Vonage DigitalVoice Service Reviews

• Beware of following things before you jump in..

  
  By on 2003-02-21
  First - let me tell you it is a great service, if you can live with the following:
  1. You need to keep Cable / DSL modem, a router and a Vonage equipment (ATA) always ON.. so count on some electricity bill.
  2. When you call someone, the receipient's caller ID will show "Unkown".
  3. You will not be listed in Phone Book / 411.
  4. NO 911 service.
  5. You always need electricity and your internet connection should always be working.
  6. If you have only 128 kbps DSL connection, then while talking on Vonage phone, you are left with only 128-90 = 38 kbps connection for web surfing.. so you cannot do both at the same time.
  7. THERE IS A DISCONNECT FEE OF 39.99 WHENEVER YOU DISCONNECT THIS PHONE SERVICE.
  
  

• Good/decent when working. Poor Support.

  
  By on 2003-04-19
  I have been using Vonage as my primary phone service for several months now. I also have a strong background in VoIP when I had worked as an Engineer at Nortel Networks on their Carrier and Enterprise VoIP and VoATM solutions. Here is my review so far:

  Pros:
  1) Low cost long distance, regional, AND international rates. Their rates/overall cost is extremely hard to beat from what I have seen.
  2) Gives the customer an additional reason to pay the expense of a broadband connection.
  3) Access to voicemail and service features online.

  Cons:
  1) POOR support of their service. I have had multiple occasions (more than 10 in 2 months) where calls were able to be established (the signaling portion or path of the call was created) however you could not hear anything (the voice path was not established).
  2) A power outage can prevent you from making calls.
  3) Internet or ISP bandwidth congestion can affect a call (distorted/choppy voice, loss of connection, delay and echoing while talking).
  4) Often times when the above problems occur, you must reset all the equipment in order to re-establish a good connection. When this doesn't work, you have to rely on support. I have gone days without service. When the service came back, it didn't appear to be related to Vonage Support fixing anything. In other words, they never checked back to confirm service was restored after any changes/or troubleshooting they performed. They also lacked any useful suggestions on how to prevent similar outages, etc.
  5) You should maintain a secondary land line separate from Vonage. This service is not reliable enough to use as your only home phone service. 911 services ARE now available, however if something happens during a power outage, you won't have any phone service to make that 911 call.
  
  

• Beware the Fine Print

  
  By ARTY95687PPE5 on 2003-11-17
  When you sign up for Vonage, make sure you realize that it will take at least one month (they say 15 to 20 business days) from the time you fax the authorization letter and your latest phone bill to actually begin receiving service. In the interim, they are charging you for monthly service when you aren't actually receiving service.

  In my case, it has taken nearly two months, so I am supposed to pay for two months of service BEFORE I ACTUALLY RECEIVE SERVICE. I haven't even had a chance to evaluate their actual service yet because it hasn't started, but I've paid nearly $100 just for the privilege of waiting. I find these sort of shenanigans to be unacceptable and the sign of a company that does not think very highly of its own customers, and as a result one that does not deserve my business.
  
  

• Customer Service is not good after purchase

  
  By on 2003-02-16
  I have had this item since June 2002. After the initial setup, customer service doesn't not call you back. I signed someone else up and they are having the same problem. Too bad because the service is pretty good.
  
  

• Avoid Vonage like it was the plague

  
  By A143EJE0CAB6XU on 2003-09-27
  Rather than a long story about how bad this service is, I'll just give you the bullet points of my experience:

  - Took five weeks to transfer my number.
  - Telephone support: 30-45 minutes on hold is common. E-mail support: 2-3 days before they even respond is common.
  - They start billing you from the moment you sign up and get your "virtual" telephone number. That makes their 15-day money back guarantee useless.
  - Multiple complaints from people on the other end of the phone that the quality was bad. Several said I dropped out entirely for 10-15 seconds at a time.
  - Sometimes phone does not ring and just goes straight to voicemail.
  - Sometimes phone just keeps ringing. Voicemail never picks up.
  - Sometimes outgoing voicemail greeting just "disappears" confusing callers and forcing me to re-record it.
  - About 20 percent of the time, voicemail does not recognize my password and I can't access voicemail over the phone.
  - About 20 percent of the time there is no cue that I have voicemail (no blinking light, no broken dial tone). The only way I know is that I get an e-mail.
  - Once, I somehow accessed someone else's voicemail box (I have no idea how, but it does show a lack of security and technical glitches) who had 900+ messages.
  - 3 way conference calling simply does not work at all, ever. The other two callers can barely hear me and can't hear each other at all. This happened on multiple occasions and I finally gave up.

