It's been about two and a half months since yarbiedoll and I switched from traditional phone service to Vonage. All in all, I'm very satisfied and highly recommend it.

Since switching to Vonage, our phone bills have been smaller than any phone bill we've had in years, and have had more features on our phone service than we've ever had. At no additional charge, Vonage includes voice mail, caller id, 3-way calling, and a whole bunch of little-used features that aren't worth paying extra for. I've never had caller id before because I never wanted to pay extra for it. Now that I have it, I love it.

We ended up opting for the less expensive of the rate plans. In the two months we've had Vonage, we've exceeded our plan minutes both times, but even with the excess minutes, our phone bill was less than the unlimited plan cost, so it's still a good deal. Even better is that our phone bills are now about half of what they were before we switched, so we're well on the way to recouping the activation charges we incurred when we switched over.

Our switch has not been without a few problems. The first router that Vonage sent us was defective, and it took a few hours with customer support to convince them that it was a hardware problem with the router they sent, but once they believed me, they went ahead and sent me a new router.

As far as the quality of the calls go, it's almost always great quality -- people I've talked with say that it's better than cell phone, which I what I usually use to call my family and friends on. I haven't been able to find anyone who says the quality is worse than the quality of a traditional landline. Rarely, it seems that our voice is not transmitted on the call. In other words, I can hear you, but you can't hear me. In the two months since we've had Vonage, I've only noticed that once or twice, for less than 10 seconds each time. yarbiedoll has had that happened to her a few more times, but it's hard to judge how much of that is with our Vonage service and how much of it is with the cell phone service of the person we're talking to. Anyway, I don't think it's much of a big deal, especially with how much we're saving on phone service, but I wanted to mention it.

So, this brings me to my recommendation. I highly recommend Vonage. If you've got reliable high-speed internet service, VOIP is definitely worth considering, and I'm very happy with the service I'm getting. If you'd like to sign up for Vonage, please let me know so I can send you a referral email. Yes, they have a system for people to get kick-backs (2 months of free service) for referring people to sign up. What's in it for you? One month of free service, plus less expensive service from here on out.

If you're interested, and there's any more information about my experiences with Vonage you'd like to hear about, let me know. If you want to call me so you can hear what the voice quality sounds like, let me know and we can arrange for a time that I'll be home to be able to talk to you. Really, I highly recommend it. Even if I weren't having the possibility of getting a kickback, I'd recommend it.