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Review by Yikes2000 
UPDATED: 32 days ago
member for 8.2 years, 2516 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Irvine,Orange,CA
 $30 per month (24 month contract)
 "Offered Discounts After Complaining"
 "Hidden Fees and TOS Traps"
 "Cheaper than AT&T, but more expensive than other VoIP's"
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I have Vonage for a year now. During the first 4 months, the V-Portal device would disconnect from the Vonage server for no apparent reason. After numerous reboots and complains, it was fixed -- more or less. Occasionally, incoming phone calls still get forwarded to the backup phone line even though the V-Portal device shows no sign of a problem, and I can pick up the Vonage line for a dial tone.
The biggest problem though, is the hidden fees and TOS traps. For the $24.99 plan, they added nearly $5 of fees. In June/July 2009, they increased it by $0.50 via shuffling -- decrease one fee by $0.50, but increase two other fees by $0.50 each. I called and complained. They offered me a discount of $14.95/mo for 6 months.
I have a 2-year contract, during which I will pay $40 early termination charge if I cancel. However, if Vonage raise their prices or make "material change" to their TOS, then I may cancel without paying the $40 termination charge. There is a few problems with that. First, they don't have to email me about TOS change or price increase. Second, E911 or other feature add-on are exempt. Third, it takes 10 business days to port a phone number to another company. In summary, Vonage could raise their fees or charge new fees for a feature, and I have only 16-17 days to notice it in TOS and initiate termination, otherwise I'd be stuck paying the price increase or $40 termination fees (or both).
UPDATE 10/22/2009:
Vonage changed their TOS on 9/2/2009. Althoughthey didn't raise prices, the new TOS gave them more ways to raise prices while keeping me locked into my 2-year contract. So I cancelled my service for "material change" in the TOS.
(TOS) Section 15 gives me 30 days to cancel without the $40 termination charge when there is a "material change" to the TOS, but it took ***22 DAYS*** for Vonage to port my telephone number to another company. By the time it was done, the 30 days has expired. I don't think that's a coincident.
To get around this, I called within the original 30 days and asked how long it takes to port my phone number out. Then I asked if I should cancel before the porting is completed. Of course they said no. I requested the agent to document my phone call and give me a confirmation #. After the number is ported, I immediately called back to cancel service and request a waiver for the $40 disconnection fee citing my previous phone call. At this point the agent cannot help me with the waiver because it's past the 30 days, but she documented my request and gave me a second confirmation #. Next I filed a dispute via email (see TOS for address). When someone from Vonage Corporate office called back, I explained everything from the beginning and asked for the $40 waiver. She gave it to me.
Cost was the primary reason that I cancelled Vonage. Although they advertise $25/mo, it's close to $30/mo with all the hidden fees and taxes. If you complain enough, then the agent on the phone might offer you $12.50/mo (add $5 for fees) for 12 months. That is still more expensive than other VoIP's.
Vonage is a good replacement for AT&T and other traditional phone companies. The initial setup was easy and I saved 50% per month over my previous AT&T phone bill. Now I am ready to try a cheaper VoIP.
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Review by Rob2647
UPDATED: 38 days ago
member for 1.2 years, 376 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Rochester,Oakland,MI
$23 per month
 about 1 days
"Rock Solid Service at a Good Price and Call Quality"
"Don't care for the auto bill pay, and out sourced customer service."
"Works Great, good starter VOIP service."
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Initial review:
Had Vonage for little over 11 months now. The service has been solid, no outages to speak of due to Vonage itself. Unlike my cable internet provider. Setup and activation was easy. I bought a Linksys PAP2 device from my local electronics retailer. Within an hour later had the service up and running. Since signing up I'm on the Residential Unlimited plan for 25 bucks a month, with taxes and fees that comes out to $31 a month. Still cheaper than my ISP's digital voice offering with less features.
Call quality has been great, at 90k or 50k bandwidth usage on a router with no QOS. Vonage worked flawlessly with my hit or miss Comcast connection for nearly a year without any issues. And you can't beat all the features for the price Vonage offers. No Cable Companies bundled discounts can touch what Vonage offers. I would not hesitate to recommend Vonage to anyone.
A couple days after getting all setup and working, I got a courtesy call seeing how everything went and if I had any questions. I think that is the first time I had any company do that. I found quite nice.
9/11/08
Switched to AT&T U-verse this past weekend, so I figured it's time for an update. Vonage still working great. Still using the Linksys PAP2 v2 phone adapter hooked into the U-verse gateway just as I did on my old Linksys BEFSR41 Now with a better ISP I have less to worry about. 
9/30/08
Dropped the plan down from Unlimited Residential to the 500 minutes a month. Was not happy with being charged a activation fee of $9.99 when the service has been active for almost 14 months. I'm going to be canceling the service by the end of October. Just tired of paying for something we barely use. Also today had to deal with the annoying out sourced customer service and automated phone system. At this point I don't know if I'd consider going back.