  Bottom line: This service is not ready for prime time. There is a reason why your telephone service costs what it costs: It works, all the time.

  As a home-based business owner, I can not afford to gamble my livelihood to save even a hundred bucks a month (which would have been my savings if this service actually worked.)
  
  

• Vonage is the future of telephones
  By A1XCHEMKKMVFPR on 2003-08-28
  Vonage is real and ready for prime time. I've been using vonage for 2 months now and I couldn't be happier. The service has always worked like a charm and the cost savings are incredible. Setup was a breeze, I just plugged it into my cable modem router and viola! The box came preconfigured and I didn't touch a thing.

  Vonage just hit 40,000 subscribers on 8/4/03. At the moment they're adding 1500+ subscribers per week! Speculation is that they'll have over 100k subs by year-end. The feature set offered from Vonage is very similar to that of your current phone provider and they're adding more all of the time, only cheaper.

  The only voice features I see missing from the Vonage service over what could be purchased from my old provider (Qwest) are:
  1) Name+Number CID (Vonage only offers number Caller ID)
  2) Privacy+ (Your "We don't accept solicitations or unidentified callers...")

  What Vonage already has that Qwest wouldn't give me at any price:

  1) Call Transfer... You can't get that unless you have a business line and then it'll cost ya
  2) Near-real-time call logging and account monitoring
  3) Voicemail that will e-mail/page you
  4) The ability to retrieve voicemail from a remote location without making a LD call
  5) Caller ID embedded into the voicemail
  6) Automatic Credit Card billing
  7) Free credits for for signing up friends and family!
  8) The ability to take my phone with me when I travel, all you need is a broadband connection!
  9) Really cheap 8xx number for toll-free dialing
  10) Free long distance
  11) Having an unlisted/unpublished number for free (Qwest charges a monthly fee for unlisted/unpublished service)
  12) Keeping my number. (I transfered my number from Qwest to Vonage and now I'll never lose my telephone number when I move.)

  There are lots of other really cool features that Vonage offers that I could drone on about, but I only have 1000 words here!
  
  

• Only as good as your internet connection
  By A31X6YVCRQKOEI on 2003-11-13
  I got rid of my land line in early Summer 2003 and have been using Vonage exclusively since then. Vonage customer service seems to be lacking as others have noted, but the Voice over IP technology works great. For us, Vonage has been working 100% of the time.

  However, I just want to remind any prospective buyers that this service depends completely on your internet connection. That means that if you have a unreliable connection, any internet-based phone is going to be unreliable as well. You may not realize how unreliable your internet connection when browsing the web or downloading files because these processes can be temporarily interrupted. But if your IP-phone traffic gets interrupted even for a second, you and the other party will notice immediately with either a choppy signal or a dropped call. This is not a fault of Vonage, but a simple fact that most residential internet services are not designed to support continuous VoIP traffic.

  My cable modem, which worked fine for browsing the web, turned out to not like transmitting traffic continously either. If you use Vonage and find that your connection gets dropped after 5 or more minutes, you may want to try a different cable modem. I switched to a Motorola Surfboard 5100 and that resolved my dropped calls problem.

  I live in an area serviced by Comcast, and every time the IP phone had problems, it turned out to be a Comcast network/routing problem where traffic was sporadic.

  And don't forget: In the event of a power failure, a traditional landline phone will work, but VoIP will not, unless you have backup power for your VoIP device AND your internet provider stays up too. During the "Blackout of 2003" this past summer, my VoIP phone service failed because Comcast ran out of backup power about 4 hours into the blackout and we lost the internet connection.

