People always have a lot to say about this!

200 Comments here

Oh wow here are some more from what i posted last time..

Ooma Has Been Offered Quite a few times before and always gets a lot of response.

This is pretty much on a monthly sales frequency, and now 2 in a row on tech.woot: I'm guessing $99.99 then too, like tonight and the 3 previous woot.com offers/woot-off offers
http://tech.woot.com/forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=5155958

Last non woot-off, and believe me, lots of comments
http://www.woot.com/forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=5065205

Okay, for those of us who stayed after/despite yesterday's "episode", group hug now.


Edit: cowboydann has you covered above, I'll step to the side except note the pricing info above and that I have the September tech.woot sale link (to add to his regular woot link above), which is the most recent woot. I'll let him take over for the night. I've got plenty of work to do.

My wife travels abroad A LOT and our Ooma lets me call her for cheap (comparatively speaking).

For domestic calls my bill is somewhere around $3.xx monthly

I got mine 18 months ago with no problems. I pay $3.27 a month in tax for local and long distance. I have save hundreds and hundreds of dollars. A must have for most anyone with high or low usage.

Is this thing really any better than NetTalk?
http://www.nettalk.com/

I have NetTalk, and it's just sorta so-so ... there are often delays, there are lots of dropped calls.

I'd love to know if this thing is worth the higher cost.

I got one in the last Woot, and I have to agree it works great. When you first hook it up it will do a firmware update, so it will reboot a few times -- don't panic.

I bought one of these a while back to replace the voip landline from the cable company.

Works great and I save $45 a month in the process.

I installed it in my basement and plugged the main phone line of the house into it so I can just plug my phones I to the wall jack like I normally would.

We bought this exact model a bit back and have used it without a problem for a few months. In Wisconsin, I think we pay $3.xx per month. It has never disconnected, and 911 is linked to our address. It does not need a computer to be on to run, and we love it. If you're thinking about it, know that we are among the very happy with this product. (I may even buy one for my mother - *that's* how easy it is to use)


We have recruited 4 families now, and they have recruited others. I feel I should get a pin or something

grest tool, great price. if you're on the fence, buy it.

I bought an Ooma off woot wayyyy back on 3/26/11. Here's the discussion http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=4400975

With additional searching you can find plenty of information.

The bottom line with Ooma is that you have to pay for the box up front, and make back the price you pay up front with the basic plan's only-pay-taxes over time. It takes (depending on your current phone bill) anywhere from 3-12 months to 'break even'.

But regardless, here's my take on the good and bad after 1.5 years with it:

The Good:
- The monthly price! It's about $3.50/mo for me for unlimited local and long distance service. Ridiculous.
- I can fax with my all in one printer after getting a phone cord splitter. This has been incredibly useful repeatedly, and the $1.25 a page you save over a trip to the UPS store or FedEx adds up RAPIDLY. Plus you don't have to drive out, etc.
- It's incredibly obvious if you put the box in a visible spot when you have internet and when you don't. The ooma "flower" glows blue when it's connected, and flashes red when it can't. I learn more about comcast outages from that than my cable mode.
- Integration with Google Voice. I happen to have a callbox in my apartment that calls my ooma. If I'm not at home, it goes to my cell phone. I can let in the UPS/FedEx guy from my desk at work (or wherever), and receive calls from home at work.
- You can take the box with you if you go on vacation (and you have usable internet). I've actually done this, and yes it works. Yes, it's pretty cool to have a working (FREE) landline. Note that this is not completely kosher as the 911 info you've input is now inaccurate.
- Call quality has been completely fine, and has generally been better than previous landline service. It's significantly better than my cell phone call quality.
- Free local and long distance in the US, and competitive rates for international calling.
- The 'upsell' (Ooma Premium) does have some nice features, like an instant second line (!!), active telemarketing blocker (useful in conjunction with National DNC list), whitelisting / blacklisting capabilities, and more. You can find the full list here: http://www.ooma.com/premier/features. It's $10/mo. You get 90 days free with your Ooma setup.

