Long Distance ?

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 07, 2006 Posts: 4

I just signed up yesterday and was given a number in Alberta which looks like a Calgary # and I am in Medicine Hat. Will people from Medicine Hat be charged long distance when calling me? Are incoming calls subtracted from my 500 monthly minutes or are those minutes just for my outgoing calls? There seems to be too many questions and it is hard to get straight answers. We called customer service to ask a couple of questions yesterday and they wouldn't answer. They were only interested in signing us up. And their site is not very user friendly with information scattered all over the place.
It also seems to me that there are a lot of technical problems with this service going by the posts on this forum.

Posts: 293 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 22, 2006 Posts: 293

If it is indeed a Calgary number, they will be charged. There could be new prefixes that we are not used to in each area. If it is indeed a Calgary number, you can switch it over in the dashboard for a charge, but a supervisor at customer service would likely (as they should) do it at no charge.

On another note, I've had the service over 2 years and have had no problems. I've used it mostly as on outgoing calls, as I receive limited incoming since I use primarly a US number. I'll be adding a second line soon and with the additional numbers in Alberta, I can now tell Telus to shove it.

As a disclaimer, I have taken the ATA on trips and vacations and have had dropped calls at locations where the ISPs were "not very good".,

BTW!, what is the 3 digit prefix for your "local" number? Someone here should be able to confirm if this is indeed a Calgary number.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 07, 2006 Posts: 4

I thank you for your reply and assistance. After thinking about this I decided to cancel my order which I did and had a long discussion with a cancellation rep who was in the US. He assured me that if my number was based out of Calgary my local incoming callers would not be charged long distance rates. And also that incoming calls are not subtracted off of your monthly minutes.
I am not sure if I believe the long distance claim or not.

My hubby and I are not technically inclined and I feel we would have too many struggles with this type of service.

I would like to tell Telus to shove it too but am going to wait for Shaw and their bundle to come to the Hat.

Thanks for your help.

Posts: 182 · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 3:13 pm Post subject:

Vonage has Medicine Hat numbers, so if you didn't get a local number, you could have had it changed very easily. It's an easy mistake to make.

Inbound calls do not count against your 500 minutes. Neither do 800/866/877/888 calls, and neither do overseas calls (although you do pay for overseas calls).

Outbound calls count against your 500 minutes. If you use more than 800 a month you can upgrade to the unlimited plan to save money.

Order online, let Vonage ship the adapter to you and specifically choose Medicine Hat and you should be good.

Posts: 293 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 22, 2006 Posts: 293

I regret that you felt you had to cancel. However, I'd have done the same if I felt I was getting run around. I think you'd have loved the savings, and found very favorable reliability. Most installation processes are rather seamless and there is always that relative that's the tech-weenie.

I really think Vonage is wrong here. While it is possible to have a "Calgary" number as a local call for Medicine Hat, I would have to think it was more a problem with the rep simply not "having a clue", and saying anything to make the sale. If you had a "Calgary" number then it should only be a local incoming call from that region.

Posts: 182 · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject:

This is one of the advantages of Vonage and other Voip providers - you can have a foreign number (even along with your local number, as a secondary virtual number). If you have lots of friends or family in, say, Edmonton or Toronto, you can have a number from there as an incoming number instead of or in addition to your Medicine Hat number. If it's an additional number, there is another $8 charge per month. You can even get American or European numbers (European cost $12 though).

Posts: 508 · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 7:07 pm Post subject:

I bet that is the most common sign-up mistake that is made, by both customer and vonage...

the ppl at Vonage activations are in NJ, they dont' have a clue where Medicne Hat, or Calgary are, or probably even where Alberta is for that matter.. so they don't have a clue, they are used to cities that are all one area code, not a province with one or two area codes, so they don't realize that the same area code can cover many hundreds of square miles..

when i signed up I did it over the phone, but I made sure that i said LONDON even before I said 519 but then again 2 more times, just to make sure, cuz Kitchener would have been long distance from the city I live in.. same with my virtual number down south, at that time they only had one 803 city, and that was Columbia, but i aasked to make sure it was Columbia, not Lexington (the 2 of which are pretty much one big city) because i knew Lex was LD form my reletives and Columbia wasn't..

this is one of the biggest complaints on this board regarding sign-up's, Vonage reps have no clue the difference b/t different cities in the same area code.. esp in Canada where our local and LD area's are set up differently than in the USA..

call them back and sign up again, try the service out, you have 30 days trial with Vonage Canada, then you can say bye bye telus.. Smile

Posts: 293 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 22, 2006 Posts: 293

True!! I didn't bother to go there, but that is a valid point.

However, I understood the original post to mean that the customer felt she was given a "Calgary" rate center as her "Primary" number. While she could add virtual number(s) to make the call local her specific area, I believe all that was warranted was for Vonage to give her a "Medicine Hat" number. Friends/family from out of town may expect to pay long distance. It's the next-door neighbor, that may get a little miffed having to pay extra for next door. (But with Vonage, you can turn it into a local call for both -- well for an extra $8 a month)

Personally, I love my Vonage

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 07, 2006 Posts: 4

After hearing everybody's thoughts on this I am almost sorry that I cancelled without giving Vonage a chance. But for now we are going to just stay with Telus even though they deserve to be banished from our household. We are at a point in our lives where we just don't need the worries of trying to get another technical issue up and running. Maybe sometime down the road when our lives are less hectic.
In the meantime thank you to everybody for your thoughts and information. It was enlightening!

Posts: 182 · Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 9:46 am Post subject:

One other option...

Use both for awhile.

Get Vonage, and use it for your outbound long distance calls. If you like, get call forwarding on your Telus line and forward it to your Vonage number, and use it. Make sure you like it.

Once you're convinced... have your Telus number ported to Vonage, and run Vonage alone.