Vonage - What Is Your Opinion?

I have been with Vonage for over two years now. I use cable Internet access but in a small town and do not experience significant loss of service due to neighborhood downloaders. I spent extra money to get the wireless router with my service and I regret it now because it is a Vonage locked down unit so you cannot “tinker” with the settings for wireless or other features beyond the basics. No firmware “reloads” etc.

I love the service particularly the feature if my Internet does go down it will forward my calls to a number of my choice (my cell phone) so that my calls are not lost and I can become aware of the fact that my Internet service is having issues. A con is probably a function of the “locked” router rather than service. About once every 3 months my lag time from ring to connect (My phone rings and I answer to say “hello” but silence from the caller, wait a second or two and say “hello” again and the caller responds back.) becomes very long so I go in and unplug the router for 30 seconds and plug it back in and 95% of the time it is working like it should again.

I set mine up to connect to the existing house wiring so I have phone service to all my phones in the house as I did with POTS without purchasing any new phones or running any new phone lines.

Your mileage may vary but my household which includes a wife with little appreciation for technology and a teenage girl have found the service meets our needs and saves us about 50% of what we used to pay for POTS.

I signed up for about 2 weeks and it was a total nightmare. Their customer support is terrible and I could tell they were simply reading things off of the list. After signing up, I started to get spammed with “upgrades” from them and even now (3 months later) I’m still receiving several solicitations per month despite asking them to take me off of their list. I’m normally willing to cut a lot of tech companies slack when it comes to their products, but my “free trial” was without a doubt one of the worst consumer experiences of my life. After my experience, I’m no longer surprised at how high their churn rates are. Stay away at all costs.

FWIW - I ended up going with Viatalk and have been fairly pleased with them. They have long hold times for technical support, but the price seems fair and the quality is good.

Thanks for the quick response.

I have one other question. I only have one [1] cable outlet. The others outlets in my home are wired for Dish.

If I split the cable would I be able to use the Vonage router & phone connection on it’s own?

I currently have a wireless router and wireless print server for 5 computers that I do not wish to mess with.

Thanks once again for the info. It is appreciated.

Ron, I just god rid of Vonage, as Verizon gave me a great deal when I re-established service for unlimited US calling and 3Mb/s DSL for $60 / mo, so I couldn’t beat that, as we don’t make out of the US calls.

I also got tired of the constant haranguing to add features, but the service was good - and, I would get the simple, wired router (or adapter if possible) and simply hang the Vonage router on the wireless router you already have - the Vonage service will work fine that way, and your other setup will be unaffected.

Thanks Marc!
I appreciate the information.:-)

I have been using Vonage for about four years and it has been an excellent experience. No service problems and it has many features that TWC does not have even though it costs less.
The router is a Linksys RTP31 and fits in nicely with my wireless Linksys Router. I don’t recommend their wireless router as I have heard nothing good about it. I particularly like the feature of forwarding calls to my cell phone when I am away and whenever the cable service might go down. Lots of other nice features too. I figure that I have saved quite a bit of money over four years and have much better phone service and features.

Thanks Herm for the info.

Hi Ron,
I have had vonage for about 3 years now. I have no issues at all.
They have not tried to sell me any new features. I have been really pleased. Service has been constant. I cant tell the difference between this and a wired land line. I also like the fact I can get a call log from the web site. I can see who calls me during the day and even listen to voice mail all from my work PC.
Oh yeah, and I have said a lot of money over the 3 years I have had it. Good Luck!!

Thanks Greg. I ordered Vonage this afternoon and will take it for a spin.