Can I add a new number now to ensure we like the device and port our old number later?

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

I had Ooma for almost 1 year.I presently have 4 cordless phones on the system.I love Ooma!I had maybe 4 disconnections in a year and had to call support twice.Not bad considering all the money I saved.The past few months have been problem free.Great quality sound too.

bhoup wrote:I believe I saw somewhere that with refurbished units you have to pay a re-activation fee or something. Does anyone know if this is true?

the Ooma I wooted was a refurb - when setting it up there was no fee.

also, heard from my dad. he wants a second one, and now I'm thinking about getting one for here too. just checked our existing phone and it's Dect 6.0, so the only thing left to do is talk to my mother-in-law - she pays the phone bill as part of a bundle.

If your 6 phones all talk to 1 base they are all as 1 phone, a base is considered the phone. Good luck!

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

desynergy wrote:Great deal/idea, but Ive had a few calls that never went through, just went to voicemail. Also they are known for caller ID problems and "all circuits are busy" messages.

That has not been my experience at all. There was one period where the system software caused problems for about a week, but otherwise it's been solid. Of course, having a solid and fast ISP (mine is Cox) helps, but the Ooma technology is very reliable.

txo8 wrote:I am wondering why some members are paying about $4 a month.

taxes & 911 fee - the amount depends on your locale.

NO taxes with obihai but no 911 either.

I really want to try this, but we live in an area with Armstrong phone/cable/internet as the only option, and Ooma says "we may not be able to port your number" I know legally Armstrong would have to give it up, but if Ooma does not care to deal with them because they are comparatively small, is there anything I can do? Number porting is important to us. Has anybody pulled off a "more difficult" porting?

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

I have used the Magicjack and now MJ-Plus. Like the service. Just wish you could adjust the voice mail option off or on without 3rd party SIP software. But I have 2 wireless base stations in my house (basement and 1st floor). In my basement, I have a punch down block where it feeds all the phone jacks in the house. Pulled off the telephone companies feed and plugged in the wire that feeds the MJ in my office. This gave me a direct link from the MJ to the INPUT to the block. Now, the MJ provides dial tone to all the jacks in the house. Got the MJplus for 40 bucks because I already had a older MJ (I needed two anyway). So, I paid 60 bucks for 5 years worth of service when I got my MJ. It's already paid for itself. What people fail to realize too is your at the mercy of your network. If it's down, you phone is down. Unless you roll your inbound calls to your cell. In the end, I have 2 base stations and 7 additional wireless phones spread through out the house, 2 wired phones also.

NRansil wrote:I really want to try this, but we live in an area with Armstrong phone/cable/internet as the only option, and Ooma says "we may not be able to port your number" I know legally Armstrong would have to give it up, but if Ooma does not care to deal with them because they are comparatively small, is there anything I can do? Number porting is important to us. Has anybody pulled off a "more difficult" porting?

If you have been paying your telco a fee, which almost all of them charge you, for number portability, then they are legally obliged to port your number. They will probably charge you another fee, and you may be able to sue them in small claims court for fraud, or they may refuse to port the number, and you'll have to sue them in civil court for contract and regulatory violations. Do whatever it takes to get out of business with jerks like that! ;-)

jrsteen159 wrote:Can I add a new number now to ensure we like the device and port our old number later?

Yes. You can even keep the assigned number AND port in your current number. The porting fee is the same whether you do it now or later.

Does anyone have experience taking this overseas so family and friends at home can call them as a "local" call? Does that work, or do you need 2 units (one in USA and one in, for example, England).

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

I have 4 Panasonic cordless phones hooked up that run off of 1 receiver. I also have a splitter running out of it so that I can connect a hardline phone also.

Forgot to say, though the fee's are cheap, leaving it open allows them to charge you what they want, when they want at anytime.

jrsteen159 wrote:Can I add a new number now to ensure we like the device and port our old number later?

My experience was that you choose a number from their "available" list when you activate the device, and use that until the port is completed.

I gave mine about a month's trial before deciding to cut ties completely with my landline and port my existing number. Reliability has been fine (maybe one dropped call in 6 months), and I'm impressed with the call quality.

