Vonage

the Vonage truthI have had Vonage for two weeks now and had no trouble at all with voice quality or connection. In fact, the sound quality is 100 times better than I had with AT&T land line and the price is far below AT&T. I do believe that most of the negative posts on here are being done by representatives from other VoIP companies. This is most evident from the lack of plain English on many of the posts, since most VoIP use India and other third world countries to do their telecom work. Vonage does too regretably. I think these companies should come back to the U.S. and give people jobs here who speak the language of our own country and have some kind of education beyond "how to try to cover up your foreign accent to fool the Americans".

We've been a Vonage subscriber for three years at three locations with the same US number and now use it from Europe. Vonage is fantastic. Once in a blue moon we experience a dropped call but this is seldom. Customer service was needed for the intial setup, however, since configuring the router the first time it has been plug in and forget each time we have moved. The people complaining here about all their problems are failing to address "jitter" in their DSL or narrow bandwith broadband connections. Don't listen to them! If you have decent cable broadband, Vongage will be outstanding. The "softphone" option you can add to a laptop if you travel frequently is also a great bonus for business and government travelers. I strongly recommend the service. Don't compare this service to services like SKYPE and others where you have to have a PC running all the time. It is not the same thing at all.

I signed up for Vonage because of cheap rates to Ukraine. Well, it appears to be not as cheap as I thought. 9 out of 10 times I try to dial I do not get connected but I do get billed for 1 minute (12 cents every time). Worthless customer support. First trying to tell me it is problem with Ukraininian lines - I am trying to explain that I have just dialed from my cell and got through from my first try with an excellent connection quality.... They are transfering me to a manager. Manager issues ticket, promises to solve problem, etc, etc... Problem is still not solved, they keep billing me 12 cents per calls which were never connected. By the way I have a great quality DSl, so interenet connection is not an isssue...
Stay away from this providedr!

Some of the reviewers say they've had vonage for 2 whole weeks and haven't experienced anything negative. I've had their service for over a year and I experience constant letdowns. Customer service promises fixes that they don't follow thru on. 5 days later you call and surprise you by telling you they haven't done what they said they would do. Be smart, go with a more reputable company.

Meanwhile I suggest we look into a class action suit.

I have had Vonage for over one month. They have billed me for services I did not ask for. They caused my account to overdraft. 3 times. Refused to make restitution. Wanted to give me credit instead. No one to talk to in Customer service who can make decisions. Unfriendly customer service.
Service does not work well when traveling and using the modem. Basically, they are unscrupulous.

I've had Vonage for a couple of months. The first few weeks were troublesome because the Vonage phone adapters (both D-Link and Linksys) were incompatible with my router. Once I bought an all-in-one router/wireless/phone adapter, everything has worked just fine. Vonage even gave me $40 credit toward buying the $60 all-in-one box. Since I'm saving so much compared to AT&T POTS, I'm not complaining about the $20 I had to shell out to get the all-in-one box.

Call quality has been good, but not quite as good as my old landline. My cable modem service is quite fast, about 6x faster than my neighbor's DSL, so I don't think the call quality is due to my ISP.

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The biggest thing people should be aware of is this: Vonage, at least in my area, only transmits your number, not your name, for outgoing calls. For all your friends, relatives and neighbors that have Caller ID, they will only see your number when you call and a generic name like, "Michigan Call". Most people with Caller ID know that when they see a name like "Michigan Call" show up on their display, it's ususally a tele-marketer, and they won't bother to answer. Such is the case with my family, neighbors, etc. Now when I want to do something as simple as quickly calling my kids home from a neighbor's house for dinner, I walk down the street and knock on their door because they don't answer my calls. It might be good for neighbor relations, but it's very inconvenient sometimes. Don't trivialize this issue, it's a major problem. It's rendered my outgoing call ability next-to-useless since I only ever get talk to answering machines.

I just called AT&T CallVantage and they confirmed that their VoIP service transmits both the name and number for outgoing calls. Since their prices are now the same as Vonage, I think I'm going to switch to AT&T.

I've had Vonage for over 2 years now and have had very few problems. I've had to reset the converter occassionally but overall, it's been very reliable. Sound quality has also been great. I disconnected the phone line that was used by the POTS system and connected the converter into a wall jack and have had 3 phones in the house for the whole time with no issues. I had to set the call quality down a notch when I first installed it though. I do notice some distortion when cruising the net while talking on the phone but nothing major.

We have used Vonage for 2+ years. It's really awful. We use our cell phones at home more often than our home phone.

I often explain to people at the beginning of a call that I'm using Vonage, it's VOIP and we may experience difficulties.

People cannot hear me when I call them, and there are times when I answer my phone and hear nothing on the other end.

Being married to a geek that knows how to reset everything is a bonus, but even he has admitted that Vonage isn't that great.

Faxing is a total nightmare so you better have a good scanner and email everything rather than attempt faxing.

The amount of money one might save means nothing when compared to the sheer aggrevatioin of a non-working home phone.

Better have a reliable cell phone as back up if you are going to use Vonage.

Virginia,
I have had calls drop and people on the other end say they can't hear all of what I say. Customer Service was the BEST ever. The lady I dealt with called me back 3 times in order to see if I still had choppiness on my line.We went over several instructions. Vonage says problem is that most people have routers and many connections between modem, router, vonage device, etc..... We shall see if anything changes.