MagicJack users any Pros & Cons

[MOXJO7282]

Because I work out of my home I have 2 phone lines into my house and thought to replace 1 with MagicJack. My one friend raves about his.

Any experiences with MagicJack from my TUG friends whose opinion I value so much?

 

[UWSurfer]

Many people have gone to Magic Jack here on Tug with good results, myself being one of them. I think their marking is a bit slick and their renewal system is setup a so that you are all but guaranteed to auto renew unless you are really quick.

That said, their service works like a champ and we use it as advertised at home just fine. Last year I was on the road and needed temporary phones for a setup we had in a couple different US cities with the local phone companies charging "event" pricing ($450 per phone plus usage) for a hardline for 1 week's usage.

We had already ordered internet service and was able to connect 4 MJ's to the router on site and the phones worked just fine on the road as well. I have been very pleased.

 

[chriskre]

I was one of the first users of their little box. In those days you had to keep your computer on to get phone service.

Now it's apparently much better. I personally don't have magic jack anymore but I have friends who do.

For the most part it works fine but every now and then the person on the other end hears muffled thru water kind of reception. When it starts I just tell her I'll call her later cause it's very difficult to have a conversation when you can't understand half of what is said.

I have U-verse Voip now and I think it works better. Of course that's not free. I also use the free magic jack app on my iphone and have used it to call home from Europe and the Caribbean on the free wifi places. That's a nice little app and it's free.

 

[theo]

A question...

<snip> I also use the free magic jack app on my iphone and have used it to call home from Europe and the Caribbean on the free wifi places. That's a nice little app and it's free.

Do you effectively circumvent "roaming" charges when you use this avenue to call inter-country?

 

[chriskre]

Do you effectively circumvent "roaming" charges when you use this avenue to call inter-country?

Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to use it locally without paying. I was in Spain in Barcelona and just used the hotels free wifi to connect.
I'm sure some techie could, but I have no idea how to do it.
It only works calling back to the USA for free.

Maybe if you register a number in the country that you are visiting you could do it.

I didn't use it with the cell service just with the free wifi. I had the cell service turned off as Sprint had warned me that the charges would be high if I forgot to turn it off. My brother has T-mobile and he gets free worldwide roaming so you might be able to use this if you have that T-mobile plan.

 

[Clemson Fan]

Do you effectively circumvent "roaming" charges when you use this avenue to call inter-country?

As long as you have WiFi, there are many VOIP services that allow you to call almost anywhere without roaming charges and the per minute charges are usually dirt cheap. I personally use the skype app whenever I'm out of country and it works great.

 

[ampaholic]

We have had MagicJack for our home phone for 2 years and barely notice it - which is a ringing endorsement since we don't want anything other than a phone from it.

Can't call for free to Alaska with it so we got Skype (one low monthly fee) for that.

One cool thing is you can get an add-on to do tricks like blocking certain numbers [magicfeatures] - I'm sure there are a lot of other tricks available if you want to research them.

It's much cheaper than vonage.

 

[Timeshare Von]

Because I work out of my home I have 2 phone lines into my house and thought to replace 1 with MagicJack. My one friend raves about his.

Any experiences with MagicJack from my TUG friends whose opinion I value so much?

We have had MJ for three years now and love it. Best part is using it when we are traveling, including out of the USA.

The only (minor) inconveniences that I've encountered:

1. Can't call Alaska (the must not have an agreement or something) . . . and

2. Can't call into conference call services from it.

For those times, I use a cell phone w/o any issue.

 

[Ironwood]

I have been considering switching to a VOIP solution for my home phone, and was looking at options at Best Buy yesterday. The options there were, Magic Jack Plus, Net Talk Duo and Ooma in that order of expense. I want to keep my own phone number and be able to call free or low LD within Cda/US. I read pros and cons for all on-line and I'm thoroughly confused which way to go. Ideally I'd like to keep my Bell land line at half the rate I'm paying now, but they won't cut a deal...I've tried, so I want to find a cheaper alternative. Next, I have to tackle my cable TV package to cut down that expense.

 

[AwayWeGo]

What's Wrong With MagicJack.