  In summary, I believe Vonage has their technical end well implmented, but the whole system is only as good as the weakest link... and I suspect for most the weak link will be your cable/DSL provider. If I could replace my cable connection with a T1 line, I really believe this service would be rock solid.
  
  

• Average service for the standard computer user
  By A1BUSVVL0M2SS on 2004-02-13
  Vonage provides a means of using your broadband modem as a standard phone. The sound quality is not as great as POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) but through their website, you can change the settings to allow the amount of bandwidth that you want to use which can increase the quality. Do take note that it depends on the speed of your modem. Think in percentages, not speed, when adjusting these settings. Knowing your average upload and download speeds first before you make changes will give you a good idea of what to expect for performance and there are a few sites that will give you a bandwidth test for free.

  The instructions included in the manual are very simple and the equipment is easy to set up, however, users with static IP addresses need to take note that you may have some difficulty with P2P and possibly other online services because your computer is assigned a local IP address by the Vonage voice box but your modem still has the IP assigned to you by your broadband company. Also, for those of us that write server side software and web applications where the components rely on communication with each other across a network, it can be a real hassle. Also, I have had call drops and fast busy signals at times. Other erratic behavior from the service includes "tin can" sound quality, even at the highest setting, forwarding not working properly, and voicemail not working properly.

  Do not bother contacting Vonage by phone. The hold times are usually in the 20 - 30 minute range and sometimes longer. One time I was on hold for 45 minutes before I got an automated message telling me that they were closed. I think they closed while I was on hold. The email support is not much better. I was having a problem with how the Vonage box was distributing IP addresses and they were not able to help with that. They usually just repeat the instructions that were in your manual. One time I got an email from a "Level II" tech support representative. I don't know if this was supposed to be a more knowledgeable representative, but he only had rudimentary networking skills such as checking the TCP/IP properties, etc. I got so fed up with the equipment that I finally just sat down one night and wrote my own piece of networking software in C++ to fix my IP dilemma. I will say that my system is quite unique and that most users will probably not have this type of difficulty, but it is important to point out that if you do have difficulty other than basic setup issues, you are on your own. Also, their website has problems occasionally that prevent you from getting into your account information. This can be big trouble when you want to check your voicemail online, change an account setting, or forward a number. Their website is slow and hangs often or sometimes just simply returns a "This page cannot be displayed" browser message. This has caused me the most frustration.

  In conclusion, Vonage is a company with a very professional image, but a very amateur staff. The idea of broadband voice communication is a boon in times when landline services are drastically increasing prices but if a company wants to pioneer this type of idea to a large client base, they need to beef up their knowledge of system diversity and get their staff some more advanced technical training.

  It is one thing to have technology as a supplement to daily life; however, if a company wants to replace a life necessity such as landline phones with a voice over broadband service then they need to have a solid service, reliable backup plan, and knowledgeable staff. I recommend that anyone who decides to use Vonage, HAVE A CELL PHONE AS A BACKUP FOR EMERGENCIES!!! I feel that Vonage has gotten in slightly over their heads in an effort to become an overnight success. They have overlooked the finer details that make modern communication what it is and for that I must give them two stars.
  
  

• Not good if you want to keep your current number
  By A3862YRWV38GEM on 2003-02-13
  Although the service may be great, here are two important things to keep in mind:

  * NO 911 SERVICE - Vonage does not provide 911 service or other automatic emergency numbers.

  * If you have DSL connected to your current line, you will have to keep your old local number plus pay for a new Vonage number.

  Make sure you know what you're getting into before you get this service.
  
