Undecided, worth it or too risky?

Posts: 244 · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 11:18 am Post subject:

Make sure they give you a 'fixed' RT31P2 if possible. For me the service is as good as my Internet Connection.

You will probably have to call to get them make a few changes to your unit initially. Do this late at night or early in the morning.

Posts: 482 · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:28 pm Post subject:

Ok, I'll probably take a little flaming for this, but...for $40 I would stick with Verizon. My BellSouth bill is typically $70-$80 and the taxes and fees alone are $24.68 each month, so that makes Vonage worth the trouble to me. But to save $15 or less is not worth the hassle at all, to me personally. Their support is horrible, Voip in general is not as reliable as POTS under the best of conditions, and Vonage in particular seems to have some strange issues that crop up at random times. Not to mention the 911 issues, which are not a deal-breaker, but they sure factor into the equation for me.

So there you go. For $15 I just would not deal with Vonage right now. Personally, when Comcast offers their service which supposedly will be $40 for existing customers, I will jump at it and give Vonage the boot. That's assuming my LNP ever goes through, which is a whole other story.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:45 pm Post subject:

hey look at me, I'm paying $7 more for Vonage than with verizon. of course that was basic verizon, and I love national LD and cid (with name even). and I'm not actually the one paying for it. so yeah, there are some differences...
I guess it depends on what you get for $40.

Posts: 70 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 17, 2004 Posts: 70

The personal satisfaction of telling Verizon to take a long walk off a short pier was well worth it for me. I'm not even paying the $25.... we have a business line, a virtual line & a fax line so the bill is like $60 / mo. But the same services, plus long distance, plus our 2nd line in a far away city (so our relatives can call us for free), plus voicemail, plus 911, plus all the other features, not to mention their 99.9% uptime & excellent call quality....... we've only had 1 outage all year & it was only for a few minutes. Vonage has proven to be a far better deal than Verizon ever was. And the uptime & call quality thru all of 2004 has been equal or better than POTS. Verizon POTS was never this reliable in Seattle.

Posts: 29 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 29

changed from Verizon freedom to Vonage a couple months ago and so far so good, well worth the 50 bucks a month i save. im sure ill miss it when my cable goes down, but thats what the cellphone is for...

Posts: 26 · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 9:57 pm Post subject: Don't buy it retail

I certainly do not recommend the retail route. I bought an RT31P2 at Best Buy. It has both the "phaser" and "wind" noise problems. I speculated, and most likely correctly, that a second unit from Best Buy would have the same problem. I did an RMA with Linksys thinking that they must surely be shipping good units. I was wrong. The second unit had the same problems. This was not suprising considering the serial number was also in the CH500D9 range. I am glad that I did not send my original back before testing because I would not have a fixed router, yet would need to have the new router associated with my Vonage account. I called Linksys. They do not have any good routers in stock. They told me to call Vonage. The Vonage rep was willing to replace my RT31P2, but not with the UPC symbol cut out of the box, resulting in a forfeiture of the $50 rebate. So, I am stuck with a defective router.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 1

I just switched from Time Warner Cables "Road Runner" Voip to Vonage because of the savings. I have already experienced an outage in the first few days of having it. In hindsight the installation was not too bad, but I can't imagine what a non-technical customer would do with the minimal direction you get from Vonage. I guess that is what I took for granted with Time Warner...ther was a lot of hand holding and it was nice, but you pay for it.

My wife handled the initial transaction, and they did not inform her of the different phone adapters that you could get...didn't tell her all about phone adapters. I could have gotten the minimal phone adapter and kept my current wireless router. AS it is, it is already promised on E-bay, and I already ordered a new A+G WAP and cards to go with it I also changed everywhere I had my previous ip address for my web posted ( pics on forums and things like that). I re-documented all that to macth the settings of my new router...No big loss there. I could have found out for myself, but it was hard to get through hence, the decision to go ahead with the install myself.

I know it sounds like Im complaining, but all in all, I learned how to hook it up thus now I can help any of my friends who want to hook up to Vonage and tell them of the choices, and Im gettin a new WAP! I neede an excuse fo that.

BOttom line, if you like to figure out things on your own, want an affordable service, and keep in perspective the level of service provided, its a great alternative. However if you are a stickler for total customer service, tried and true tecnhology, and a total service support from the beginning, then you may want to wait till Vonage gets up there in the years. Despite what everyone complains about ( which I can only agree with) I think they show alot of potential in the future.

my .02 which has since devalued during this post.

Posts: 16 · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:33 pm Post subject:

I had Verizon in SE Pennsylvania. The biggest doubt I had was more psychological in that there has always been a local phone company hookup so how could I possibly cut that tie.

Well, I did it almost four months ago and love it. My number was ported from Verizon in under two weeks. I have yet to experience a Vonage outage. Have had a power outage for a couple of hours due to a storm, and my cable went out twice for a few minutes. Vonage has saved minutes on the cell phone.

Consider this: ATT has stopped selling regular phone service; they now sell only Voip.

I think you will be quite happy with Vonage.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 1

I'm new here and I don't have any of your experience yet. I ordered Voip from Vonage a couple of days ago. since then I've been pouring over the forums and getting more and more apprehensive with every post I've read.
I have a home network (hybrid 802.11b and hardwire) connected to a cable modem. I'm somewhat of a computer geek, but all the problems people seem to have connecting to their networks really had me worried.

This is what worked for me.
I initally attached the linksys Voip supplied router to my laptop's nic via a standard patch cable and rj45 port 1, logged in and checked the configuration. I disabled the dhcp and set the router's ip address to an available static address within my network. I saved the changes and shut it down. I shut down my system router and plugged in the patch cable to an available port to the wan connector on the linksys Voip router. I powered them up in order and all came up and worked. I was really surprised that it worked. I hope that this information helps anyone else that's unsure.
The big thing is that if it continues to work as well as it seems to, I'm going to save about 300 bucks a year on my phone bill.

Posts: 30

limelite wrote:

If I have to go back to them, they won't waive the $55 installation (what a joke) charge.

It's clearly a risk. I started yesterday and spent 2 hours (probably still not done) getting it to work in my home wireless network. Now I'm spending more time reading a forum. Never spent time with the Verizon phone except to use it.

However, I am fed up with bogus charges from all of the typical standard service providers. $55 for installation - yeah right. Hell some companies charge you to cancel your account!! There's nothing better than good old competition to shake things up.

I probably spend close to $200 per month on communications (cable tv, cable internet, 2 cell phones, 1 land line) but I mostly b#tch about gas prices - Sheesh! Rolling Eyes