I have been a Vonage customer for several years, but discontinued it when I ordered FIOS for the office. The reason I did this was because I received a discount for having both phone and internet on one bill. This is technically true, but that means I’m paying over one-hundred dollars for a freaking phone. It is technically a business line, but there is no discernible difference between it and a regular phone line.
For the cost of this “business line” I could easily justify a new cell phone plan, which basically makes a land line useless.
I was very happy with the Vonage service, and in many respects works much better than Verizon’s land line. All of your voice mail is available on a web site, and can be downloaded. You can set all of your features through the website as well.
I called Verizon several times to change the number of rings before going to voicemail (which is set at 4, which is way too quick), and they haven’t been able to figure out how to do it… meaning that we never get messages on our physical answering machine. Also, Vonage treats everything as long distance, and always puts a “1” on every caller ID, so all numbers are easy to redail.
The straw that broke the camel’s back is long distance. We live in Seattle, so Canada is the next-door neighbor rather than a foreign country. We have several friends in Vancouver, and we call them from time to time. Verizon charged us over $30 in additional long distance just because we called a “foreign country”. Why are we paying for “unlimited long distance”? Going with Vonage allows us to call several countries, even most of Europe, and it’s all included.
So I ordered Vonage again. They even gave me two months free and waived the installation charge to come back. I filled out their form, and an online representative was immediately available for chat when I had a question. They even gave me a new Vonage router (which has caller ID and a log right on the device) for free (just pay for shipping).
I ordered Vonage yesterday around 3:00 pm. The Vonage modem showed up this morning around 9:00am.
There may have been previous issues with Vonage’s customer service (some of which I experienced personally), but they seem to have totally gotten their act together.
Hopefully there won’t be any issues with transferring my phone number or any other installation issues. These types of things usually go wrong. One thing is for sure, though: Vonage isn’t messing around.
