Following my last post, I decided after much research to get the Ooma Core VOIP Phone System from amazon. I ordered it yesterday and surprisingly, it arrived today!! It didn’t have far to go from PA so I was very excited to see it show up so quickly. Love that prime shipping from Amazon.com!
Just like many of the reviews I’ve read online, the box the device comes in is real sleek looking. The packaging is in par with other high end electronics these days, matte black sturdy cardboard with everything integrated in its own compartment. Everything about it looks sophisticated and well put together, it looks like their design team has put a lot of thought into the aesthetics of their product.
I had a little trouble getting it set up as I didn’t know the password to our router and I think I needed to configure some things when putting the ooma core device in front of the router. There’s a sequence to follow when hooking up this device and after a half hour of reading the manual and trying to figure out what was making it not work, I just decided to try to put the device behind the router as though it was another peripheral.
After replugging some of the cables since it’s routed differently, and some rebooting of the modem and router, within a few minutes, my red ooma tab glowed blue (meaning it’s ready to go) and all the lights on the buttons disappeared except for the voicemail button. I pressed it and instantly hear my first voicemail message which was a welcoming message from ooma. :clapping:
Our internet connection is 15mbps down and 2mbps up I believe so hopefully having ooma behind the router will not be a big lag issue. We’ve never had vonage but my sister in law did for years. Whenever I call over to their house, the voice quality was always really choppy. I suspect it’s because my nieces are gaming while the phone is in use so the gaming was sucking up the bandwidth which is why the calls were choppy or echos.
I didn’t have it up and ready til after 10pm so I didn’t get to make too many local calls on it to test it out. But I did call a friend of mine on the west coast since I now I have free long distance in the usa and she said it sounded ok, not as great as a landline but was in par with a good cell reception. I think if I had plugged it into a better phone or even a corded phone, the quality may be even better. I was using an older cordless phone that didn’t get very loud. She was on her cell so there’s no telling who was the culprit. I’ll have to test it out with someone that has a landline tomorrow and see.
My cordless has a two line capability so I just hooked ooma up directly to the second line slot. I’ll test it out for a couple of days to see if there’s any flakiness before I try to get my number ported over. I hear it takes awhile and so I’ll probably just request the paperwork tomorrow. I’ve been reading negative comments about their customer service and I have also tried calling them prior to my purchase to see if I could get through and inquire if my number is portable. The two times I tried to call, I was put on hold for a long time and eventually was disconnected. The last time being 21 minutes before the dreaded disconnect.
Not being able to get through and getting disconnected made me feel a bit uneasy :worried: but then I thought maybe their company just blew up too fast for their current customer service department to keep up with. Ooma is being sold in many of the well known retailers like best buy, staples, and even walmart and costco is carrying this item online. I heard that amazon was pushing it hard over the christmas shopping season but I wasn’t aware of it since I wasn’t shopping for VOIP then, I could have gotten it for closer to $200 instead of the $220 I paid. Still, you can’t beat the no tax, free ship, and arrived at my door step the very next day…plus I saved over the suggested retail price, I love amazon.com! :luv: There was a blurp over their the main ooma forum about the rush over orders over the holidays and the backlog of number porting for their customer service. Growing pains I suppose.
I would have liked to know whether my number can be ported over before making the purchase but I live in a pretty populated area and not in the sticks so I think my chances are good. It was a roll of the dice with this purchase in regards to the longevity of this company but now that I have the device actively working here, I feel so much better about my purchase.
I just finished another call just now for 23 minutes and I checked email, ran speed tests, and surfed the net all while talking through ooma and the voice quality sounded decent enough. I don’t get super great cell phone reception, in fact, it ranges from 4 bars to none frequently so I get dropped calls, no calls, or choppy “can you hear me now” calls which are aggravating. Now with ooma, it sounds pretty good. I’ll have to do more testing to see how well it does in other calling situations.
I am excited at the fact that I can now make teleconference calls via a regular phone with ooma instead of using the free long distance on my cell phone. And I kinda like the new temporary number I picked out to use, I might even get their premium service to keep that extra number while my other number is ported over. The premium service is like a hundred bucks a year and you get a ton of the extra features like the blacklisting that I will enjoy using on those pesky telemarketers despite the fact my number is already on the do not call list!! :bat: And I am already liking the call log feature which I’m not sure if that’s a regular or premium feature, I’ll have to look into it more. I especially like that I can listen to my voicemail right in my ooma account by logging into ooma lounge! At first I wasn’t sure how that works but once you’re in the lounge, there’s a voicemail player and a list of your voicemail messages to listen to! That’s VERY cool and works very well!
Overall, I am happy with ooma on this day 1 and I feel a little relieved over rolling the dice and taking a chance. With any new startup company that hasn’t built a long reputation, one never knows if it will succeed or flop in this economy. I want to make good decisions obviously and sometimes you’re not sure if it’s a good decision in the long run. I took a chance and hopefully, I will hit the 6 or 8 month mark to breaking even, depending on if I want to subscribe to their premium service….which I may do.
This little Ooma device is so cool, I hope they stick around for a very long time and build a great following! Hopefully my number porting will go smoothly too, I’ll update when that happens. :hyper:
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