We bought the earlier version of the OOMA base station here on Woot almost two years ago. Installation took only minutes, and our monthly phone bill is now < $15 (we have the premier plan), taxes included, instead of $40 as it used to be with Vonage.

The sound quality is fine. My favorite feature is the blacklist; if we get a telemarketing call, I add that number to the blacklist, and if they call again, OOMA tells them that our number is no longer in service.

I've got one and enjoy it as well. However, if you have a Costco membership, you can buy new for the same price as this refurb.

Can someone explain why this might be better than
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004LO098O/ref=cm_sw_r_an_am_ap_am_ ?

Must be a new product. I've never seen woot sell Ooma's,... Oh, maybe they have:
http://www.woot.com/forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=5065205 with same $99.99 price.

I have had Ooma for about 3 years. It is great. The sound quality, the ability to forward your home phone to your cell, retrieving messages online (I have the Premier Plan), the setup, it is all great.

I just moved and I was able to take my Ooma equipment and plug it in to the new internet service and my phone was working in about 10 minutes. Went online and changed my service address and my re-setup was complete.

I was paying Pacific Bell $160 a month to have 2 lines with all the features. I was a little worried switching over at first but I really have no regrets now. I pay $10 a month and have more features than what Pacific Bell was able to offer me.

jimnovator wrote:I've got one and enjoy it as well. However, if you have a Costco membership, you can buy new for the same price as this refurb.

Costco.com currently has it at $169.99 or 199.99 with 4 handsets. I haven't seen it at our local Costco yet.

Anyone has experience with the international plan (1000 minutes for $10)? How much does it cost with taxes and everything?

My Costco has it for a minimum of $120 at times. This is a steal.

I got mine from Woot! and have been very very happy with it. Shut off the land line and have never had a concern. Got the premium package and now have a separate second "virtual" line for faxes. Had a leftover bluetooth dongle so now my cell phone in its charger base rings over the whole home phone system.

I really like my Ooma, and it's saving me a lot of money, too.

Oh, but the cell phone minutes, using Ooma instead of ATT, are a complete fiasco. Fortunately, it's an added service with the premium, or else I'd stop paying for it.

The only issue I have had using Ooma is when I try to call back-ass locations. For example, Bristol, ME has some regulation that's keeping the big time carriers out, so the rinky-dink local phone company has an old system that cannot handle VOIP to landline connections. I average 4 attempts per connect. Very frustrating; however, I would still never go back to paying what I once did.

dmax801 wrote:Oh, but the cell phone minutes, using Ooma instead of ATT, are a complete fiasco. Fortunately, it's an added service with the premium, or else I'd stop paying for it.

Can you please expound on what you mean? I'm about to pull the trigger, but 99% of the calls I would make from it would be to ATT mobiles...

jkgm wrote:Can you please expound on what you mean? I'm about to pull the trigger, but 99% of the calls I would make from it would be to ATT mobiles...

Dude pull the trigger as quickly as possible. I'm talking to my brother on his AT&T iphone as I'm telling you to pull the trigger. I talk to my brother's and sister who all have at&t phones. Pull the F-ING trigger and keep your money in your pocket. Greatest thing since sliced bread. Get a google voice # so you'll only have to give out 1 number. GV works with Ooma.

rstuckmaier wrote:Can someone explain why this might be better than
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004LO098O/ref=cm_sw_r_an_am_ap_am_ ?

Well, with Ooma, calls will be free (except for the taxes and fees which come to about $3.75 in my area). With the device you linked, Google voice calls will be free till the end of 2012. After that, an as of yet unknown fee will likely be charged.

The other services are also pay for use, but still usually cheaper than paying a big TELCO company.

Ooma, still free.

I will add that the low price Ooma charges for the premier package isn't bad for all the features you get. The extra packages, however, are optional.

This is a great deal - I bought the telo here a while back for more, and I've saved a ton of cash on my phone bills.

jkgm wrote:Can you please expound on what you mean? I'm about to pull the trigger, but 99% of the calls I would make from it would be to ATT mobiles...

