Almost three years ago Jabley got Vonage. He’s my guinea pig for cool new tech toys, and I’ve wanted it since then. The delay for most of that time has been over the 911 issue. Cel phones are actually tracking you all the time to know where you are, but Vonage doesn’t. The phone number you have may not be related to your geography at all, Jabley cites people using American phone numbers even though they’re based in India. This means that if you dial 911, you might not get the right service.
How smart are we? We finally realized that Vonage is for the house, it won’t replace our cel phone. We can tell Vonage with the right 911 is, and it will always be right. Duh.
So I called and got it. It works perfectly. Reception is clear as a bell, all the features I could ask for, long distance is no distance, etc. I’m especially glad that we kept our old phone number. It will cut our phone bill in half, that’s $300 a year. I even got two months free by putting Jabley as a referral.
But then…
- Activation, buying the physical unit, shipping it me: $50.
- I naively pictured that all our existing phones would continue to work. In reality, Vonage is a physical unit that the phones must plug into. That means we had to buy a phone system with a master unit and a few slaves. And these new ones can’t be outside which means our outdoor phone is gone. $99.
- TiVo: TiVo uses the phone system to update itself. Although there are ways to hook it into Vonage and dial, it makes more sense to connect it to the home network. I broke down and bought the wireless adapter: $65, thank you Circuit City.
After all this saving money, I’m over $200 in the hole!
Here’s the thing. As I referenced, we had to get a new phone system (wireless), new TiVo adapter (now wireless), and we coincidentally put in a wireless doorbell. Mrs. Muttrox kept having issues where the phone was going dead. She blamed it on Vonage. Now I haven’t been able to reproduce this, it never happens to me. My view is that it could be anything, but is most likely to be the phone. Mrs. Muttrox told me to shut up it’s Vonage, get rid of it. For a scientist she doesn’t really like to apply the scientific method to her own life.
She is watching me type this. She says to shut up.
Wow. I’m surprised the wife wants rid of it. That was one of the things in my review that I mentioned, I think–high Wife Approval Factor. What’s her concern?
Right now, I’m in the hole. If I make it 12 months, I’ll be ahead. The savings have not yet been realized.
And now I’m facing down a domestic rebellion from the wife who wants to get rid of it. Will my troubles never end? O, this world!
Umm… I’m not known to be any kind of decent mathematician, but it seems to me you’re still $86 ahead.