Enjoy unlimited US calling, exceptional voice quality, and must-have features with no monthly fees or contracts
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Receive caller-ID, call-waiting, and voicemail at no extra charge; Pay as you go for low-cost international calls
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Hear voicemail and customize settings in the ooma Lounge
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Try out ooma's enhanced calling features with a free trial of ooma Premier, which includes a free second phone line, real-time message screening, one-touch Do Not Disturb and Send to Voicemail, a second personal number with private voicemail, and more
Poor # porting and poor customer service experienceSeptember 6, 2008 1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I am still waiting, 7 1/2 weeks after paying for and submitting a request to port my landline phone # to Ooma, for it to be done. Oooma is NOT very helpful is this process and will not tell me how much longer it will take. I cannot even return the equipment for a refund since the 30 day return policy is expired. POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE.
Excellent product, slight improvement needed in customer serviceSeptember 4, 2008 I had actually been looking at this for awhile. My husband and I are both in our 20's, and like many of our peers, we primarily use our cell phones for communication. So we held off on getting a home phone. Still, there were many times I wished we had one. I cannot hear my cell phone ringing throughout my house, so unless I carried it around everywhere with me, I would miss calls. I also don't get the best cell phone reception in my house, so I found myself sitting outside, or by open windows when I'd have to make a call. Pretty annoying. At the same time, I didn't want to pay for home phone service either. That's when I started looking into this.
After the initial purchase, that's all you ever have to pay. Unless you want special features like several phone lines. Even with the special features, it ends up being about $10 a month. However, I find that I don't need those extra services.
I have Comcast, with only one internet connection, and I was worried that I would need to buy a router so that I could have both the ooma and the computer hooked up. But I was wrong, it connects very easily with the ethernet going from the modem to the ooma, and then from the ooma to your computer. So you only need one hookup, unless you want to keep your main ooma hub in a different room from your computer. Actually, the ooma comes with all the cords and accessories you need, including a splitter if you have DSL. The only thing it doesn't come with is a phone that you need to hook up to it. You can use any kind of phone, you don't need a special one. Once the hub is hooked up, you can plug the scout into any phone jack in your house (doesn't have to be connected to the internet) and you now have two lines.
Installation was fairly easy. If the machine is hooked up wrong, it'll flash red. The only problem I had, is once I had it hooked up, it's supposed to glow blue, and it didn't. It simply stopped glowing all together. The phone would make the sound as though it were connected, but I couldn't make any calls, and I couldn't call the ooma from an outside line. After maybe 15 minutes, it started working even though I hadn't done anything, but it still doesn't glow blue. But whatever, it works.
Ooma appears to be a small company (at least right now), without much in the way of customer service. You have to wait a long time in order to talk to one of the few people that works there. My husband is in the military, and as such we're prone to moving. I called customer service to ask if there's a fee involved in changing your phone number (so we could get a new local number if we moved). The man I spoke to sounded very frazzled and confused. He said, no, there's no fee to change the number, but you can't just change it whenever you feel like it, it needs to be for a 'real reason' (how they know it's a real reason, I'm not sure). And maybe in the future they'd charge a fee, but he doesn't know for sure. He sounded as if he was making up policy on the spot. The concept of "maybe in the future they'd charge a fee" kind of worries me. What else might they charge for in the future??
Awesome productSeptember 2, 2008 I'm not usually an early adopter, but Ooma seemed like it was worth taking a chance on. Boy was it. It is extremely simple to install, I was up and running in about 10 minutes. Rather than list all the great things about it let me just say that every feature listed in their product description works exactly as described. The call quality is perfect, no one would ever know you're not on a traditional land line unless you told them. I'd recommend this product to anyone with a high speed internet connection.
Great Features and Value, Easy to Set Up, Flawless Domestic Calling, Spotty International ServiceSeptember 2, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Background: I've been using numerous VoIP products for several years. These include Vonage, Skype, Yahoo! Messenger with Voice, VoIP Discount, and more. I feel very familiar with today's VoIP offerings and have a thorough understanding of Ooma's product. My current broadband setup is through a Comcast Cable modem. For the sake of comparison, I will use Skype and Yahoo! Messenger.
Setup: Ooma is extremely easy to install. A tech-savvy customer probably doesn't even need the instructions to set up Ooma. For the uninitiated, the included instructions are very clear and all the ports are easily identifiable. I can't imagine many people that would have a hard time physically setting up Ooma and activating the service on the company's web site.
Features: In addition to unlimited domestic calling, Ooma offers great features like caller ID, call waiting, and voicemail. These all work as advertised. I particularly like the voicemail notification options. Ooma also has premium services; for my calling habits, they're unnecessary, but I understand why some people would find them useful.
Domestic Calling: For me, this is where Ooma really shines. The call quality is fantastic -- definitely as good or better than calls I made through Skype or Yahoo! Messenger. The calls are extremely clear and I never had any connection issues. Considering the current price of the system, Ooma will pay for itself in less than a year if you compare it to all-you-can-eat offerings from phone and cable companies.
International Calling: When it works, it's very good. In terms of call quality, Ooma sounded significantly better than Yahoo! Messenger and on par with Skype. The Ooma rates are very competitive. For the countries that I frequently call, the rates were better than Skype (sometimes half the cost) and on par with Yahoo!'s. Unlike those services, you don't need to have a PC on to dial internationally. This is a huge feature for my household, since I live with people that want to make international calls but are not PC savvy.
Now for the bad news -- the international service has been spotty. I've been using Ooma service for more than a year. At times it works perfectly for international calls. At other times, it's very difficult to connect. There have been extended periods (sometimes weeks) where I've had to redial a number numerous times in order to connect an international call. Ooma's customer service was not helpful at all in these cases, offering advice like "dial the number slowly" and "don't use speed dial". I understand that this service is evolving and changes are made to it, but the main reason I'm taking a star off of this review is due to the inconsistent international service. While it has worked flawlessly for the last few months, I'm not comfortable relying on it without Yahoo! And Skype as backups.
Conclusion: Overall, Ooma is a great product and a fantastic value at its current pricing. It has served me perfectly for domestic calls. For international calls, the service is great when it works and frustrating when it doesn't.
WOWAugust 31, 2008 0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I don't know how they do it or why, but this is the best deal going. I have used Vonage and Lingo, and this pays for itself in less than a year. Call quality is just as good as or better than the other VOIP services, and NO PHONE BILL is a huge plus. Definitely worth the initial investment.
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