  

• Beware of VOIP over the Internet
  By on 2003-02-28
  What this product does is digitize your voice, put the digitized voice into TCP/IP packets and ship them over the Internet to a VOIP gateway at the destination, where it is connected to the traditional telphone system so that you can make calls to everyone else in the world. The problem with this approach is delay. For ADSL, there is significant delay in the ADSL connection due to interleaving of the packets, and then lots of variable delay (and some packet loss) in the Internet itself. For cable modems, there's delay in the upstream path - the modem has to bid for use of the upstream channel and be granted access. If you ever have the opportunity to talk over a VOIP link, ask the person you're talking to to count with you. You say "one" and they reply "two" as soon as they hear your "one". You can quickly get a feeling for the amount of delay. People learn to tolerate delay so if you talk to the same people all the time, you'll all quickly learn to work with the delay - almost like using a CB radio. But new users, accustom to the regular phone system, will have problems.

  If you can tolerate the delay (which can lead to double talking and talkover), AND you do a lot of long distance calling, this product may be of some value to you. However, you can find traditional long distance telephone service at very low cost, especially if you're willing to use a prepaid calling card.

  Others have pointed out some of the additional problems of loss of service during power failure, lack of 911 (because the VOIP people really don't know where you are) and a few others. Lack of 911 can be life threatening - if you take this service please make sure you have an alternate way to get help, either another land line or a cell phone.

  This lack of location information *can* be an advantage (as a second line). You could establish a "presence" in Atlanta (for example) even though you live in Phoenix. That is, you could have an Atlanta phone number, area code and all, without a physical presence in Atlanta. This is of value if your family lives in Atlanta and calls you all the time - they can do so without long distance charges.

  But if your motivation is that you dislike your telephone service provider, I suggest you get a cellular phone with free long distance and use that, rather than VOIP (at this stage of its development).
  
  

• Great product as long as you don't need support
  By A3EBLH2RSXY6PH on 2003-03-11
  I've been using the Vonage service and my normal phone to make calls and have been very impressed with phone call quality. I have seen others complain about the delay, but I don't think it really affects the quality of most phonec calls. Yes there is a delay. No, most people won't notice the delay in a normal conversation.

  A bigger issue, however, is Vonage support. I have had no Vonage dial tone for two days. Calls to their support # have ended in a "we are too busy to take your call, please leave a message." These messages, as well as three emails, have gone unanswered. The result is that I have no phone service and no way to speak to anyone to fix the problem. This, I believe, is Vonage's critical flaw.

  When support is fixed and the service becomes reliable, this will be a great product. Until then, stay away.
  
  

• Amazing voice quality! Easy install!
  By A1ZE0J2WIHV19K on 2003-01-29
  I have been using Vonage since Jun 2002.
  The service has excellent voice quality - sometimes better than my home phone!
  I recommend it to to all my friends and get an additional free month for each friend that signs up!
  The international rates are almost as good as Net2phone, but since I use a regular cordless phone it is soo much easier to use;
  and my PC doesn't even have to be on! Many thanks to vonage.j-zone.com/faq for all their helpful advice.

  While I am travelling outside of the country, my Vonage phone IS my home phone. :)

  If you have cable or DSL, then this is a great way to call anyone, anytime and not worry about a growing phone bill.
  
  

• Vonage: The Good & the Not so Good
  By ACK92T7HBGQ2S on 2003-03-12
  First I would like to say that if you would like to save money each month on your phone bill and if you have high speed cable internet access, then you just might want to switch. But please be aware of the disadvantage of this service.

  But before I state some disadvantage and problems, I want to write about the positve things about Vonage.

  The Good

  I have cut my phone bill by more than %50. Not to mention, I get 500 hundred minutes of long distance included along with all the other common features (such as caller Id, call waiting, voicemail). I get all this for only $ a month! I love to save money and I am sick and tired of throwing money away to these traditional phone companies! Vonage simply gives me a much better value.

  Another great thing about Vonage is the online account management where you can check your messages, make changes to your service, and see instantly what charges and calls are posted to your account. I love this becuase I am not suprised by a huge long distance bill every month.

  The Not so Good

  The greatest disadvantage to using Vonage is that there currently is no 911 service. Although, they are working to get the added and I am being told that this will be available by the end of March 2003. Vonage should have had this service from the beginning.

  Another disadvantage of Vonage is that there is no name display for the caller ID. This is something else that should have been available from the beginning. However this is also being added although no estimated date was given.

