I'm cutting lose some monthly services that I don't feel I'm getting my money's worth from – BaseCamp, TEC insurance for my BlackBerry, and next on the list is Vonage. They've shown zero customer loyalty in the 3.5 years I've been a customer and my bill increases nearly every month.
February, 2006
Service: $14.99, Fees: $1.95. Total: $16.94
August, 2009
Service: $17.99, Fees: $7.23. Total: $25.22
The monthly service has increased 20% and fees have skyrocketed 270%! Over the same period my usage has declined.
| Year | Average Monthly Usage |
Annual Minutes Used |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 73 | 586 |
| 2008 | 72 | 866 |
| 2007 | 103 | 1140 |
| 2006 | 102 | 1224 |
I'm on the 500 minute/month plan and in 44 months I've only used 3816 minutes; about 7 1/2 full months of minutes.
Enter ooma
A one-time cost of roughly $230 gets you hardware and free unlimited (3000 minutes/month) national calling.
Forever.
Add $40 to port my number from Vonage, and I'll begin saving money in 10 months. Check out ooma.com for more details or make me rich using the affiliate link below. There are a handful of articles about ooma on GigaOM too.
July 28th, 2010 at 11:06 am
This is about a year after your original post and I'm wondering if ooma is still saving you money or if they went the way vonage did and gradually increase rates while cutting services.