Hey all..

We've got:
Comcast for our Cable & Internet
Verizon for our home phone & cell phones.

Just got the Verizon home phone bill and it's $42 for a BASIC LINE.
When we signed up, it was supposedly $16.99 for a basic line and all the rest is surcharges and fees and bullsh!t!
For this much, we should at least be getting long distance in the US and Canada.. BUT WE DON'T HAVE THAT!!!!

Is Vonage good? Does it cover everything without all the crap fees??
What about Comcast? or will we just run into the same fees with them?

Call Comcast, since you already have their service, they offer a bundle deal.

I haven't had a "home phone" in years. I don't see the need for it what so ever. I have VOIP for home calls and a mobile when I'm not. I think traditional home phones are a dying breed.

We have Vonage. It's great. It's about $20 a month. Unlimited long distance within US and to Canada.

And I thought Casper was overpriced. Yikes!

=)

AT&T is $62/month for phone service in Houston. That includes the $6 unlimited long distance in US/Canada.

Way too high for phone service though. I went with Lingo VOIP. Signed up for their $195/year plan. Unlimited local and long distance to US/Canada, many other countries too.

Verizon sucks. They are the only one to offer phone service here, except for the fibre optic internet company. Comcast REALLY sucks. I had them when I lived in Indy, and they were horrible.

We don't have a home phone. I told Verizon to piss off. We have a family plan through Cingular/ATT. I've been with Cingular/ATT/CellularOne for about 10 years now.

We also have Skype installed on this computer and one of the nifty phone handset things. We have yet to use it. lol

We have Vonage and we love it.. Two exceptions - every now and again it drops calls.. not a big deal I just call back and at the beginning of the calls there is a few seconds delay when you answer the call (doesn't continue throughout the call though - just first few seconds)..

We have Comcast Cable Internet only + Vonage (30$ taxes in each month). It works for us, and there are no hidden fees with Vonage.. we get any time of day unlimited calling to US and Canada.

I hope this doesn't sound like a really dumb question but, how does Vonage work? Don't you have to have a landline anyway through your local phone company? I'm all for ditching Windstream (formerly Alltel here in this part of Georgia) and going with another company but I'm guessing I'd still need my landline to have internet....unless Vonage has that capability as well....

VOIP works over ur computer connection. We have VOIP with Cox and it works fine. keep in mind if internet goes down, so may ur VOIP phone!!

We're in the same boat as you, Liz. Comcast for cable and internet, Embarq for basic land line. Unfortunately, Comcast doesn't have VoIP available in our area yet, so I'm going to look into Vonage. I had delayed doing that because we had a large credit with Embarq due to a massive error on their part .... something I have come to expect from most service industries in the US. Plus, I was hoping that Comcast would have advanced a lot quicker than they have in VoIP services and it would have been available by now. Oh well. Click to view attachment Yeah.... we're definitely not in Kansas anymore Toto.

We now have our internet/phone/cable with Cox and after taxes and fee it is like $130 a month!! They adverise it as $99 a month, bt of course that doesnt include the taxes and fees, as well we pay an extra charge each month for an extra cable box!! We were hoping to stay with Verizon for the whole package, but thier high def cable TV still hasnt come to ur area and we dont want a dish!!
I have hear many good things about Vonage. Do a google search for vonagae reviews! I have no need for a calling plan to Canada, as al my family has free long dist to the USA, so I just call and let it ring twice, and they call me back,lol

My fiance has Trinsic and they are very good also. She had verizon before and would never go back to them. Call for a quote.



Sly

I have Vonage and it's great! You have to have a high speed internet connection, like cable or DSI, a regular dial-up internet won't work. it costs me only $30 per month, and its unlimited calling for North America and parts of Europe (includes UK, France, Spain, and Italy now I think) It sometimes freezes up if I'm surfing the internet and talking on the phone at the same time, but it comes back no problem. And if the cable goes out (which ours does fairly often, our cable company sux!) I just have my Vonage line forwarding to my cell phone, which you can set up on your account from the website. You can also access your voice mail messages from anywhere with a web browser, and see your call history from the Vonage website. Its pretty cool. And, if you want, you can get a toll free number added to your account for like $5 extra per month (also unlimited) so your family can call you and not be charged long distance fees.

