Recommended: Vonage for Phone/Long Distance
I’m a big fan of word-of-mouth recommendations, so I’m hoping to periodically recommend services and products that have been useful to us and that we love enough to want others to experience them too.
Vonage - we’ve been using Vonage instead of a regular phone line for almost 6 months now. It’s been great. Not a single complaint. We pay $24.99/mo for unlimited long distance (within US and Canada) plus an extra $5 for a Vancouver number so that our family there can call us via a local number and it doesn’t end up costing us or them anything (day or night). We haven’t had any problems, so I can’t speak for their customer service. You provide the broadband internet (cable/dsl/etc.) and a phone, and they provide the rest. Shipping was surprisingly quick, and you can even transfer a normal phone number if you’d like. One of my favorite features is the ability to log in on the website to instantly and easily set up call forwarding and other features. We’ve got call forwarding set to ring at our house for 15 seconds and then forward to our cell. Email me or leave a comment and I’ll send you an email that will get you the first month of service free (and we’ll get credit for it too). There’s also no contract, which is really nice to know that you can cancel at anytime.
Note: In the interest of full-disclosure, some of the things we may recommend might offer incentive to us to get people to use them or sign up for them. Regardless of whether there is incentive, we’ll never recommend a product for that reason alone - we’ll only recommend something that we thoroughly use and love and want others to use and love too.
October 25th, 2005 at 8:52 pm
Thanks for this post. I’ve been eyeing Vonage for a while now and talking it up with Jeannie. So far she’s not sure (she like our long distance provider–Working Assets) but posts like yours can help.
October 26th, 2005 at 9:24 am
Just have to speak up because I work for a telecommunications carrier. If you are thinking of getting this and getting rid of your land line, please keep in mind that Voip does not work during periods of power outages and also still has some 911 issues.
I think it is a great product for some but for those with small children or health issues I still recommend that they keep a basic land line in the house with a pushbutton non cordless phone attached to it.
During the blackout of 2003, when cell phones and cordless phones did not work, I was a hit with the neighbors because I was one of the few non all cordless, all cellular houses on the block.
October 26th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
Those are good points to bring up, Saple. In our case, 911 does work perfectly, as we found out by mistake a few days ago. One of our phones is messed up and in dialing a number that was 912-#### (stupid, stupid prefix!), the phone dialled 9112-#### - which went through as 911 - as we found out when the police showed up at our door.
As for the power outage issue, I certainly can’t argue with that. For us, it hasn’t been a problem, and as you mentioned, many people have only cordless phones these days, which won’t work anyway.
Still for us, though, not a big deal in exchange for the money we’re saving each month in long distance charges. If you make many long distance phone calls and you still want a landline, it would likely still save you money to get Vonage and use it for your long distance ($25/unlimited) and then you’d still have your landline for power outages.
October 31st, 2005 at 3:26 pm
Hey you too…nice to see some more entries. Joel and I have been renovating as well these days…..matter o’ fact, joel is working on the laundry room too. I have considered blogging as well, but those who are more faithful to online journaling might be offended by my ability to start a blog an never post…lol…well anyway, reno is a lifestyle..I swear, it will never end!!!!
May 12th, 2006 at 6:38 am
Nice job! A lot more original than the old Rejuvination medicine cabinet that everyone has in there house. Including mine. Be sure to take a pic of the door when finished-
Thanks.