VOIP Update

As I have mentioned before, we are getting VOIP through Vonage, and I promised to keep you updated on our efforts to save hundreds of dollars a month by ditching the local phone company for an internet-based phone service.

We are still in the set up phase.

So far, so complicated.

I had our local phone company here moving phone lines all around. We have to keep one phone line to carry the DSL that we use for high speed internet access. I wanted to take our home, office, and fax phone numbers with us to Vonage. You can't move the phone number of the line which your DSL is on though, so I had the DSL switched from our old fax line to the one extra line we would keep from the phone company.

Then much later I learned that for some stupid reason, Vonage won't let you take your fax line number with you. This information was not in their marketing materials. But our fax number is all over our letterhead, which costs about $1000 to reprint, so I wasn't eager to let that number go. I was stumped for a while.

But now it has occured to me that the only thing to do is to have the phone company back to move the DSL exactly where it used to be, on the fax line. We can fax on it and access the internet at the same time, which we have been doing for years. So I never had to have the phone company here in the first place. Double hassle, and it costs money every time they show up.

So I complained to Vonage, and they have agreed to give me $50 off, and they sent me two free hats. So that's not so bad, I guess. I mean, hats.

By the way, if you are considering signing up for VOIP, send me your e-mail address. If I refer you to Vonage, we both get a month of unlimited free calling in the U.S. What a deal! Maybe we'll end up with matching hats.