The Bad:

- Sometimes when I hang up and need to immediately make another call, the phone won't have hung up, and will complain about the fact that I can't use a second line without Ooma premier. Then the phone will ring back with the call it thought I 'dropped'. Hanging up again remedies this. A minor annoyance, but notable as it happens a few times a month.
- It took me 2 different phone-line splitters before I got one that worked with my phone / all-in-one printer. I don't know why.
- Ooma service outages. Rare (I've only had one service outage I've noticed that was more than 1 hour), but obviously if it happens it is a massive inconvenience.
- Losing the ability to have a working phone during power outages. Don't forget the fact that converting to a VOIP box means that unless your internet connection and VOIP box (and router, potentially) are ALL on a battery backup, you will lose the ability to make calls when the power goes out. Apt in this time of Sandy-induced power outages.

Overall: The good FAR outweighs the bad. So much so that I've bought 2 as gifts for people, who have loved it as much as I have. Moreso for one family who saved over $50/mo after the switch.

edit: Forgot to include the tax calculator, where, once you input your Zip Code, you can see exactly how much the 'basic' service will cost you per month: https://go.ooma.com/tax_calculator.

The Ooma Telo is great except once
the overload protection is tripped
it is dead and can not be reset or repaired.
I purchased my unit from Woot, worked great for about 14 months.
[Jan 2011 to April 2012]

Going off the grid: Using woodstove fireplace instead of electricity, prepaid net10 instead of verizon bills, Tivo w/ digital roof antenna instead of cable tv, and now Ooma instead of landline phone. Sometimes you gotta be a bit techie to be a modern Luddite.

My Ooma didn't come with the sleek little phone cord and ooma headquarters said they couldn't send one out to me unless I shipped the whole package to him--easier to just buy one myself, but bummer--not as much as the bummer it takes to port your phone number from Att to Ooma. Depending on how confused the right hand and left hand of Att is, and whatever goes on administratively with Ooma porting, the whole transition can take several weeks. Meanwhile, I do use my ooma alongside my regular landline just to make long distance calls and to call from alternative phone numbers to confuse people's caller id. Ask 3 different Att technicians how and why a dry loop is obtained for this switch and you'll get 5 different answers. I already had 2 guys come in and look at jacks and lines and am awaiting a second "box" to "self install" it to get me ooma-ing on that stand-alone tack using internet only while phones continue to work on other jacks for the phase it takes to port the old phone number over. 'Easy if you don't care about preserving your current phone number.

This has been an Ooma tease. Get the gadget, but start ordering a 'dry loop' immediately if your purpose is to eliminate your landline but want your current phone number.

Ooma works surprisingly well and this is the best price I've seen anywhere, even usedbay.

YOu get a log posted on-line of all outgoing and incoming calls so I can get all Big Brother-y on my roomie if I wanted. The Ooma has a nice answering machine in it for each of its phone numbers. It's so easy to block target callers now that I'm emboldened to risk giving my unregistered number out to unsavory characters that live off the grid.

Since the last Woot Ooma sale, the new HD2 handset has come out, new features, more expensive then the previous (non-existent for quite some time) handset. Nice, I suppose, still waiting for mine to arrive.

Can anyone tell me what rates to Canada are? I currently get it included with my unlimited land line service.

Bought my version in Sept. 2009. It has done well but the HOME port went dead after a year. I still use the phone port and it seems to work with the house wiring. I don't pay any taxes so it was worth it to me. I have hear rumors that if you have to pay taxes then it might be even cheaper per year for you to use something else. I am experimenting with the Obi device with a up front of $40 and hooked up with goolge for now and it is not too bad. If google starts to charge after this year there are other options with my OBI device. I hear some poeple really like the fairly new super magic jack or whatever they call it now because that version can be used without a computer. There is also software out there that will help you take an old magic Jack so that you can use it with something like google for nothing.

Can anyone direct me to a good comparison between the Obi 110 and this Ooma? I have been looking for Ooma to come back up and kept watching in the last two WootOffs. While researching and waiting I found the Obi 110 and finally ordered it from Amazon. Should I send it back and buy Ooma? Which is best?

Can anyone tell me if i can hook up my house alarm system to this? Thanks.

wardca wrote:Can anyone tell me if i can hook up my house alarm system to this? Thanks.

I've been looking at getting a home alarm and currently have Vonage. Since both are VOIP technology I would say no.

It won't work with satelite and I have the fastest, Exede by Viasat. Returned it. The delays and latency were awful.

I installed AT&T Wireless Home Phone and it is awesome. Sounds better than a land line and for $20/mo. unlimited calling plus very little fees and frivolous Fed charges.