Because I work from home, I signed up for Ooma Premiere service for roughly $10/mo. (I opted for an annual vs. monthly subscription). It's worth it for me to handle both work and personal needs, and the cost is WAY less than I was paying AT&T for the same features (incl. two phone numbers).

The ability to have it forward all calls to my cell when I choose -- one of the options is to automatically forward when my Internet service is out -- is one of the things that convinced me I could ditch the landline completely.

Very satisfied customer.

Question to those who have ported their existing phone number (I currently have Vonage and can port the number)...

What is the porting charge and does Ooma have a monthly charge to port an existing number?

gustafer823 wrote:And oh ya the compatibility with Google voice is great , when someone calls me it rings my cellphone and my house phone , I get to choose which one I want to pick up. Also one voicemail for all my calls.

Just to make sure everyone knows, this is not a feature of Ooma. I have this exact same experience with my Google number on my work phone.

That said - Can anyone out there tell me if this will show my Google number with outgoing calls? Without doing the online dance from Google's Voice site.

desynergy wrote:We use Ooma for our home phone number. For my work, they have me tied into a service with Voipo.com (someone dials my extension, goes over the net to my phone on my desk) and its much better. Its not free, but you would forget its not a land line. I think their basic service is like $150 for 2 years of service with options Vonage STILL doesnt offer (like call block). And they send you the free device.

Bottom line, Ooma is good for basic general phone service with bugs/hickups, Voipo for more reliable/cheaper than Vonage service. If you in a heavy populated area with overloaded circuits, you will hear buzzing and the other end with hear echos.

http://www.ooma.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=4

use magicjack...works great and super cheap

Bought ours on Woot a year ago and love it. I have it set to ring my cell phone the same time my home phone rings. That way I only have to give out one number and can leave home for long periods without missing a call. If the computer is down the cell still rings. It is great being able to put numbers on a black list, all surveys and sales calls go there.

bennyk wrote:Does the $40 rebate work with this?
http://www.ooma.com/rebate/ooma-july-rebate.pdf

No. The "small print" says the rebate does not apply to refurbished units.

Noted your quote. Notably a variation from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Is it from some other writing or personal experience?

I certainly have been lied to my face and that seems the harshest lies of all.

desynergy wrote:Yes, thats another thing. As long as that unit survives, you wont pay anything. If you have to replace that unit, your plan will change.

I have two backup hubs - just for that reason :P

Just keeping my fingers crossed that the company does not shut down

gustafer823 wrote:And oh ya the compatibility with Google voice is great , when someone calls me it rings my cellphone and my house phone , I get to choose which one I want to pick up. Also one voicemail for all my calls.

Not sure how that has to do with compatiblity with GV. GV will forward your calls to any phone within US/Canada.

Given how often this shows up, is this the "brown Zune" for 2012?

Wow. This is a great price. I bought one to replace my burnt out one (lightning strike) last time it was on woot for $139 IIRC. That also came with a $25 discount because of a goof up on the product description.

I love my ooma. My phone bill went from $30 per month down to $4.77 in taxes and fees.

Some times it fails to connect to my friends down the street who have a competing internet phone system... but that doesn't matter now as they have gone all cellular.

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

I've had Ooma for almost 3 years and love it. I disconnected the phone company line outside the house. Then plugged the Oooma unit into the main house phone line. Now every phone in the house is on Ooma. Works great. You won't regret the purchase!

I've had my Ooma telo since they first came out with the Telo version (2 years now, possibly even longer) and I am VERY pleased with it. Sound quality is great and not having to pay Ma Bell $35 a month for basic service which I rarely use anyway is king! With Ooma I now pay something like $4 a year to satisfy some requirement with the government that they get their measly $4 in tax revenue.

The voicemail is great, especially how it sends the voicemail to my email address as an attachment for me to listen to on my cell phone whenever someone leaves me a new voicemail. Also, I had one issue when i first bought it setting it up. Their tech support people were great and helped me through the issue with ease. Since then, it has been working great and saving me money with each passing month.

You can only plug one phone into it. However, if you have a cordless phone system that has only one base with several remote phones that don't plug into jacks, it will work fine.

We paid $140 for our OOMA on Woot. We made our money back in few months. $100 is a steal. Excellent voice quality and good bye to AT&T. Life is good. Snap this up now

R&D wrote:Question to those who have ported their existing phone number (I currently have Vonage and can port the number)...

