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Chris5277 · Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2023 10:41 am Post subject: Saying Goodbye To Bell

Saying goodbye to Bell

I took the plunge with Vonage a month ago and have no major complaints. Purchased my phone modem at Staples and was all set up and running in about one hour. I just plugged it into my existing router as I had one spare port left. Unfortunately, I live just outside the City of London and have a rural exchange number and was unable to keep it, so I now have a London phone number, which is convenient in some ways for some of my rural friends who could call London toll-free, but not me, who is just one township beside them. That's what I call the Bell Canada Wagon Wheel Affect. Anyway, after 4 days of testing, I called Bell and my service was gone in under 30 minutes.

I've had Roger's Highspeed for 5 years and it is very stable. The $20 a month Vonage package suits my lifestyle fine. I'm enjoying the new features I did not have with Bell, as I just didn't like getting nickeled and dimed to death. My 911 was activated in less than 48 hours, over a weekend! I had no problem with setting up features on my account web page, so if there is an interuption of service, the calls are driected to my cell phone and it's voice mail.
One of my concerns of course was power outages. I simplified this by installing a seperate pawer bar that only has on it my Highspeed modem, wireless router and my Vonage Phone Modem. When the power goes out, I simply plug it into my Canadian Tire Eliminator Power Pack and I should be good for many hours. Actually, I had to scramble to do this about one hour after I got Vonage Working as we had a 3 hour outage here. Luckily it was in the day and I could see, but I had my phone back in 5 minutes. ( Roger's has battery back up on their cable I found out a few years ago when talking to a technician out here working on the main box where it comes off the fibre cable)

There have been a few quirks though with Vonage, but they tell me they are trying to resolve them. One has to do with the 1-800, 877,888 numbers. If the toll free number is NOT set up to work in both Canada and the USA, you can't call it at this time. This can be a problem in some areas. I.E., my Expressvu Dish will no longer call home ok to let them know if I watched any PPV movies. Hydro, Union Gas worked ok, but the 1-888 number for the OPP did not. The good news is, when you do call a toll free number and you are on the $20 package, the time does not come off your clock. The second issue is with listings in phone directories. Right now it is like I have an unlisted number and I'm not paying for it. It is true, I have not had ONE telemarketing call in a month and I was getting 3-4 a week. When I left Bell, I was asked if I wanted my new number referred to if people called my old one. She said it was FREE for a month, so I said, OK, one month, gave her the new number, but they never did it. Oh ya! calling 310-BELL doesn't work either. LOL. Anyway, I don't know what if anything, Vonage will be doing to update my listing in various phone directories be they books or online directories like Canada 411, etc. For now I'm just telling everyone in my town, "NO, Bell Canada did not disconnect my phone because I forgot to pay the bill." You people in the city won't have this problem if you opt to keep your same number.

I convinced a friend of mine in near Calgary to switch and he did. We can now call each other with no time off our clock. Also, he will be able to take his modem to Arizona for the winter and hook it up to his DSL there and his friends and neighbours from Calgary can call toll free and vice-versa.

I was impressed with Vonage, still am! I can hear better and I'm telling my friends and I'm saving close to $500 a year. The overseas rates are great as well!

Cheers.

Gert · Newcomer Joined: 02 Aug 2023 Posts: 6 Location: Toronto

Ive been using Vonage for two lines (running off of one Motorolla Digital Terminal) and its been great Smile

One problem...Vonage has difficulty with regional based toll free numbers. These are toll free numbers for available for a particular province. Such as Ontario's Telehealth number. When a call cross from the Internet and drops to the nearest PSTN network node...or public telephone network...it could be outside of the region the toll free is set for. You will get an error recording saying the call cannot be made from your calling area.

Vonage customer service has been pretty decent at accepting emails of these numbers as they are discovered and fixing Smile

Gregster_m · Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2023 9:06 pm Post subject:

I look forward to the day when I can kiss Bell goodbye and never have to pay them another cent!
Bell Canada sucks - big time!
This day is rapidly approaching - the only problem is that then I will have to deal with the local cable company for high-speed and voip, and they are not much better.