Update!
Everyone knows Vonage's top package is now only $29.99 rather than the $39.99 I signed up for. I must say when I received an email from Vonage telling me that their rate plan is now only $29.99 for the unlimited package and that they would adjust my bill to reflect it... I was shocked!
My old phone company would never have reduced my plan on it's own and I'm not sure any other business would either. For example a cellular phone company.
Here's tips to those that might be interested in Vonage:
1. As noted above there is a $9.99 charge for changing your plan up or down.
2. Don't buy your unit from BestBuy or any local stores. You miss out on the free month offer. You must be refered from a current Vonage user and use the link the user sends you to signup with or you don't qualify. BestBuy gets all the credit $Money$ since they sold it to you.
3. If you have a broadband upload cap of 15kb/s like with most current cable ISP plans and you want to use the three way calling feature you must drop down the sound quality on your account in your Vonage website settings as I have. The sound quality is still great. I'll help anyone who is interested or answer any questions they might have. I'll even test out the three way calling quality with you if requested.
4. Just because their website says they offer local number in an area don't mean they are available when you sign up. To help your chances of getting a local number don't cancel your home phone or cell phone until you find out if Vonage can support a carry over of that number. I canceled my cell phone and therefore lost a local number I could have had.
Please feel free to drop me a PM.
Oh ya, as a side note. I recently seen Vonage talked about in MaximumPC magazine. They said that they took their unit that had a USA subscription on a trip with them to England and over their hooked it to broadband and called back to the USA for FREE! So lets say I have family in Mexico and I live in the USA. I signup for a 500 minute plan or better and mail them the unit to hookup to broadband over there. Now no extra charge for them to call me or anyone else in the USA. WOW the regular phone companies must really hate this.