11/4/08
I have been debating on canceling the service. I have not as of yet. I may not, and just ride this until Vonage possibly goes under at the end of the year. But 500 mins a month out going, and unlimited incoming for just under 20 bucks a month is not bad. Finally had 1 very brief service outage last week. Lasted a minute or two.
2/27/09
Received email today, stating the basic plan is raising to $17.99 a month starting in May. Thinking it will be time to dump it. Either for Uvoice or a AT&T POTS line. Other than the price increase, the service has been stable.
5/7/09
I've had the service about a year and a half. Funny thing is it's been more reliable than my old cable internet ever was. I only had one brief outage in that time. I've decided to keep the service. Still on the basic 500 minute plan. It's all we need, and for the price, POTS or Uverse voice can't compete.
10/19/09
Now after 26 months decided to cancel the service. Just was not being used to keep dishing out $24.xx a month. Was not too thrilled with how the customer service rep handled my call. Vonage is a good beginners VOIP service, but the price is getting too expensive for what we used it for.
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 Review by Matt_31
Posted: 44 days ago
member for 6.7 years, 444 visits, last login: 7 days ago
Jasper,Dubois,IN
$35 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Excellent Voice clearlity, low price, features, support"
"couldnt trandfer number, had to get a new number"
"Well worth getting, excellent choice."
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Our cable company offers phone but not for our area and after three years of waiting we gave up, Vonage finally got numbers for our area. We orginally wanted to transfer the number but we were unable to so we had both lines our Verizon landline and Vonage. Using Vonage the first time was a huge upgrade alone with the same phone we used with verizon. I was shocked at how well it sounds, but now we have features verizon doesnt even offer like Call waiting ID and many others.
Ordering, we did online and it was simple and easy and was VERY clear about 911 and fee's even before we started so we knew what we we doing. it took a few days to get the portal box by ups and hooked it up and off we went with no problems. Very happy now after 2 weeks.
Verizon: Less features and much worse sound $78 a month
Vonage: all the features and clearlity $35 a month
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 Review by NetFixer
UPDATED: 45 days ago
member for 5.4 years, 3061 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Murfreesboro,Rutherford,TN
$35 per month (12 month contract)
about 1 days
"The basic service works well."
"Arrogant, ineffectual customer non-service."
"The basic service works well, their customer non-service sucks."
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I have two voice lines and a fax line for less money than a single business line from BellSouth. The two Cisco/Linksys RT31P2 routers worked right out of the box even behind an existing wireless router. So far voice quality even with two lines in use has been excellent without even using the RT31P2 QOS feature.
Update 08/03/06:
I have been using Vonage now for over a year, and I am quite pleased with the service. The two original RT31P2 routers went belly up during the year as well as a replacement RTP300, but Vonage replaced the defective units at no charge, and the RTP300 and VT2442 I now have seem to be working with no problems. I now have all my routers and modems on a wall mounted open frame rack to increase air circulation as I suspect that my previous practice of stacking them lead to premature failure due to heat buildup. The only problem I have had with the quality of the service was Comcast's erratic lag time which caused voice dropout, but moving all VOIP traffic to Covad has fixed that.
Update: 03/05/08:
About two months ago I terminated my Vonage service. I did so partly because I was offered a price break from AT&T CallVantage, but primarily because of the treatment I received after a failed attempt to use one of Vonage's V-Phone USB dongles.
Vonage marketing and billing refused to honor the terms of the MONEY BACK GUARANTEE as published in their Terms of Service agreement. Their argument was that the MONEY BACK GUARANTEE was only intended for new customers, not for loyal existing customers who were expanding their service. That failed experiment cost me $75.00 for the unusable USB dongle + $35.00 for the unusable first month's service.
I was so pissed with their arrogance and treachery that I ported my other existing Vonage numbers to AT&T CallVantage, and terminated the service on the existing Vonage accounts.
Way to go Vonage Customer Non-Service, turn an otherwise satisfied customer who was attempting to give you more business, into a churn statistic. 
Update 10/10/2009:
As much as it pained me to do so, I just signed up for a Vonage "World" plan. After AT&T CallVantage forced me to migrate, I moved one line to AT&T Mobility and for a while all I had was cell phone service. However, most of this week I had no phone service at home because of a cell tower problem. This forced me to reconsider the cell phone only option, and I was not about to further reward AT&T for shutting down their CallVantage service and taking almost a week to restore my cell phone service. The only saving grace is that I had increased my AT&T Mobility minute plan when I started being a cell phone only customer, and now I may be able to partially recover the cost of the Vonage service by cutting back on the AT&T Mobility minute plan.