  In regard to phone quality, Vonage is not as good as a traditional phone line but better than the other internet phone services that I've tried. I have had a few complaints that people are getting feedback on their phone. Also, while surfing the web, very brief hesitations and minor voice problems are common. This can be irratating so I just mainly surf when I am not talking on the phone.

  One last thing: Know that you will be sharing your net connection with your phone service. This does make a noticeable diiference in speed. Users can select the bandwidth saver feature but the voice quality will be greatly decreased.
  
  

• Miserable failure
  By A3VONQL7YW8UPM on 2004-03-03
  We got Vonage to save on the outrageous BellSouth commercial line fees and because BellSouth's customer service is so lousy.

  Unfortunately, the Vonage system has such lousy service quality(dropped calls, echos, delays) that it's just not viable for a small business. Reliability is at or below what you would get from a cell phone (while driving through a rural area).

  Their customer service seems to range from average to lousy in my experience. Also, as a small business, it was important that we be able to get a "block" of numbers. Not only could we not get a block, we were assigned different exchanges (the 3 digits after the area code). When we asked to at least be put under the same exchange, they told us to use the web site to do it (for which there is a charge of $10.00 per change).

  Here are your options:

  LOCAL PHONE: Bad customer service, high prices, reliable signal
  VONAGE: ? customer service, low prices, unreliable signal
  
  

• Completely unresponsive customer service
  By on 2003-03-19
  Pros: Unique product that can fill special needs. Good voice quality, nice features.

  Cons: Worst customer service response I have ever seen, it will make dealing with your local baby bell seem pleasant by comparison. Delay in voice leads to talk-over. Flaky service.

  We purchased this because we are moving and wanted to take our old number with us to an area that would be long distance for many of our friends. If this service worked well, this would have been great. Unfortunately, there is a delay between when you talk and when the other person hears you. We found this too annoying to live with, so we decided to cancel the service and get a money-back guarantee (unfortunately we bought through the company, not Amazon, so no easy return). I've been trying for two days now to cancel, and have gotten no response to my e-mails.

  I first tried to contact their customer service when the voice mail didn't work. After waiting on hold for nearly 1/2 hour, a message came through saying that their call center was too busy, and that I should try again later or send an e-mail. I've got better things to do than wait on hold for 25 minutes just to be told to call again. I sent them an e-mail, and no one responded (not even now, 1 week later). After several episodes of being on hold for 25 minutes, I finally got through (5 days later) they told me that this was a system-wide problem. It would have been nice if they could have said this on their web page, then I wouldn't have bothered trying to call them. Now I'm trying to contact customer service to cancel the service. I'm afraid that I may have to put a stop pay on my credit card to get my money back.

  If you can live with the delays and flaky voice mail, it might be okay for you. The voice quality is quite good. I currently have a cable modem through Comcast (formerly AT&T) which is 256K upstream, 1.5 MB downstream. I have talked on the phone while doing other surfing, including watching live video, and haven't had any problem with quality.

  I wanted to like Vonage, but the horrible customer service turned me off for good.
  
  

• Don't Be Scared By The Internet Aspect Of This - It Works
  By A1US87X5YUEQ7A on 2003-09-15
  The toughest thing about setting up Vonage is taking the twistie ties off the cabling. Everything self installs. You plug the included hardware into your Internet connection and it self installs. No CD to load. No commands to type on your computer at all.

  People who I've called cannot tell the difference between a normal phone line and Vonage. The sound quality is identical. In the 1,000 minutes or so that I've used Vonage I have not experienced any echoes or other problems. And I have easily been able to simultaneously use my DSL service to browse the Internet and download files -- while holding a conversation via Vonage.

  If there is any downside to this service it seems to be on the incoming call side. While I've only used my Vonage for outgoing calls - I have read a few messages from users that have switched their phone service over entirely to Vonage and they sporadically seem to have issues with callers getting busy signals or out of service messages. While these are understandable with any new service the bigger concern is that contacting technical support is not as fast as with the local phone company (this seems to be the one area the telephone company still has an advantage with).
  
