The End of an Era

I disconnected the last of my remaining VONAGE lines today, the phone that sat in my house and served as an office line, just one that happended to be in my house.

It feels a bit sad, nostalgic almost.  While VONAGE was the source of much of my telecom pain in the early and not-so-early days of my fledgling urology practice, it was VONAGE's then avant-guard service that enabled me to grow in those first critical months cheaply and mobily.

In many ways, it was VONAGE that put me on the map.  And for that, I thank them.

Ultimately, I outgrow its capabilities, however.

For the past few months, as I have been looking to cut cost whereever possible, VONAGE was always near the chopping block, but the off-site line still served a function, even though improvements in cell phone reliablity  at my house enabled me to make and receive calls from almost any room in my house.

Still, I held a special place in my heart for this little phone company that could, silly as it seems.

Then my VONAGE router died--just went kerplunk--and that was the catalyst.

Several minutes ago, I called and canceled my service.

Fairwell old friend.

Dr Schoor

My VONAGE experience summarized

I finally switched from VONAGE, my VOIP phone service provider, to Optimum Voice, a local Long Island company and branch of Cablevision. In the end, I switched because my 2 office VONAGE lines went dead and VONAGE customer service was unable to remedy the problem. I think the lines died because of incompatibility issues with my VPN router, but this is just my own, admittedly ignorant, speculation. Since I use the VPN router daily for billing purposes, and reconfiguring the router's settings would cost me hundreds of dollars, I decided to switch to Optimum Voice.

But please do not misinterpret my impression of VONAGE, which is this. It is an absolutely fabulous system. If I had to do it all again, I would pick VONAGE again, and again, and again. In fact, I kept my third VONAGE line, which I have in my house as another office line.

Here are some of the great features of VONAGE.

• Cost: cheap
• Simulring: I found this feature indispensable. As far as I know, only VONAGE has it.
• Portability: Just re-locate the router
• Caller ID: many phones have this, but not as good as VONAGE's. Trust me.
• Call tracking: ALL inbound and outbound calls are logged. Other's services have this as well, but not quite as good as VONAGE.
• Voice Mail-Email notification: This came in handy once in a while.
• Network availability: great feature. If your internet goes down, VONAGE automatically forwards to a number of your choosing.
• Others that I did not need, but are really cool. Go to the site.

Here are the disadvantages:

• Unreliable: let me add a caveat. It is really only unreliable if the VONAGE routers are in line with other routers and switches, in my experience. My home VONAGE works fine.
• Technical support: Only by phone, so if you have a major issue, your SOL. For minor issues, their phone support is OK.
• Dropped calls: I had lots, but I think this had to do with my set-up, and not really with VONAGE per se. My home VONAGE phones does not drop.

That's it. In summary, I liked VONAGE and still do. I can contribute lots of my success to their ingenuity. Over 19 months, I never missed one call. Not one. I would recommend them to any small business.

Thanks for listening,

The IU.

VONAGE Vindicated!

I have switched from VONAGE to Optimum voice, have purchased a $3000 phone system and calls still drop. Broad band is sufficient to handle the volume, so it is not a VOIP issue and was likely never a VONAGE service issue. After all this, the issue may be in a faulty phone line from the source to the wall jack by the reception area.

Of course everyone blames everyone else, but I am zeroing in on the problem. In the meantime, we just march on and continue to function.

The IU.

THAT'S IT, I'M DONE!!!

I finally decided that enough is enough with VONAGE and have decided to phase it out slowly. Here is my plan.

I desperately do not want to lose my phone number or have a major disruption in service. So, I am going to add 2 additional optimum voice lines for a total of 3 lines in a call hunt grouping. Call hunt, for those who don't know, allows incoming calls to jump from busy line 1 to busy line 2 then to open line 3. I now have 3 VONAGE lines. The main line, 631-326-6035, will jump to line 2 when busy. I actually do not know the phone number for line 2. My 3rd VONAGE line is at home, and I use this line to make and receive patient related phone calls after hours. This line is not part of my call hunt sequence, but after hours, calls made to 631-326-6035, my VONAGE line 1, will forward to this home line. Interestingly, this phone line has never dropped a call, though it's call volume is negligible.

I have one Optimum voice line, which I use as a private line for outgoing calls and as a fax line for outgoing faxes. Incoming faxes come in via EFAX. This line has been very reliable, though again, with a lower volume of calls, so who can really say? For some reason, this line's phone number is listed in the yellow pages--the free listing. Why do I mention that? Because, in April and May of 2006, when former patients of mine tried to look me up in the book, they found my listing and called the Optimum voice number, which rang and rang and rang. Fortunately, my patients are my greatest assets and they told me about the problem, which I corrected by forwarding Optimum Voice line 1 to VONAGE line 1. Voila, solved. Crisis averted.

So here is what I plan to do now that VONAGE has caused my hairline to recede to the apex of my skull. I am going to keep VONAGE line 1, but forward it to optimum voice line 1. Optimum voice line 1 will then call hunt to lines 2 and 3. VONAGE line 2, the number I don't know, I plan to use as a back line and outgoing fax line. VONAGE line 3, the one in my house, I will keep as is. If after several months, everything is working fine, I'll probably start to pear back the system, and screw everything up.

Now I just need to figure out which phone jacks receive their signals from which phone number. And for this, I need to go pro, at $85 per man per hour, not including parts.

Did you ever think a phone could be so complicated. Well they can be. Any suggestions from the 'sphere.

Thanks, the IU.

Vonage: A Biopsy Story

You know I have a love-hate relationship with VONAGE, my VOIP phone service provider. Well, the other day I was in the process of telling a patient about his biopsy results. Here's how it went.

"Hi, it's Dr Schoor. I'm calling with your biopsy results."
"Oh, thanks doc, I'm really stressing over this."
"OK, the biopsy was" click.

Dropped call.

Somehow, I don't think that that'll end up in one of their commercials. Though I still, on the balance, have liked VONAGE.

Thanks, The IU

Something in my phones is actually trying to kill me!

This weekend my phones were down. Only this down, it was my home phones. Not my VONAGE phones, my Optimum Voice phones. I do have a separate VONAGE line at home, and that worked fine. SOMEONE IS MESSING WITH ME!

The IU.

PS: and my toilet overflowed twice.