[Suzanne 3FC]

I'm considering signing up for Vonage phone service but would like to hear from actual customers Has anyone tried them?

[mandalinn82]

Yes! Yes! and more Yes!

Its the best decision I've ever made.

I first got the line when my office put it in for me. Soon, I was making all of my long-distance home calls on that phone line. Great quality, great services (free voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, etc, etc). Two things - make sure you do the 911 setup if this is going to be your only phone line in the house, and make sure you have a cell phone or whatever in case your internet goes out.

I couldn't be more happy. PM me if you have specific questions.

[FairyWinx]

This is good to read. I am thinking of switching too. AT&T is taking over SBC here.

[lovemygordie]

We use Vonage and really like it. We also have cell phones so we only signed up for the 500 minutes per month plan with Vonage, which is $14.99. My boyfriend did have to play around with the settings a bit to get everything working smoothly (I'm not sure exactly what he did). Before he did something to the settings, occasionally the person on the other end wouldn't be able to hear us. We haven't had that problem since he did something to the settings. One thing that's cool about Vonage is that you can pretty much choose your own area code if you want. We recently moved from Vermont to California and kept our Vermont phone number. People who call us from Vermont don't have to pay long distance to call us.

[DeafinlySmart]

I'm a vonage customer. I actually have had several "unlimited" internet phone plans. I always recommend it if you have cable interent already. If you don't, cost wise it isn't a good option. Obviously you do. I'm not necessarily for any plan such as vonage. I just like the type of service itself. So far I have not been disappointed. Ditto on the 911 stuff. I called 911 two weeks ago and it worked! My baby was playing hide and seek REALLY well and did not say one word for over 30 min while he was hiding behind a thick curtain in the bay window. The door was wide open (the kids forgot to close it). Nobody knew he was playing the game. My baby is 2 years old and I FREAKED!

[kaplods]

We're on skype, as our primary phone. We also have a TracPhone (buy minutes as you go) for emergencies. Skype is like vonage, but a lot cheaper. We paid $75 for last year's entire year of service.

[Suzanne 3FC]

DeafinlySmart, so sorry to hear about your baby scare!

Thanks, everyone, for the great input! I hadn't thought about Skype, I'll go investigate that now. I think one or the other is the way to go.

[DeafinlySmart]

Originally Posted by kaplods

We're on skype, as our primary phone. We also have a TracPhone (buy minutes as you go) for emergencies. Skype is like vonage, but a lot cheaper. We paid $75 for last year's entire year of service.

I don't buy anything not unlimited. I talk too much...lol.

[Misti in Seattle]

I don't have it but a lot of my friends do and like it. I was planning to join but got a better deal from Comcast so did that instead.

[JuliaTN]

Suzanne, I think y'all are in E. TN and might want to consider that there aren't local phone numbers available from Vonage. I use it for my home office and virtually everyone is calling from long distance anyway so it doesn't matter for me but people calling me locally freak out thinking they are calling Nashville. Other than that, I've been happy with it. One thing I really like is the ease of changing forwarding and other customizable features. I just give people my office number and it automatically forwards to my cell phone so they don't have to try 2 different numbers to get me.

[mandalinn82]

One of my coworkers had major reliability problems with Skype - lots of time spent fighting it to connect. Don't know if anyone else has had those experiences, but he switched over to Vonage after getting tired of fighting Skype.

[kaplods]

Hmm, I've never had any problems connecting. I was disconnected twice in the middle of a call, and sound quality has been less than perfect on a few occasions (maybe 3), but in each case, I just called the person back and it was fine.

For us, the price was well worth the rare problems we experienced. It's so cheap to try, I'd highly recommend giving it a try. We started out with the free skype service (where you can call any other skype member on their computer free) so that we could talk to my family in Illinois. Then we bought one month to try it out, and we've been hooked every since. Going from $95 per month, to about $7.

[almostheaven]

I'll let you know next week. Our Vonage kit will be here tomorrow. LOL

[willmakeit]

Our alarm security system is not compatible with Vonage (direct dial 911 i.e if you call 911 they wont get your number and location unless you tell them!)

[almostheaven]

Well the Vonage is hooked up and working just fine. Can't tell the difference between it or the regular phone...except in the price of course.