Vonage Review

We love Vonage.  We signed up when the company first came online.  And boy do we save money.  You see we live in Florida for 6 months of the year and in Wisconsin for the rest of the time.  We have a broadband connection at both houses.  When we had traditional phone service, we paid $38 a month for a single line with no features or long distance at each home.  When we left one home we put the phone on vacation hold for $15 a month.  Then when we returned it cost us about about $30 to take the phone off vacation hold.  So the two traditional phones cost us $53 a month plus long distance, plus reconnect fees. 

Now we have Vonage which uses a phone adaptor plugged into the Internet modem to make phone calls.  We take our adaptor with us back and forth and plug it into the Internet modem when we get there.  Vonage costs us just $25 a month for local and long distance calling plus taxes. 

 Then to accommodate the family and friends at both places we added a virtual phone number at $5 a month for Florida.  So for about $30 a month plus taxes, we get 2 phone numbers, call waiting, call forwarding, conference calling, unlimited local and long distance, etc., plus our friends and family can call us for free no matter which place we are at.  And as an added convenience, I have a standing call forwarding order to send calls to our cell phone if we are out.  So we never miss a call. 

Another thing we did is to connect the adapter to the traditional wall outlet in the house so all the house phones are now live.  Just be sure the traditional house lines are no longer connected to the outside telephone wire in the box outside. 

When we are in the travel mode and the Vonage phone adapter is not connected, Vonage sends the calls directly to our cell phones, so we never miss a call.

So our savings come up to about $275 per year, plus all the extras.  Now you can't beat that.