Check the Vonage website because service is not available in all areas yet, and some cable companies aren't compatible. I have a friend down in South Carolina on Turner Cable, and she couldn't get Vonage because they have their own VOiP service er sumthin'.

Our AT&T land line costs (we haven't been able to get the phone company to disconnect our service, so we just stopped paying the bill hoping they'll cancel it ) over $40 per month, and that's just for local service. Any long distance calls were costing over $1 per minute or something like that, and that's just freakin' rediculous, I had ONE phone call home that cost me like $70, so I said ###### it and got Vonage.

I have the bundle with all three services from Comcast. With two DVRs, HD Channels, and HBO, now that the introductory periods are over, my bill from Comcast is approximately $212/month. I was kind of looking at alternatives, but I had a telemarketer call me from AT&T the other day, and when he asked me what I currently have and I told him I have every phone service plus unlimited long distance to US and Canada for $40-some / month, he said, "uh, sorry, we can't beat that," and then he hung up.

The thing that scared my about Vonage is there's something in the Contract Agreement online that says they can charge you $150 if they so chose... (online)

So I backed out of signing up online when I read that..

but obviously that's just legal crap

well, here is a different perspective. We got vonage when I was still in Canada and it was fine at first but then it started to get really bad. It dropped calls fairly regularly but the quality of the line was horrendous - distant and echoing and a long delay between when I spoke and when they heard it. It got to the point that my friends in Canada said "don't call us to talk on that line - call, then hang up and we will call you back - we can't understand you when you are on vonage!'. So, we had been hearing about the COMCAST bundle (cable/internet/digital phone) deal for $99 a month. We were really hesitant after our experience with Vonage, but they had a money back guarantee so we tried it. It is wonderful! The quality of the voice line is excellent - just as good as when we just had a land line and in the 9 months that we have had it we have not had a single dropped call or problem. The only problem is that if the cable goes out - which does happen occasionally - we are without phone or internet. For that we have cell phones.

I would strongly recommend anyone who has access to the COMCAST bundle to check it out. We didn't expect it would be as good as it is - and it beats VONAGE hands down!. (We didn't sign up for any of the extra channels or stuff like that - there is far more available than I ever get a chance to watch to begin with so our basic bill for all three is the $99 plus taxes).

Check the Comcast bundles Liz - we have that and pay 119/month for phone (LD included) cable and internet. And after the offer of 1 year expires... we will so switch he he

Nope you don't need a land line. With the Vonage package they give you a phone adapter/router that you use to run to your computer and to your phone. Your phone plugs into it and you are connected. Sometimes you get a message when you pick up your phone that says "your Vonage device cannot be connected" and you have to reset the router, but that's no biggie, even I a technophobe can do that!

Flames is right - if your cable internet goes down, then so does your Vonage line. And we've experienced that happening from time to time for an hour or two at a time. During those times we have our cell phones, so it's not a big deal. We just keep remembering it's 30$ a month. Do we get bad connections sometimes? Sure, but My mother has the same problem in Canada with her land line as well.. it's communication after all and there are glitches now and then. Hubby's had his Vonage account now for 1.5 years and has no complaints and no hesitations in recommending it. It has been a lifesaver for me while I've been here in the US, knowing I can call home anytime and not have to worry about the time of day or the cost of long distance.

We forward our Vonage phone line to our cell phones when we travel so we don't miss a phone call, and with your online account you can check messages from work or when you are away!

Well, we just got a sale thing from Insight (our cable company). We can upgrade to "Digital 2.0" cable (we have Basic right now), get unlimited phone service, and 10MB internet (which we already have) for $90.00/month for 12 months. I'm not sure what it goes up to after that.... $120/month, I think. I think we might do it. We're paying $60/month right now for internet and Basic cable.

