Both companies have customer service operations that’d make AOL look like British Royalty.

I never had any problem faxing with Vonage, with my HP Photosmart 7280 all-in-one printer / fax. And faxing with Ooma is no problem either.

After they ported my first number, my bill went down to $33. And change.

After my second number (which is actually my primary number) had completed it’s port, I noticed that the light on my Vonage portal showed that I had no active phone connection; so, I called Vonage and confirmed that they and I were no longer connected, and / or associated; and that I had no outstanding balance. I don’t know how someone could get an outstanding balance, since they only do auto-debit – UNLESS someone’s card declines, when presented for payment.

BUT, I recorded that final Vonage phone conversation; and confirmed my severance date and the fact that Vonage would no longer continue to debit my account; as I informed them that that’d be felonious misrepresentation.

They don’t want to f*ck with me; as if they did, I’d pursue a class action suit against them, the likes of which they’d not emerge victorious from. Not even Alan Shore from Boston Legal could win that one for them.

IF ever you want to save money, as I said below in a prior thread, check out Ooma. Now that I’ve been using it on a regular basis, I’m VERY surprised to say that it’s even better than I had anticipated that it would be. – The actual phone service, that is. There are still a couple of called ID issues on the secondary number that need to be resolved. Remember the customer service department sucks donkey dink.

Once those 2 minor issues are resolved, chances are 99.999999999% that I’ll never ever need to talk with the customer service department ever again. Remember, I’m in the VoIP industry, in a technological basis; and as long as it’s not a network issue, I can resolve just about any issue.

So nothing evil yet, but come on ooma – just like Vonage it is easy to sign-up for service online but no way to end service online. I like the ooma product and service, but now want to end the “Premier” service but no way to stop it online and for that matter no even suggestion to call them if you want to. Don’t companies get it – I may even recommend the company or return to the service if it isn’t a pain in the a@# to come and GO!

I’m glad to finally have an answer to the local service adds/changes/deletes questions. That makes the math possible now. In my case, my local service monthly cost would actually go UP with Ooma by about $9 ($5 additional for unlimited local and $4 for “busy call forwarding”) so Ooma only saves me money if my domestic long-distance bills average more then $9 per month, which in my case they don’t (the equivalent of about 300 minutes of long-distance calls, and my average over the long run is about half that per month). So there is no cost justification for Ooma for me – I would have to justify it on the basis of the extra features being worth the $450 hub/scout plus an extra $5 – $10 per month in costs to me.

So OOMA admits that they delete every feature I have with the phone company. What if I want Call Waiting for my own calls? The rational way to handle it would be to allow me to keep Call Waiting (to be applied to calls I make to local or calls I receive) and for the OOMA hub to send the Cancel Call Waiting code for any call it makes from my hub for someone else.

About the BCF (I thought it was CFB) forwarding to a local number. The question still remains: Who pays for this other local number and line? If I’m the only OOMA subscriber in my area, then someone has to pay for one phone line just for me. That’s way too expensive. If I’m in an area with many OOMA subscribers and there are only a few of these local numbers to forward any of them to, there could often be times when they are all busy and the call to me is blocked – i.e., no “Instant Second Line”. It’s really a “Sometimes Second Line”.

Considering the large number of “local” areas, I find it impossible to believe that there will be another local line to support this capability for every OOMA subscriber.

And if OOMA subscribes me to BCF (or CFB), can I deactivate it on a per call basis when I make local calls through my hub? Since the functionality it is trying to duplicate is Call Waiting, I would certainly want the ability to Cancel it for certain calls.