I think he's talking about the mobile app.
http://www.ooma.com/products/ooma-mobile-hd-app

For calls made from the Ooma Telo you don't pay anything extra.

If you still have a home phone (besides cellular) then this is a must. Bought mine 2 years ago and it works perfect. You would not know the difference between this (internet calls via Ooma) and regular home phone service through the phone companies.

I have a 5 megabits/second internet line and it costs me about $3.50/month for taxes only.

I have an old AT&T phone with a mechanical bell. Does this provide enough power to ring that, or does it only work for newer phones?

Refurbished means... refurbished by the original manufacturer, right?

I use one of these at my house, my favorite feature is the ability to have it ring your cellphone as well as the house phone and answer from either!

Ooma works as well as everyone says, and it's ultra-simple to get up and running.

The biggest PITA is how they handle international calling. Unlike "normal" phone companies, you can't just pick up the phone, make an international call and have the charge show up on your monthly bill. Like the cell companies, they really want to sell you a recurring monthly bundle of international minutes -- which you may or may not use. If you make some but not enough international calls to justify a monthly bundle, then you have to pre-deposit cash into your Ooma account that, like Skype, you draw down as you call -- at much higher per-minute rates. And unless you upgrade to Ooma Premier service for another $10 / month, calls to Canada are treated the same as other international calls. Be warned.

Sounds like there's some fairly knowledgeable people here - hope you don't mind if I pick your brains.

I currently have home phone service from Time Warner Cable. I just run a standard phone cord from an RJ-11 port on my cable modem into one of the wall jacks for my home phone system and it works just like my old land line. I can plug a standard phone into any jack in the house and get service. I can hook up as many extensions as desired.

That's what I want. Will this device do that?

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge.

Yes you can do that, sort of. What you have to do is disconnect your house from the main line coming in. Somewhere outside your house will be a box where you phone line enters the house. If you open the box you just unplug the jack and you're good to go. There are a couple different ways to connect the Ooma:

1. Cable modem to Ooma, to router, (or computer)
2. Cable modem, router Oomah.

I have mine set up the second way. Once you have it connected to the internet you can then connect the Oomah to any wall phone jack in your house and then you can get a dial tone from any wall jack.

Oomah also has an excellent message board if you do run in to a rare issue. I bought mine here about a year ago and am very pleased.

mommadillo wrote:Sounds like there's some fairly knowledgeable people here - hope you don't mind if I pick your brains.

I currently have home phone service from Time Warner Cable. I just run a standard phone cord from an RJ-11 port on my cable modem into one of the wall jacks for my home phone system and it works just like my old land line. I can plug a standard phone into any jack in the house and get service. I can hook up as many extensions as desired.

That's what I want. Will this device do that?

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge.

Ooma goes through your internet connection, and if Comcast is down I'll lose internet AND home phone connection.

Does anyone have an opinion on ATT&T's new "home phone service?". It is wireless service, one time activation fee, I get to keep my existing number, and is only $10 extra on my cell bill.

HELP! Can't decide which is better.

Will this work with a home security system that is connected to a remote monitoring station. The service notifies the home owner if the house alarm has been triggered. I believe the alarm "sensors" are connected to the monitoring service via telephone.

I love mine. My monthly bill went from about $39 to 4. (Just pay the 911 fees and federal taxes).

For some odd reason it doesn't want to connect to a friends house who uses a similar VOIP system (they switched to all celular so its not an issue).

If you pay the monthly advanced services fee you get all your messages forwarded to your email address and you can also listen to the messages online.

endangereddelicacies wrote:Refurbished means... refurbished by the original manufacturer, right?

If it's like most "refurbished" units I've bought, it is a customer returned unit, for whatever reason, that has been checked for serviceability, dusted off, and repackaged. The refurbs of other products I've purchased have looked and worked like new.

daphidoc wrote:Will this work with a home security system that is connected to a remote monitoring station. The service notifies the home owner if the house alarm has been triggered. I believe the alarm "sensors" are connected to the monitoring service via telephone.