What is the porting charge and does Ooma have a monthly charge to port an existing number?

Seems to me it was a one time $50.00

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

You just plug the base phone into the back of the Telo. All the other phones are hooked up. A word of caution: we had a Uniden D1384-4 Dect 6.0 4-phone set, and it did not work with the Telo. If you knew the Telo had a call coming in you could pick up, and you could make calls out, but it incoming calls would not ring, nor would the caller ID work. We replaced it with an AT&T Dect 6.0 4-phone cordless set (model number escapes me at the moment, but it was $50 at Staples with a $20 credit for turning in an old phone). It works just fine. I hear that Panasonic cordless phones work well with it, too.
We have the Premier service, and some of the things I like about it are that I can kill telemarketing calls, it has call forwarding, and voicemail messages can be sent to my email.

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

You can plug the Ooma into a wall jack and it will provide connectivity to all of your other phones also plugged into wall jacks. (You have to disconnect the outside phone line first.) We have the Ooma plugged in to the jack by the router and we get a dial tone on the kitchen cordless, the bedroom handset, and the upstairs cordless.

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

If you disconnect the feed from your current provider, you can plug Ooma's output into one of your phone wall jacks, which will then ring all the connected phones in your house.

Moving my 80+ year old parents to live near us and thought this might be a good option for them for their (new) phone service. Especially like the 'free long distance' since they are leaving lots of friends behind 600 miles away. I do have a few questions though:
1) can this run off a wireless router or does it really need a CAT connection to be crisp/clear?
2) how are the taxes/fees billed? Do they send you a monthly bill or do you pay by the quarter etc.? What about the international calling fees?
3) how 'effortless' will this be for them? Will they even know it's there as long as they don't have an internet or power interruption?
4) do you need to dial the area code in your 'home' area?
5) can you use a 'dial around' service such as OneSuite (for long distance calls to Europe for instance) or does it have trouble with that process (not sure if they still have credit with OneSuite that may need using up...)
6) if your internet goes down do you need to 're-boot' the unit when it comes back up to re-establish a connection or does it perform that task automagically?

So basically in other words... how 'elder friendly' is this as a phone option?
Thanks for the input!

desynergy wrote:You would get a cordless kit (3 - 5 cordless phones with charger/stand, while one of them is the home base that you would plus the phone cable into). You see them a lot on woot (usually uniden).

There are devices available to increase ring current to use several phones. I had T-Mobile (Which I cannot recommend) VOIP and plugged this into the phone device and plugged the ringer booster into my wall phone jack. It operated 6 wired and 2 cordless phones with no problem.

enktwiss wrote:Can anyone out there tell me if this will show my Google number with outgoing calls? Without doing the online dance from Google's Voice site.

No it will not. It will pass on your Ooma # (unless you've chosen to be anon.). If you want it to show your Google mumber, you'll have to call your Google number, and go through it's menu system (enter PIN, etc) to place your call. Alternately, if your PC is handy, you can use GMail calling to connect your local Ooma phone, before calling out. This will then show your Google number to the call recipient.

ashah1111 wrote:This sounds great, but what if we have 6 cordless phones throughout the house? According to what I'm reading I can only connect one phone like to this.

You just backfeed your house with the device and everything works as it always did. If you have a land line make sure to open the box outside and unplug the phone jack.

dancojanu wrote:Seems to me it was a one time $50.00

It was a one time fee. The only non-government fees they charge is if you want premier. Premier is nice, but not required.

Do any of you use the Bluetooth adapter? I currently use the Calisto Pro phone set and love it. But it's failing.

I was thinking of getting the Ooma with the BT adapter, but looking for experience with someone is actually uses it with a BT headset. How easy is it to use? Is it worth the trouble?

Thanks!

--mop

I'm not sure this is a very good value. It's basically a VoIP service, like many others, with a couple of differences: Not only do you have to pay an expected subscription fee (which is higher than one particular VoIP provider who claims to have some kind of "magic"), most other VoIP providers have more features AND charge little or nothing for the necessary equipment. There is also a significant danger of this small company going out of business, rendering their service useless. DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE COMMITTING TO BUY!