Installation was relatively painless since I just re-registered my old Motorola VT-2442 ATA, and everything was done over the Vonage web site with no interaction required from Vonage Customer Non-Service. Within minutes of completing the on-line registration, the new line was working for outgoing calls, and within an hour, incoming calls from AT&T lines also worked.
Update 10/12/2009:
After a couple of days and a few calls, I rediscovered something that I had forgotten about. Unlike AT&T CallVantage, Vonage does not work reliably when behind a load balanced router. I had to setup port binding rules to a specific WAN port for SIP and RTP for the Vonage/Motorola ATA. Not a deal killer, but I sure do miss my AT&T CallVantage service which worked quite well with a load balanced connection.
Followup comments:  Brigrat
join:2003-09-01
Lovington, NM | I Hate Vonage! you shuld adjust your ratings to reflect their service... | |
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 Review by dunworkin
UPDATED: 47 days ago
member for 2.9 years, 1058 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Bellflower,Los Angeles,CA
$46 per month (24 month contract)
about 15 days
"Good cost alternative to POTS"
"No service during power outages"
"Great service for the price."
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I have 2 lines, one for voice and one for voice and fax. Both are the lower 500/month service. Install went real smooth. I'm using a Mortorola VT2442 router/adapter behind a Ambit U10C018 modem and Linksys WRT400N router.
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 Review by John_W
Posted: 48 days ago
member for 9.5 years, 3522 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Worcester,Worcester,MA
$24 per month
about 7 days
"Good sound quality, nice website interface, Nice features"
"Very expensive, no call blocking"
"Good, but there are better choices out there."
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I originally signed up for Vonage back in 2003. My reason for choosing the service was specifically on price. I ordered the 500 minute package for $14.99 plus $1.50 in fees. The package including an ATA arrived in 2 days and I was up and running in 7.
The call quality was excellent and they had few outages. Most of the outages were the fault of my local cable company as VOIP is only as good as your internet connection.
Their website and service offers extensive features including simu-ring, my favorite, which will ring two numbers at the same time. I chose my home and cell phone numbers. The control panel is very detail oriented showing all calls made and received and for how long. Voice mails can also be listened to online or just viewed. They used to offer emailed voice mail mp3's, but have since ended that, and now charge a fee for that service. They now offer world wide calling included in the base price of the $24.99 plan. Which is a nice feature now.
Some of the negatives. There is no call blocking of specific numbers. Something that users have been requesting for a long time. They are very expensive now. When I originally ordered, I got my 500 minute plan for about $16.50 a month. That has ballooned to a whopping $24.94 a month with the $3/mo increase in price and added fake fees. That is too expensive for what you get. I could get the unlimited plan for $32/mo, but why. I make only 60 minutes worth of calls a month. I have left Vonage for that specific reason. They jacked the price up too high too fast and it drove me away.
Vonage is nice and cheaper than a POTS line through the telco's but, it is expensive when compared to similar VOIP products. Why pay $25 a month when I can pay $9/mo for the same thing.
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Review by scasmflop
Posted: 50 days ago
member for 50 days, 2 visits, last login: 47 days ago
Bakersfield,Kern,CA
 Business customer
$22 per month
"Service was ok after some time spent optimizing everything"
"Hidden fees = rates much higher than quoted. Inexplicably charged me $120 to cancel!"
"Service was ok although I did notice drops when it was competing with other broadband activity. Cancellation = Scam Company"
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I had ok service with vonage but wasn't overly impressed as my service was spotty when it had to compete with other broadband activity. I'm sure I could have optimized even further to give it more priority through my router but my telephone service wasn't a priority to me and cable broadband should have been enough anyway.
Cancellation was the real eye-opener. Vonage is a complete scam. After 7 months of service I called to cancel (had already switch my number back to my old carrier), and they run me through 45 minutes of dodging and multiple offers to attempt to resign me despite my adament desire to just cancel and be done with them. Upon finally getting to the final cancellation step, they inform me that there will be $120 in charges for cancelling! I never signed any time-based contract with them and was always under the assumption that cancellation would not be an issue. They told me I had agreed to these charges in their TOS agreement when I first came on board with them (I remember being bombarded with tons of 911 workaround agreements, this TOS informing me that there could be $120 in fees for cancelling anytime wasn't anything I remember).
I would not recommend this service to anybody, they pass with QOS but are absolutely shady if you attempt to walk away even if you've never signed any time-based agreements.
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Review by Mr_A1
UPDATED: 50 days ago
member for 5.6 years, 2118 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Dickson,Dickson,TN
$25 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"3"
"7"
"You get what you pay for."