My main reason for keeping land line service was my alarm system being wired into it. After a little research I was able to figure out where to wire Ooma into the house telephone wiring. How this is done may vary based on the type of alarm system you have. For mine, Ooma needed to be connected to a line that runs directly to the alarm system phone jack (and if they wired the alarm correctly that line already runs from the outside phone junction to the alarm). Once that was done the existing wiring from the alarm back to the outside junction and then through the rest of the jacks in the house worked as intended. You should disconnect wires coming to the junction box from your phone company as mentioned in other posts.

In about a year I have only had one instance where the cable went out, in addition to power, during a thunderstorm. I have all my electronics on UPS so Ooma had power, but no internet service to dial out with. This is probably more likely than land line phone service going out in those situations.

rejiii wrote:If it's like most "refurbished" units I've bought, it is a customer returned unit, for whatever reason, that has been checked for serviceability, dusted off, and repackaged. The refurbs of other products I've purchased have looked and worked like new.

The "refurbishing" is usually done by a third party, not the manufacturer.

Bought one of these last year, and without a doubt, it's been the best investment for 99 bucks I've ever made! Wish I'd done it sooner.

Long-time Wooter but 1st time with a question, so please be gentle if it's a stupid one. I'd love to get off of the regular phone service money drain but was wondering how Ooma handles collect calls. My mother gets fairly frequent calls from a relative from a distant State, from a correctional institution, and they are expensive calls. How do those calls work with Ooma?

Bottom Line, no one here has a problem with this product? I will wait an hour or so for response and if no neg... then in for 2, one for my brother.

Ooma is great. We paid $40 extra to keep our old number and (I think) another $40 for the wireless dongle. The switch over took a few days and our internet was down for about week while AT&T removed the landline from our account and went 'net only (not Ooma's fault, obviously). Our bill has gone down from over $40/mth to about $4. Quality is great. The premium account may be useful to those who get a lot of telemarketers, but we have caller ID and just don't answer the numbers we don't know. Even with the added cost of keeping our old number and going wireless, this has already paid for itself.

For the basic features, how does this compare with Magic Jack, which has the ability to use without a computer also?

We have had our Ooma for about a year. Got it refurb from Woot. Works great. We dropped their premium service. The only thing we used that was premium was the voice mail to email feature. While we will miss it we didn't feel it was worth $120/year. We keep a land line for those people that don't know our cell.

does the reactivation fee listed on Ooma's site apply?

http://www.ooma.com/legal/rates

zeta30 wrote:Somewhere outside your house will be a box where you phone line enters the house. If you open the box you just unplug the jack and you're good to go.

Yeah, they already did that part when we had our phone service switched over to Time Warner. I live in Kansas City - Google Fiber is supposed to be live in my "fiberhood" sometime in the next few months, and I'm really looking forward to getting free of Time Warner. They've had a virtual monopoly around here entirely too long, and it shows. Maybe they'll shape up a bit once competition has cost them a few customers.

whatsamattaU wrote:Must be a new product. I've never seen woot sell Ooma's,... Oh, maybe they have:
http://www.woot.com/forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=5065205 with same $99.99 price.

Dude, what's your point? Woot sells the same items many times. This used to be $139, now it's come down.

dbamberg wrote:For the basic features, how does this compare with Magic Jack, which has the ability to use without a computer also?

Looks like I may have answered my own question:

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Ooma+vs+magicJack+Plus

It also looks like Magic Jack might be the better option. Some key points:

Porting cheaper on Magic Jack ($20 Vs $40)
Initial device cost cheaper (($70 Vs. $100)
3 way calling and call forwarding included with Magic Jack, need premium with Ooma

Anyone else have any experience for a comparison?

crony wrote:does the reactivation fee listed on Ooma's site apply?

http://www.ooma.com/legal/rates

Weird - the yearly charge for the Premier service is eleven cents more than paying the monthly charge for twelve months. Usually it's cheaper to pay for a year up front.

I never will understand why people buy these when Magicjack is out there. It's way cheaper, does the same thing, more portable and you can get the free app for your smart phone and use it anywhere there is wifi.
Maybe the Ooma name is cooler or people feel better having a larger device?