Ooma Review – One Month Later
Some of you may have read my post back in September about how I switched my landline phone service from Comcast to Ooma. Here we are, a little over a month later, so I thought I’d write up a more in-depth review.
Ease of Setup
For the most part, you just plug in the hardware and set up your account online. Getting the hardware hooked up right can be a little tricky if you’re like me and tend to skim the instructions… but aside from that, no major issues in this department.
One thing you DO need to be aware of is that when you create an account, you’re automatically enrolled in a free trial of Ooma Premier. Premier is the $9.99 a month extended-feature service… which, in all fairness does have some nifty offerings… but it you don’t opt out, you’ll be automatically charged for it once the free trial ends. It’s kind of nice of them to let you continue with the full duration of the free trial even if you do choose to opt out, though.
If you’re curious about the differences between Basic and Premier, the Ooma website has a handy chart.
Porting my phone number from Comcast to Ooma was quick and painless, and was completed in less than the two week time-frame they initially advised me to expect.
Customer Service
I noted in my previous post that their support was a little hit or miss. Sometimes you’ll get someone who’s really great, and sometimes you’ll probably end up calling back hoping for a different person. The community forums are a nice touch, though, and the people on them seem genuinely interested in helping out.
Ooma also offers live online chat support every weekday. I haven’t had the opportunity/need to use it yet.
Call Quality
Ooma has been as good, if not better than Comcast’s (much more expensive) VoIP phone service. I have never had a call dropped, and haven’t had any issue with echos or distortion, even when calling cell phones.
I did have one issue that resulted in incoming calls not ringing through my phones. Resetting the Ooma Telo unit fixed the problem and I haven’t experienced it since.
Cost
The hardware is a little on the pricey side (the Ooma Telo unit costs around $170)… but the cost of the service itself more than makes up for it. Since Ooma Basic is free, all you pay for are local taxes and fees. For me, it amounts to a little over $4 a month.
Extras
Ooma does have some nice extras. For starters, the My.Ooma.com interface lets you do things like check voicemail online, view call logs, and customize your caller-ID settings. If you opt to keep Ooma Premier, you get nifty things like SMS notifications of new voicemail messages, a personal blacklist, and anonymous call blocking.
Ooma also offers add-on products, including warranty extensions for your hardware and a mobile app that allows you to use your Ooma service on your cell phone’s wifi connection instead of using up your cellular airtime and data.
Overall
After a month+, Ooma has been great. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a cheaper VoIP solution for their home phone.
while in the process of porting my existing number over to the Ooma service, do i still use my old phone service as my land line? I’m a lttle confused on the porting process.
mike
Yes, you would still be using your old phone service for that number until the port completes. Once complete, Ooma would take over.
This is how it went for me:
1) I signed up for Ooma. This required selecting a phone number, which, since I was porting, would be temporary for me.
2) I purchased the option to port my existing number from my old carrier to Ooma.
3) Ooma sent the request to my old carrier to transfer the number to their control. The response for me was a little over a week and a half. Your mileage may vary.
4) Once porting was complete, when someone called my number, the call would come through the Ooma rather than my old carrier’s connection (which, in my case, was my cable modem’s phone port).
So basically, you start out with two numbers. Your temporary Ooma number, which you will probably never even use other than to verify that the hardware is working, and the number that you are going to port. Once the port is complete, the temporary number goes away and you can cancel your old service (or they may just cancel it for you once they relinquish control of the number… Comcast did, anyway).
Hi Nikki –
Just bought ooma telo and will be porting my current Comcast number. While I wait for the port to complete, do you know if can I forward calls from my current Comcast number to my new (temporary) ooma number? My Comcast account includes call forwarding as a feature, but I’m not sure if ooma numbers accept forwarding. Thanks much!
Just chatted with ooma and had my question answered… thanks!