Any experiences with MagicJack from my TUG friends whose opinion I value so much?

The Chief Of Staff has issues with MagicJack.

She is peeved that there is an annual charge for the MagicJack phone number in addition to the annual (or multi-year) charge for MagicJack phone service.

She is irked even worse that MagicJack calls to numbers in & around Woodstock VA served by Shenandoah Telecommunications Company do not go through. Her irked level increased after complaining to Shentel, which did not do anything about it. Ditto after wasting time typing back & forth on-line with MagicJack representatives, who also did not do anything about it.

Other than those dissatisfactions, MagicJack is great.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[Timeshare Von]

The Chief Of Staff has issues with MagicJack.

She is peeved that there is an annual charge for the MagicJack phone number in addition to the annual (or multi-year) charge for MagicJack phone service.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

That's curious. I checked with my home IT guy (my hubby) . . . he said we aren't paying for the phone number, only the annual/multi-year fee to MJ.

Does VA have some special fee . . . or do you have a specially selected (vanity) phone number?

 

[MichaelColey]

I think there's only an annual charge for the number if you ported your old phone number (which we did with one line) or if you got a vanity line (which we did with another line). Still, that's only $10/year, so it's not something to complain about IMHO.

We paid $99 per MJP device for 5 years of service. That's less than what we used to pay for 4 months of landline service.

One thing I like about MJ is that we can have the same number ring in multiple locations (by using a MJP in each location and assigning the same phone number to both of them). One of our business lines rings at our storefront AND at our home. When we go out of town, we take our home MJP with us (along with a small cordless phone) and we're able to make and receive calls on our business line anywhere we go. Very handy.

 

[Timeshare Von]

We paid $99 per MJP device for 5 years of service. That's less than what we used to pay for 4 months of landline service.

Bingo! That's how we felt about it too.

 

[UWSurfer]

I somewhat over complicated things by porting our home number over to Google Voice & have GV pointing to the Magic Jack number at the house.

GV lets us point to as many numbers as we like so in theory we can have it point to our cell phones, work phones or if we have a DID number whereever we're staying we could have it ring in there..simultaneously if we like. GV is a free service.

It was a little tricky at the time as GV only ported from cellphones, so I had to first port the number to a throw away SIM card temporarily setup for service and then go from it to GV. We also like GV because it will txt or e-mail us the voicemail msg it records and provide a text translation of the message in addition to the file we can listen to anywhere.

About the time I came up with this I noted it here on Tug: http://tugbbs.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1142289&postcount=51

I'll add since then we purchased a separate MJ+ and simply pointed the GV number to it and occasionally use the original MJ when we travel with a computer.

Overall it's worked well for us for a dirt cheap price.

 

[AwayWeGo]

Specially Selected Is As Specially Selected Does.

Does VA have some special fee . . . or do you have a specially selected (vanity) phone number?

Was a plain vanilla telephone number in the same Area Code zone as our regular land-line home number, although we chose the number off MagicJack's menu when we went through the set-up routine. Maybe that counts as a specially selected number, I don't know.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[x3 skier]

I use Skype when overseas. Works great.

Never tried MJ.

Cheers

 

[bobpark56]

Satisfied (generally)

We have Magicjack and have found it useful...especially when traveling outside of the US or calling to others located outside the US..though we don't use it a lot. 2 cents a minute for calls outside the US is nice.

Our only annoyance has been with Magicjack's (unannounced) practice of sweeping deposits made for international calling after 6 months of international non-use. We have lost about $25 to them here.

 

[dioxide45]

I have been considering switching to a VOIP solution for my home phone, and was looking at options at Best Buy yesterday. The options there were, Magic Jack Plus, Net Talk Duo and Ooma in that order of expense. I want to keep my own phone number and be able to call free or low LD within Cda/US. I read pros and cons for all on-line and I'm thoroughly confused which way to go. Ideally I'd like to keep my Bell land line at half the rate I'm paying now, but they won't cut a deal...I've tried, so I want to find a cheaper alternative. Next, I have to tackle my cable TV package to cut down that expense.