  

• Stop Being Robbed by The Bell Company.
  By A2E08HUH8PI3KX on 2003-02-13
  I use Vonage Digital Voice, and I love it. I use my regular telephone plugs into my Vonage box and make my calls through the internet. I can call any telephone number I would call with a regular phone line (except 900 type toll calls). I also receive incoming calls and people never know I am using a different service than normal telephone service.

  The service is VERY inexpensive but the quality is great. I get voice quality that is as good or better than a regular telephone line.

  No more talking on rinky-dink set-ups connected to your computer. Use a real phone, your computer doesn't even have to be turned on.

  This is the phone service of the future!
  
  

• Great Product, Terrible Support
  By A3EBLH2RSXY6PH on 2003-03-12
  I recently installed Vonage and it worked great for a couple days. The sound quality is surprisingly good.

  Two days ago, the service stopped working altogether (I get a dial tone, but all calls end in a fast busy signal). I have made 3 calls to support and each time I was forwarded to a recorded message saying they are too busy to take my call. I have also sent three emails to support. I have not received a response to any of my inquiries. Now I am without phone service and it is impossible to get help.

  This could be a great service, but I would recommend staying away for now.
  
  

• Vonage [Stinks]and Here's Why
  By on 2003-08-25
  ... Ok, here's why Vonage sucks:

  After relying solely on my cellular phone for a year because I was annoyed by the high costs of traditional land line service ...), I came across a Vonage ad. I had been meaning to sign up for VoIP phone service with Earthlink, but in features, Vonage beat out the Earthlink and came in at a lower price . Wonderful I thought as I waited anxiously for my Cisco ATA 186 (converts analog voice signal to digital; your phone plugs into this device and this device to your router) to arrive in the mail.
  
  Well, let me quit beating around the bush and say that this service[stinks] at best. Here's why:
  Got my voicemail working and it was fine. Had some friends call in from work to show them how great Vonage was. Voicemail message had mysteriously disappeared and was replaced by an annoying beep, beep, beep. . . and you couldn't leave a message. Called in and finally got through to someone after several attempts and they said that they had an outage. Ok, so I reset my message.
  Set up a virtual number for my parents to use to call me. Did not work. I called Vonage and of course couldn't get through on the line (busy signals, dropped calls, and answering machine after being on hold). I sent an email to support several days ago. To this day I have received nothing and of course I can't get though to anyone on the phone.
  Since Saturday, today is Monday - phone service is off and on due to outages. Saturday it was for several hours. Sunday a few minutes. Monday a couple hours. Not able to make or receive calls. Not acceptable
  Customer service is not accessible. When stuff goes wrong, and believe me it does, you just have to sit back and wait and use your cell phone. No wonder they let you transfer your calls to another number for free. Your number never works!
  I have yet to be a satisfied customer. I had four friends ready to switch Vonage and I told them to stay with Verizon. Verizon may kill you on taxes, but hey, at least you get to use your phone and you can rely on it!
  
  No, it's not my setup - I have Earthlink cable modem - 2.3mbs down and 384k up. I know how to build and manage networks so it's not my configuration. Vonage is a bit ahead of their time. Like Microsoft, they should have worked out their bugs before releasing such a poor service to customers.
  
  

• Absolutely no customer service
  By A2SRUMWXH9XJ21 on 2004-01-29
  The service works well . . . most of the time. However, if you have a problem, Vonage doesn't want to know about it. I've waited up to an hour on hold to get a tech rep and forget about e-mail support - they just don't answer. Now I want to cancel and they're going to charge me a cancellation fee! My advice is to wait until they work out a few more bugs and get over their growing pains.
  
  
• Great product - best value for use outside the USA
  By A26SA8Q5X5HCGN on 2003-01-18
  Vonage works! It's really best for international users who will save a fortune on long distance; domestic rates are so low anyway the savings aren't as great.
  
