Magic Jack Phone Service

Is Magic Jack a Scam?

Yes, the commercial for Magic Jack is a bit cheesy and I'll admit my first impression was that this is probably just another "As Seen on TV" device, or maybe even a scam of some sort.

The website is rather gaudy. You're greeted with praise from television and newspaper stories, and a video featuring the inventor and his daughter plays automatically. A bright orange block of text warns that there are "only 20,000 available" and that the offer expires today. Relax, that same hype was there yesterday, and will be there tomorrow.

However, after doing some research, and hearing a couple of my friends swear by the gadget, it seems that Magic Jack really does deliver what it promises -- even if the marketing is classic infomercial gimmickry. For $39.95, you get the Magic Jack, your own number with unlimited local and long distance (USA and Canada), and your first year of service. Subsequent years are only $19.95 each. That's all you pay... you never get a phone bill, because you can cancel your service with the phone company and cut them out of the loop.

You can try MagicJack with a free 30-day trial. So it might be worth checking out if you want to get rid of your landline, or get bad reception inside with your cell phone. You also get free caller ID, call waiting, voicemail and directory assistance with the 30 day trial. Note that there are extra charges for some of these features after the free trial.

Another benefit that many readers have mentioned is international calling. If you take the Magic Jack with you when you travel, you can call any phone in the US for free. And people can reach YOU by calling a US number. Also, if you have a family member who lives outside the US, and they have a reliable Internet connection, this can be a significant savings on overseas long-distance fees.

How Does Magic Jack Work?

Magic Jack was invented by Dan Borislow, who formerly ran a long-distance company called Talk America. He describes Magic Jack as "a wireless client with a network adapter in a single device which allows a telephone to connect to a network access point for the purpose of establishing Voice over IP." So in that sense, Magic Jack is similar to other Internet Telephony services like Vonage or Skype, which allow you to make phone calls over the Internet.

The unique thing about Magic Jack is that it plugs directly into your computer. In a nutshell, you hook up your existing telephone to one end of the device and the other into your USB port. MagicJack works with Windows XP/Vista and Intel-based Mac computers, you must have a high speed connection, such as DSL, cable or fiber. Your phone works the same for dialing out and receiving calls, no special access codes or prefixes are needed.

One minor downside, you can't use your existing telephone number with Magic Jack. In most cases, they will assign you a new number in your area code, but the company says that some time in 2009, they should be able to port customers' existing telephone numbers into Magic Jack. If you want to avoid the hassle of changing your phone number, you can try a service called Phone Number Bank which lets you forward incoming calls for your existing number to your Magic Jack number. Phone Number Bank costs $9.95 a month, but it's a good solution if you want to keep your existing phone number and still use Magic Jack.

This might also be a fine idea for travelers as it can be used in any computer and as a secondary service for a business. College students who have cell phones can pull the old one ring trick and parents can call back, saving them both a few bucks. And of course you can call forward to your cell phone and vice versa. Setting the magicJack up seems simple enough, with most reports I read saying it took 5 minutes or less.

Magic Jack Problems?

One of my friends who has had the Magic Jack for several months says he and his wife use the phone a lot, and voice quality is excellent. The only glitch they encountered was that calls seem to be dropped after 60 minutes. That bothers his wife, but he considers it a useful feature. :-) You can find plenty of other people who swear that the Magic Jack is wonderful, if you poke around on Google.

As for the cons, some customers have complained that they had terrible sound quality some of the time. If a screensaver comes up during a call or there's a glitch in your Internet service, transmission may be interrupted. If you use a bandwidth-intensive P2P service such as Bittorrent or Limewire, you may experience some voice quality issues while downloading large files. The same applies if someone is using the computer to play a game or some other task that places a high load on the processor. But if you have a solid high-speed internet connection and a fairly decent computer, voice quality or dropped calls shouldn't be an issue.

Others have complained they had to restart their computer each morning to get their MagicJack to work, while some had customer service problems, anywhere from not helping to overcharging to difficulty using their automated phone order processing. Some people are concerned that the Magic Jack privacy policy allows the company to serve ads to your computer, but apparently they are not doing so at this time.

So there are both pros and cons to the device, but I can say that it's definitely not a scam, and works well for most people as a landline replacement. At least you have that free trial. But make sure you grab it quick... there are only 19,999 left today. Do you have a Magic Jack? Post your comments below...