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Due to AT&T CallVantage service being discontinued, I decided to try Vonage as a value replacement. The changeover was easy and the equipment came fairly fast, but the call quality and features are not the same as AT&T for the same amount of money being paid per month. I will definitely be changing over the AT&T U-Verse Voice when I order their tv and internet services. Vonage still has a long way to go to provide better services like outgoing caller id along with other features now found on other carriers like a phone book, etc and really need to do something about improving their call quality.
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Review by rnikischer
UPDATED: 51 days ago
member for 6.9 years, 280 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Ottawa,La Salle,IL
$32 per month
about 5 days
"Excellent Call Quality"
"Sneaky Price Increases"
"Rock Solid Connection"
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August 12, 2009
I began shopping around for another company after Vonage's last price increase. I had no problem with their service for the many years I had them, however I was getting fed up with their price increases. I finally decided to switch over to VOIPO after having a conversation with Tim. I like the price and features they have to offer and I am not the least bit sorry I left Vonage. It was a good run but it was time to move on. I will give a review of VOIPO in the next few weeks after I have had their service for a few months.
April 20, 2009
Well despite all the doomsday prophecies regarding Vonage they are still providing me service and I haven't had a single issue with them. Top notch call quality and reliability. I haven't had to call them for any reason so I can't comment on their technical support. Historically it has been pretty bad but like I said I haven't had the need to call them so I don't know if that is still a problem. I am using cable 6/512 speed connection which I am sure helps keep the service running well. I did try to use their outbound fax service once, which is supposed to be a free feature, but it did not work. All I kept getting were error messages and the fax did not get sent. Don't know if it was a fluke or if it happens all the time. Other than this 1 issue I would suggest to anyone that they consider using them.
October 23, 2007
I have experienced no outages or problems with the system since my last review and while others have reported problems with their service I have had absolutely none. I decided to stick out the lawsuits and talk of Vonage going under and I am not the least bit sorry that I did. I am a bit aggravated that they increase the prices little by little under the guise of "recovery fees" and that other nonsense. When I started out with the service it was $34.95 per month with a small tax I believe it wound up costing around $36.50 per month. They had 2 price decreases of $5.00 each but then began charging these other fees over time. Some I believe are legitimate - others are not. So todays cost is around $32.50 per month. Still cheaper than when I started and mostly competitive with the other major players in VOIP.
Since I haven't had any problems I can't say if there has been any improvements to their tech support - but judging by the other reviewers here I tend to believe they still stink. The problems is - who the heck really has good tech support anymore?
I increased their website ratings because it has been greatly improved and their interface is very user friendly.
I hope to continue reviews of Vonage for another 4+ years.
12/23/2005
I've been with Vonage since March, 2003 so I guess that speaks for itself. A few hiccups here and there but since last year I have had no major outage whatsoever. They have dropped the price by $10.00 per month since I joined them to remain competitive - and that was a plus too. I use Vonage as a second line for most of my outbound calls but I have kept my POTS line after stripping it down to the bare bones and use it mostly as an inbound line and to keep 911 reliable and simple.
I bumped them up since my last review in reliability. I dropped down a notch for website since it has been getting slower and/or more difficult to login to my account online. Tech support in the past has been something I purposely have avoided and the other day I had a question I needed to ask so I made the mistake of trying to get through on a business day during business hours. After 10 minutes of listening to Vonage commercials on hold I gave up so I kept my tech support rating the same - I think they still need to improve it.
Overall the service is well worth the money. Good quality, high reliability provided you don't need tech support and your not in a hurry to get into their website I'd still recommend them. I don't plan to switch to anyone else.
One note: I use the service over 6mb down and 256k up cable connection which has also proven to be pretty stable so I'am sure my experience with Vonage has a lot to do with having a good connection and ISP as well.
08/23/04 UPDATE:
After my recent glowing review and over a year and a half of reliable service I have to give Vonage a ding for their recent outages and slow customer service reply to my email.
While still fairly sound, the recent outages and response to my email (over a week) leaves my agitated. As a result I have downgraded their reliability from a 5 to a 3 and their tech support goes down to a 2.
I also wrote them and suggested they have someone join in here at BBR and show their customers that they support them - but I haven't seen anything yet.
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Review by robl27
UPDATED: 54 days ago
member for 1.3 years, 718 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Mary Esther,Okaloosa,FL
$25 per month (month by month)
about 20 days
"cheap price!"
"Customer Service is in the philippines (one reason why our economy is crap)"
"Solid Service"
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Went from Embarq to Cox Phone,they wanted $55.00 a month for 15 features and had to cut back, now with vonage world for @24.95.
Service has been solid, and with plenty of bandwidth on Cox Premier, I needed to step back on monthly costs.
Found out they have a 500 minute plan for less, may switch to that.
Service has been rock solid, made several calls to my best friend last night and been solid!
I'm sorry, Cox but your not as competitive as you should be in your phone service.
Some plans are in the works for travel, and vonage will be packed in suit case!
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