  
• Vonage Voice Over IP service
  By A163NN5PRAYCYG on 2003-03-26
  I signed up for Vonage and received the Cisco ATA adapter for use with my regular phone. The setup took a couple of minutes and the service has been up and running with no problems. The clarity of the calls is far better than I expected compared to my local SBC service even though my DSL service is at speeds less than 144K.
  Only thing that I had to get used to is that you have to dial all ten digits to call numbers in your local area i,e 1 510 555 1212. If you don't, you will get a fast busy tone as experienced by one of the other reviewers here - a bit frustrating --it would be nice if you get a message that reminds you to dial all ten digits. I was paying ATT about $... per month for long distance and I now expect a bill around $...inclusive of the monthly fee.

  Since this service is straight forward, the only reason to call them would be incase of a hardware failure. Of course problems or interruptions with the DSL service is another story.
  
  

• Vonage Phone Service [is bad]
  By AI56Y6I0OAB9L on 2003-05-12
  I signed up for VONAGE 3/10/03. I have paid 3 months of service since then and have yet to have my phone number transferred from my local carrier.

  Let me quote from Vonage web site ... It says "you should expect the request to be complete in no more than 15 business days" Furthermore there is money back gaurantee during that time frame. How will any new customer excercise this option if they have not been transferred. What few people realize is that they start to charge you the day you click the submit button on their website. They give you a SILLY virtual phone number that your supposed to use in the meantime. I have not used that stupid Virtual phone number yet. It's a pain in the but to tell friends and relatives that I have a new temporary phone number.

  Anyway I've rambled on enough. Please don't waste your precious time on this 3rd World Phone Service.....
  
  

• Vonage Service
  By A84SRSVABT4IH on 2003-03-12
  I ordered the phone last week and it arrived yesterday. The Cisco box was small and I simply plugged it in, picked up the phone, and there was a dial tone. It sounds clearer then the regular phone service. You do have to dial 1+area code even for local calls, and your name will not show up (your number will) on other people's caller ID, it says vonage on it. But when you get unlimited phone and voice mail for $ its worth it. The caller ID light also comes on on my Panasonic telephone when there is voice mail -- cool. This is no gizmo that will disappoint you, its the real deal and works great. The web based control panel is cool too. You can see an online log of incoming and outgoing calls, as wel as check your voice mail.
  
  
• On an Island off Nova Scotia, a Phone like the Next Room
  By A1A6PRG4DACMPF on 2003-06-27
  I spend the summer on an island a mile off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. We have an undersea electrical cable, but no phone service. Last year I established a wireless high-speed internet connection that works well. Our phone service was an "industrial grade cordless phone" that worked okay, but had frequent dropped calls.

  I bought the Vonage phone service and brought it to the island this summer. I connected the "modem-like device" to my Apple Airport ethernet connector, and about 10 seconds later the light on the device went out, meaning I had service.

  I got a dial tone and called my office. They said I sounded like I was in the next room. In fact, I had to turn DOWN the volume on the phone, because they were so loud and clear. Then my partner called his parents in VA. They said he sounded like he was in the next room. (We need more metaphors here.)

  In short, the service works as advertised, does so with no problem and with elegance (like Apple products, it just works). Highly reccommended from the middle of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada. If it can work for me on this crazy internet setup, it can work for you.
  
  

• Vonage: Phone Service Mediocre, Customer Service TERRIBLE
  By on 2004-03-15
  I tried Vonage for 2 months. The call quality was okay -- there were some annoying echoes and delays when speaking. There was often no dial tone when I would pick up the phone receiver. The "solution" was to unplug, wait 20 seconds, and replug my cable modem and the Vonage modem every time I wanted to make a call. This was, as you can imagine, annoying, so I decided to get rid of the service.

  A Vonage salesperson had persuaded me to give the service a try, and had promised me that there would be a "no questioned asked" trial period where I would be guaranteed to get back my $57 start-up fee if I was unhappy. I was reluctant to try Vonage with such a huge start-up cost when the technology was so new. After I cancelled, I tried to get my money back per this guarantee. When I called to request this, I encountered very rude customer service representatives. They refused to give me my money back, telling me that I should have read their terms of service. Buried somewhere in their multi-page, tiny contract are a bunch of techical rules that, if you fail to follow them, makes you ineligible to get your start-up money back.

