Lessons learned moving from Vonage to Ooma

Posted on | January 3, 2014 | 3 Comments

The transition from Vonage to Ooma seems to be complete. So far, so good.

Some things learned:
-It will take some time – several days, up to weeks – to port your number to a new service.
-My suspicion that Vonage is complacent on its technology and features is confirmed – Ooma offers some things that would be easy for Vonage to do but chooses not to.
-If you have a contract or agreement with Vonage (we did not) they will charge you a disconnect fee.
-If your number ports to the new service immediately after you have automatically pre-paid for the next month’s Vonage service, don’t expect any sort of refund. Do expect some weasel-ey double talk about a policy of not doing partial refunds, then, when you call them on that BS, some more double talk about how their system just plain won’t let them do that (see point, above, about their complacency re: technology).
-You can’t disconnect from Vonage via their website – you have to call – and their voice recognition automated system is not very good at recognizing voices (see tech point, above).
-You don’t get to take advantage of some Ooma advanced features unless you buy a handset from them – you can’t use them if you just connect your regular telephone to the service (which otherwise seems to work pretty well).
-One service I will miss with Vonage is free, automatic voice transcription of messages sent to you via text (which, given their voice recognition challenges, were sometimes funny, sometimes cryptic). I still get free emails of voice mail transcripts via Ooma, though.
-I also miss just entering the number, no 1- before a long-distance call with Vonage – have to do that with Ooma.
-Don’t pay full price for a new Ooma unit – they go on sale, and there are used and refurbished units available for significant discounts.
-You Ooma unit won’t flirt with you like the one in the TV commercial (and you can’t jump that crossover import onto a train).

Don’t get me wrong – we were happy Vonage customers for some time, and switched because the price and features with Ooma looks to be much better. And while the amount of the refund we should get is pretty small, it should not be an issue for them to do that. The simply choose not to, pocket that money, and make excuses about why it is that way. Disappointing that they would take that route.

When I posted this to Facebook, someone asked about my thoughts on Magic Jack. I replied:

I don’t know much, have not used it – my impression is that is is bare bones (cheap in a bad way) with not much support/customer service. I believe that <a friend> uses or has used them – I think I recall she got to the point where she moved away from them, but I’m not sure.

I think it works really well for some – depending on what you need it to do. Cheap and limited features, but better, in some situations, than the alternative/nothing. I think it has a lot to do with the quality of your inet connection – and Vonage and Ooma have dedicated teams to make sure quality is up to expectations. I don’t think MJ has that – you are sort of on your own if it does not work well.

That said, Vonage is a “razors and razorblades” service – modest hardware cost, loss-leader “oh boy!” initial rate that goes up to $25/mo. or so, with some add on fees for some services features.

Ooma is a bigger up-front hardware cost, then “free” but you have to cover the monthly taxes/fees – a few bucks in most places. Their premium service is $10/mo, but they make it pretty enticing to go that route. Lots of features, and they waive the $39 number port fee if you commit to a year of service.

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