We have Ooma, have also been paying for Ooma Premier since we signed up over three years ago. We may drop that though. We pay $13 and change each month, though $10 of that is for Premier. We would just pay the taxes if we didn't have Premier. It isn't cheap to buy the equipment, but if you watch out for some deals, you can usually get a good price. Buying at Costco comes with six months of Premier I have heard.

Ooma is fairly new to Canada and if you carry Premier, you get calling to the USA free too. You should be able to port your Bell telephone number over to Ooma, but not sure how that works in Canada.

 

[janej]

We've been using OBi100 VoIP Telephone Adapter and Voice Service Bridge. There is no monthly charge and the cost about $40 initially. You can find it on Amazon. It uses our google voice number. There might be some changes coming next year when Google voice changes their service. I have not really looked into it in details, but you might want to do that before you purchase.

 

[Ironwood]

We have Ooma, have also been paying for Ooma Premier since we signed up over three years ago. We may drop that though. We pay $13 and change each month, though $10 of that is for Premier. We would just pay the taxes if we didn't have Premier. It isn't cheap to buy the equipment, but if you watch out for some deals, you can usually get a good price. Buying at Costco comes with six months of Premier I have heard.

Ooma is fairly new to Canada and if you carry Premier, you get calling to the USA free too. You should be able to port your Bell telephone number over to Ooma, but not sure how that works in Canada.

Thanks dioxide45. I'm seriously considering Ooma. Costco and Best Buy in Canada have Ooma Premier package with Bluetooth adapter at $149. I've seen it around for $125. LD would be free in Canada, and low cost to continental US. They charge $40 to port your no. which is steep and I read blogs of all sorts of issues porting nos and out of area code temporary nos. It appears there is no simple, clean solution. I'm tech savy enough to get these conversions up and running but I am increasingly annoyed with installations that don't unfold as advertised. I don't want to make a mistake...so I'm still looking.

 

[PStreet1]

We bought Magic Jack in the U.S. (with a U.S. phone number) to take to our home in Mexico. All our calls in Mexico are, therefore, U.S. calls--no charge. At $99.00 for 5 years, it was a no-brainer for us. Now, we transport it back to the U.S. when we travel, so that number always works for us. I'm wondering why it is that we have a domestic land line now.

 

[MOXJO7282]

I set up the magic jack very easily and it worked right away and so far the connection is great. If all goes well we'll be saving about 11/month. I ported my old number so it appears seemless to me. Seems to be a no-brainer.

 

[dioxide45]

Thanks dioxide45. I'm seriously considering Ooma. Costco and Best Buy in Canada have Ooma Premier package with Bluetooth adapter at $149. I've seen it around for $125. LD would be free in Canada, and low cost to continental US. They charge $40 to port your no. which is steep and I read blogs of all sorts of issues porting nos and out of area code temporary nos. It appears there is no simple, clean solution. I'm tech savy enough to get these conversions up and running but I am increasingly annoyed with installations that don't unfold as advertised. I don't want to make a mistake...so I'm still looking.

For us, the installation seemed to go pretty well. We also ported our number. I don't know if they offer this same deal in Canada, but you can get your porting for free if you purchase a year of Premier service. There may be additional challenges in Canada with porting. Ours was pretty easy porting from AT&T.

We are glad that we went with Ooma. Though we have one issue, when we are talking with someone else that has VOIP service that is not Ooma, there is a half second or so delay in the conversation. This means that we are often talking over each other. With more and more people (and companies) going to VIOP, it is rather annoying. I don't know if this is an issue that all VOIP services have or if it is just Ooma. We don't have the problem if talking to someone that is on a old fashioned land line. The problem is more noticable when both people are trying to use speakerphone.

 

[Dori]

We purchased Magic Jack for our winter home in Florida, and it works great! We paid to have our old Century Link ported over and had no disruption in service.

ironwood, call Bell and threaten to go over to Rogers for your home phone. We had our bill reduced by around 30%. Then call Rogers and threaten to defect to Bell Vibe (Fibe?). Ask for Customer Retention Department. They are usually able to hook you up with some promotion they are running.

Dori

 

[Chrisky]

Ironwood, I noticed on the costco.ca site this morning that Ooma is selling for $99.00 with shipping included.