  I argued with the customer service representative on 2 occasions, trying to get my money back, but each time they told me that I should have read the terms of service more carefully. I told them that their rules were hidden and in any case, unfair. I feel like they mislead me. The salesperson didn't mention anything about sneaky limitations on the money-back guarantee in the terms of service...he didn't even mention that there were terms of service to look at.

  The customer service, in general, is terrible. From the accents of the representatives, it sounds like they have been outsourced to another country. The representatives in this country clearly don't know about the saying "the customer is always right." After I asked one representative what I should do, he rudely replied, "I don't know, because I wouldn't have gotten in this situation." All of the representatives proceded to argue with me instead of listening to my side of the story.

  I'm very unhappy, as you can tell, with Vonage's terrible customer service. As other reviewers have noted, with any new technology there are going to be glitches, and you are going to have to deal with customer service. Unless you feel like waiting on line for a long time only to argue with rude customer service representatives, I can't recommend Vonage.
  
  

• Great Product!
  By on 2003-02-11
  I am impressed with the Vonage VOIP service.

  I signed up on Thursday night, and received my Cisco telephone adaptor on Monday. I plugged it in to my router and a phone, and it worked.

  I've called several people already, and they never knew I wasn't on a regular telephone. I have a cable modem from Comcast.
  
  

• It works
  By on 2003-03-09
  I have been using Vonage for over a month now. It is easy to set up and configure and the sound quality is generally excellent. There could be a problem for some people who have insufficient upload speed, but with my DSL it works essentially flawlessly. I am using a Sony phone with 4 wireless remote phones in various places in the house and find that I get excellent coverage. There could be a problem if you use a firewall program such as ZoneAlarm integrated with your Linksys router, but a conventionally installed firewall should not cause any problems.

  In short, it works and there have been no signficant problems.
  
  

• Mostly good, can improve on some things
  By A772JEY1EJ84 on 2003-07-01
  I have had Vonage for about 3 weeks. Here are my thoughts:

  Pros-
  * The price
  * You can port your existing number over
  * Very good voice quality MOST of the time
  * Online control of your account and features
  * You can configure it to forward to another number when system is down.

  Cons-
  * Customer service is difficult. They are friendly, but never give status calls that they promise
  * Calls SOMETIMES have an annoying echo. This seems to happen more with local calls than LD calls

  * When calling CERTAIN numbers, seems like cell phones or certain types of cordless phones, the voice sounds like it is on "half-duplex". In other words, it sounds like when you speak, you can't hear the other person, and vice versa (a lot like old speaker phones). The good thing is that even though it sounds like half-duplex, it seems to actually be full-duplex, because when the other person does talk while you are talking, the voice does in fact come through. I think it may have to do with the "noise cancelling" properties of the Cisco ATA. It can hopefully be corrected with an improved version of firmware, but who knows.
  * As many people have mentioned, you need power to the ATA, the modem, and the router in order for the system to work. But a good way to make sure this happens is to use a cheap UPS (uninterruptable power supply) which will also act as a very good surge protector.
  
  

• Vonage Sucks Hard
  By A14OC5CVKBMXDO on 2004-01-06
  I feel that Vonage totally sucks. I got the service in mid November.
  It never worked at all for the phone number that was the whole
  reason I got Vonage. So I finally got fed up with dealing with
  customer service and canceled online. Well, apparently you can't
  cancel online. So no that I'm back (Jan, 5th) I saw the email saying to
  call and I did. The guy in cancelations told me that he was sending
  me to credits so that they could credit me for this month's service.
  The guy in credits told me that according to his screen I canceled
  today and there is nothing he can do for me. I asked to speak with a
  supervisor and he told me that there is no supervisor. I feel that they
  should credit me pro rated from December 12th, when I canceled
  online, but even if they can't they should credit me pro rated from
  today!! I had to pay a full month for five days of service that I didn't
  use at all. I'd say people got through about 25% of the time.

  Vonage Sucks!!
  
  

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