Free Phone Service With Ooma Telo? - Comments Page 2

Magic Jack has an anonymos call block feature online that you activate which virtually eliminates all spam calls. No unwanted calls.

We took the plunge and went with Ooma. I would not recommend the change, unless you really, really research it carefully, and are sure you understand the service.

The actual calls seemed no different from cable VOIP. However, the hardware is dreadful.

We bought the Telo Box and three handsets.

We followed the instructions to set up, finishing up with the Telo box between the modem and the router, using ethernet cable.

We set up the three handsets and made calls.

All appeared okay, UNTIL we made an International call. Now the handsets, which had only tolerable speaker output for US calls, has sound that makes it appear the other party is underwater and words are garbled and missing.

Also when told to Press 1, it was not recognized we were doing so, so we are unable to listen to our messages without going online!

WE spent more than an hour with Ooma "support" being passed upwards to another "specialist" twice, and non of the three would admit the speakers were the issue. They said I needed to make 5 changes to the firewall, allow UPnP amongst many other things. They did not seem to understand that my router was not involved as the box was attached directly to the modem with ethernet, before the router.

We decided it was just a game to avoid having to replace the three faulty handsets.

We removed the Ooma handsets and installed our old ones and the sound from the speakers is perfect.

It is not clear until after purchase that to get even basic "upgrades" you need the Premier service at $9.99 a month. You cannot even screen calls without upgrading.

We wish we had not gone ahead with this change. We have major concerns that if there is a problem in the future, it will be "too bad, so sad" from Ooma.

Plus, they charge $39.99 to port your number unless you sign up for a year of Premier Service at $119.88.

So for our family the monthly cost, because we make International calls, will be very similar to the cost of cable VOIP, and some months could quite easily be more expensive. It costs double per minute to place an International call to a cellphone. There is also a 15% fee added on international calls.

How I wish we had researched the fees more thoroughly and not taken the sales pitch so literally.

If you search online you will learn that the speakers on the handset are really bad, but we did not know to research about that (now you do). First with HD2 handsets, but also with the newer HD3 that we have.