I bought an Ooma in one of the early Woot offerings. The device has gone bad, so because of the tremendous savings over a regular land line, I'm probably buying one of these today. Ooma has been great for saving on the phone bill.

To me the biggest negative, and it is a big one, is Ooma's atrocious customer service. When there was a catastrophic outage that lasted several hours, there was NO meaningful communication from Ooma on Facebook, Twitter or email. During the outage, people were speculating in social media, that Ooma just picked that day to close up shop. After service was restored, Ooma didn't give enough information to tell its customers what happened and assure them that additional measures were installed to prevent a repeat occurrence. Also, Ooma phone reps are aloof, cavalier, and do not speak clear English. In other words, Ooma does no wrong...even if you find they have without notice to you, unilaterally upgraded you to Ooma Premier and are taking the payment from you through automatic debit. So, expect to save money, but be vigilant with them when it comes to your account.

I've had my Ooma for 10 months now. It definitely needs the best possible internet connection you can give it.
I have TWC with 10 down, 1.5 up and it works great. I use it constantly for work calls.

NOTE: any LAN extenders etc will degrade the call quality and cause dropped calls! I was using a LAN-over-AC style extender to a 10/100 switch with my Ooma connected to it. It frequently dropped calls. I replaced that extender with a long ethernet cable (kept the switch) and haven't dropped a call since.

sporadic wrote:I've had my Ooma for 10 months now. It definitely needs the best possible internet connection you can give it.
I have TWC with 10 down, 1.5 up and it works great. I use it constantly for work calls.

NOTE: any LAN extenders etc will degrade the call quality and cause dropped calls! I was using a LAN-over-AC style extender to a 10/100 switch with my Ooma connected to it. It frequently dropped calls. I replaced that extender with a long ethernet cable (kept the switch) and haven't dropped a call since.

My Ooma service worked okay but just okay, with AT&T basic DSL. I now have basic cable internet and Ooma definitely does better.

d0g wrote:Is this thing really any better than NetTalk?
http://www.nettalk.com/

I have NetTalk, and it's just sorta so-so ... there are often delays, there are lots of dropped calls.

I'd love to know if this thing is worth the higher cost.

I started with nettalk (mainly because of the cheaper up front cost and slightly lower yearly cost) and wound up returning it. I have a 15Mbps connection so speed was not an issue. The main thing was that I would hear tones like someone had pressed a key every once in a while, but the biggest issue was that every so often (it seemed really random but occurred every week or two) there would be a "stuck key tone" like someone had just presses a button on the phone and won't let go. The only way to get rid of it is to hang up. That issue was the reason we returned ours. It was just too risky because, let's face it, who wants to be one hold with someone for 45 minutes and then as soon as they finally come on, your phone goes berserk and you have to hang up.

With the ooma, we can hear what sounds like a key press maybe once or twice a month, but it never kills the call. That is really the only thing that we can tell different from our old land-line. Also, depending on how you hook it up, the Ooma has a built in DHCP server, so if you put it before your router, it will actually reserve a certain amount of bandwidth for your calls when you are on the phone. This helps to make sure that you never run out of bandwidth for the phone and I bet it helps prevent quite a few issues. You can still plug it into your router, but then it is sharing bandwidth with everything else. If you are downloading a large file, it might get short on bandwidth and could have issues. Mine if before my router like they recommend and it is pretty rock solid.

Bottom line...much better than the nettalk. Worth the extra $40-$60 up front and the extra few cents a month.

HIH,
-Keith

d0g wrote:Is this thing really any better than NetTalk?
http://www.nettalk.com/

I have NetTalk, and it's just sorta so-so ... there are often delays, there are lots of dropped calls.

I'd love to know if this thing is worth the higher cost.

I don't know NetTalk, but those aren't problems for my Ooma. Is it worth the higher cost? Well... that's your call.

We've had our for about 9 months now. The first two units went bad, but Ooma replaced them for free. this third unit has been trouble free for several months. So it may have been the luck of the draw on the first two. So now that things seem to be working well... well, they're working! Great call quality - be sure to adjust your "Quality Of Service" settings (or whatever it's called).

fishpotpete wrote:We've had our for about 9 months now. The first two units went bad, but Ooma replaced them for free. this third unit has been trouble free for several months. So it may have been the luck of the draw on the first two. So now that things seem to be working well... well, they're working! Great call quality - be sure to adjust your "Quality Of Service" settings (or whatever it's called).

