers.
It does take a bit of time to get a representative from Vonage's Tech support or billing department on the phone with you but all and all, I am very satisfied with Vonage. I have been tempted to switch from time to time and try something like Lingo but I've been reading Really really bad reviews about them. Vonage will have a video service up soon too. I think I'll just stay with them for now. -
"i tried vonage and switched" on by daniel small
Pros: i liked the installation program
Cons: the sound quality was bad
Summary: i tried vonage and did not like the voice quality.
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"Vonage is very good despite the growing pains and hiccups." on by AG13
Pros: Cheap. Quick: 15 mins to 1st call. Very good sound quality.
Cons: Certain features don't always work right (ie., Caller ID blocking.)
Summary: Bought it at Bestbuy, came home and set it up in 15 minutes. Made my first call without any problems using the Virtual phone number. I filled out the Line Number Portability form to transfer my existing landline number to Vonage on 03/06/05. It finally transferred over today, 03/31/05, although the website doesn't show the current status. I thought it was fairly reasonable for it to be done in less than a month. What you can do, in the meantime, while you're waiting for the switch to take effect is to FORWARD (*72, New Number) your landline to the Virtual Number or to your cell phone (doesn't everyone have one). So, you won't really miss a call at all with your old number, but you won't be able to use Caller ID if you want to reveal that old number to people/businesses. I didn't get an official notice of the transfer (not yet) but occasionally I'll test the old number to see if it works. Finally, today, it did.
The sound quality is very good. No delay in sound or echo. Very clear. Works well with my cordless Uniden phone.
911 takes a while to setup so be prepared for some delays. Just set up 911 today and will wait for a confirming email to see if it finally went through.
Also, I'd suggest hooking up the telephone, the Vonage box, and the cable modem/router to a UPS so that there won't be any interruption if the power goes out.
I experienced a brief cut out in power and the call was terminated.
I'm quite happy with the service. I always have my cell phone in case Vonage doesn't work, but luckily, I haven't had to resort to it yet. -
"Vonage Rocks" on by bobfox321
Pros: The best, what else matters
Cons: None that I have noticed in 6 months
Summary: The best by far. Even when I travel and stay at a broadband hotel with my vonnage interface I have my complete phone service. You can't beat that. They have already lowered the price once. Perhaps they will do it again? And YES it does have 911, if one would just read and apply for it.
Updated
Repeat:
ahh - no I have never worked for vonage.com
Don't know anyone who works for them Mr. Ali Ahkbar212. -
"customer service is the WORST ever" on by mcslain
Pros: cool idea, might work with a better company
Cons: you have to spend at least an hour & go through many disconnects to even talk to cutomer service.
Summary: customer service is practically non existant. i was completely unable to get anyone to help me aftermultiple calls and emails. this includes over hour long waits, unexpected disconnects and busy signals during transfers. a total mickey mouse operation. this company spends tons on advertising, but seemingly has no one to even answer the phone?
Vonage user reviews