I waaaaant bundled phone service toooooooo!!!

OK, I am bit late jumping on this thread, but FWIW here's our experiences in Northern VA. When Derek first moved down we used Skype which I liked, but the intermittent delays in service ticked Derek off. Dunno if Vonage is any better, but another important fact to consider is that it's usually only as good as your internet connection. Slow connection = worse service. Which was probably what hung our service up once in awhile since we have a pretty slow DSL.

Anywho, we get cable included in our rent, but we do have basic Verizon for our land line. And by basic, I mean the Economy Message Service that's about $16.00 a month with taxes and fees depending on how many local calls we make, which usually isn't very many since we often use our cell phones. Then, we also have Verizon DSL for $21.99 a month, so our total Verizon bill is usually around $35-$40.

Finally, we have Pioneer for our Long Distance and I love them! Something like .03 a minute to Canada anytime. I don't think our bill has ever been more than $7-8 a month since we signed up in the summer. And since it's not VOIP, no interruption of service, delays, outages, etc. Their website is http://www.pioneertelephone.com/ if you want to take a look.

We have Vonage and Cox but as soon as AOS is done we are prob switching to Verizon FIOS so I can have my full digital TV. (Don't want to change the emails addresses right now) Vonage works great. I must say the service has gotten much better lately too. Ours is $30 but we also have a local line for the Canadians so they don't have to dial long distance to call us.

We would have stuck with verizon if they had FIOS!! But rhey have no clue when it is coming to my area!! Once they do will probably switch back.

I took the plunge!

Signed up with vonage.. I should be receiving the package soon

i HOPE!

Hi! sorry to hear that your having BS deal....I am using vonage 24.99 amonth plus tax something like, that and end of being $30 amonth...unlimited call free call in canada and there some other country are free too.. you need to have a broadband internet, one thing that I dont like in VOnage is when I talk on the phone while at the computer my internet connection on the PC disconnect.. but that is rarely happen...

$55 for internet in Dallas

I am in NY and I use TimeWarner for high speed internet and cable. I pay about $140 because I have a DVR, HBO & Showtime packages. I used to have their digital phone service until I got an invitation to try out a new VOIP product called ooma. I got the ooma hub and one ooma scout for free, and I haven't looked back since. Ooma charges $399 for the hub right now - after that, there are no further charges unless you need to make international calls. I call Jamaica and I have to prepay (through ooma's website) to make calls. $10 gives me 80 minutes for Jamaica (12.5 cents/min). Ooma has no monthly charges so I figure, even if I had bought the device for $399, I would have spent that much in phone calls over a year, and since I didn't buy it, pretty good deal. I don't have a landline, and ooma works as long as my internet is up and running. The best part is, that when I move, my number (assigned to the ooma hub) will be moving with me.

Vonage costs us about 28 bucks a month including taxes... no hidden costs

and you can call anywhere in the US, Canada and Mexico for no extra cost... plus you get all the features, like call waiting call display, voice mail etc at no extra cost....

Vonage rocks.. we have had no problems with it so far and we have had it for over a year now

I too have Vonage & have had no problems. Whats great about Vonage? You just need internet connection. I was living in Pennsylvania last year and had Vonage there, when I decided to move back south to be near my family. My fiance was still in Canada though & we did not want our phone bills to go crazy. So, even though the Vonage line was a PA phone number, I gave my fiance the Vonage box and he plugged it up to his computer & sure enough-American Vonage service in Canada. So, while living in the south, I could call another 'American' phone number-but the phone was actually in Canada. Beautiful.

I've been quite happy with Vonage Canada. I used it because I was having some problems with my Bell Canada line...could get DSL no problem, but my line was quite noisy on voice calls and a service call to Bell hadn't helped.

I added a "virtual number" in my girlfriend's state very quickly after we started our relationship (months before she became my fiancee), and I think I only added $8/mo. more for that. We've gotten PLENTY of use out of it, especially with her able to add my number to her cell phone's list for free minutes.