For what it's worth, adjusting the qos in my router never made a difference in the call quality. It boiled down to a poor connection quality.
The QoS settings are only going to work if you are hammering your network with other traffic at the same time.

Is it required that you use the Ooma handsets, or does this work with any handset? I can't find info on that online, so I have to assume you can use any handset with the system.

I have had my ooma telo for about 3 years now. Loved it so much I talked my parents, brother and co-worker into buying one. All of them are extremely happy with it. Call quality is good, you can port your old number over and it's easy to setup and install. Here was my only issue with setup....

Note to Comcast service or any service with a "speed boost" service:

I had problems with dropped calls and poor performance when I had comcast service. I called Ooma support and they directed me to change my internet speed on the ooma from auto to a fixed 1500 kbps down and 256 kbps up. Once I had the change and rebooted I never had an issue again. Apparently the speed boost causes an issue when it starts throttling your speed down and can cause problems when Ooma's internet speed setting is set to auto.

bkarlan wrote:My wife travels abroad A LOT and our Ooma lets me call her for cheap (comparatively speaking).

For domestic calls my bill is somewhere around $3.xx monthly

Not compared to Magic Jack. I never will understand why people buy these bulky expensive things when MJ is available. I gues because they are bigger you think you are getting more?

wardca wrote:Can anyone tell me if i can hook up my house alarm system to this? Thanks.

Jasulistio is correct, security systems will not work with it, however, you can order an alarm only line from you phone company pretty cheap. They sell it to you cheaply ($9 per mo or so) with the idea being that the line will rarely be used and normally you have other services from them (don't let them guilt you into ordering them).

Does anyone know can I use this in Ecuador?
Or is it just USA/

How are you billed for the taxes? Is it a paper bill that comes to your house or do they take it from your credit card or soemthing?

wardca wrote:Can anyone tell me if i can hook up my house alarm system to this? Thanks.

You cannot hook it up to your house alarm. I had the same issue, and was going to cancel my ADT service, but after haggling, they installed a wireless system for $99. Ooma is fantastic btw.

JohnnySocko wrote:How are you billed for the taxes? Is it a paper bill that comes to your house or do they take it from your credit card or soemthing?

You get billed on the credit card you use to set up service.

Another great feature is that you can route the Ooma into your home phone wiring, so all your existing phones etc are automatically connected ( you have to unplug a connection in the outside phone company box).

dlancioni wrote:Is it required that you use the Ooma handsets, or does this work with any handset? I can't find info on that online, so I have to assume you can use any handset with the system.

You can use any handset. The output port of the Ooma is a typical phone jack. I have that output line wired into my whole house so all the phone jacks work exactly as they would with a typical phone service.

Obi 110 w/ google voice master race reporting in

I've had my Ooma for about a year. Bought mine with the wifi dongle, which is worthless in my case. It kept losing connection and would take hours to reconnect. Not sure what was going on with it, but once I connected it via hard wire, it works perfectly. I'd definitely recommend to anybody that wants to shed some $$. I already pay the cable company $200+, and felt slightly better by taking away the $40 phone charge.

I don't have a land line and the cell reception at my home is barely existent so I am thinking the Ooma might be a good option (as opposed to paying $250 for the Verizon network extender that will allow me to actually ~use~ my cell at home)

Can my Ooma integrate with my cell phone number? Do I get a new phone number for use with the Ooma only?

As I understand it, I need a hard wired phone ?

thanks Wooters!

colbytitus wrote:Not compared to Magic Jack. I never will understand why people buy these bulky expensive things when MJ is available. I gues because they are bigger you think you are getting more?

tried MJ and the call quality is junk compared to the Ooma

pjammasan wrote:I don't have a land line and the cell reception at my home is barely existent so I am thinking the Ooma might be a good option (as opposed to paying $250 for the Verizon network extender that will allow me to actually ~use~ my cell at home)

Can my Ooma integrate with my cell phone number? Do I get a new phone number for use with the Ooma only?

As I understand it, I need a hard wired phone ?

thanks Wooters!

Yes you need a hard-wired phone, but the other option is to have Ooma dual-call your cell phone. I think that takes a premium account.

I use a Google Voice number for a "work" number, which I have set up to dual call my Ooma number and cell phone. Works quite well.