A few days ago, I had the opportunity to be provided information and a demo of the new Vonage Proâ„ . I was impressed with what the new service has to offer those of us who work from a home office. So much so, I wanted to provide some information which the staff at Vonage were good enough to provide to me. And just so you know, I am not receiving any money, prizes or free items from Vonage for doing this post.
Vonage Pro features five components that specifically accommodate the lifestyle of “prosumers,” or professional consumers who are comfortage with and understand the benefits of using technology to improve their personal and professional lives.
With Vonage Pro, You are Home…Away from Home
The offering includes a next generation Vonage SoftPhone client, Vonage Companion**, that allows the residential or home office user to access their home number from any desktop or laptop PC connected to a high speed Internet connection, enabling them to communicate as if they are at home.
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Incoming calls ring both the customer’s home phone and their Companion, and customers can make outgoing calls on both devices simultaneously — essentially providing a second phone line.
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Vonage Companion also offers customer requested features such as selective call block, conference calling, personalized ringtones and call recording.
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Customers can use their PC’s built-in microphone and speakers or plug in a headset with microphone to make and receive calls.
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Vonage Companion automatically synchronizes with Vonage Contact Centerâ„¢
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Home office users will never miss an important call when away on vacation or on a business trip.
For more information and a description of all the services and cost, you need to visit Vonage.
Categories: Telecommuters, VoIP
2 Comments
With all due respect, I used Vonage for a number of years. I got concerned when they loss those massive lawsuits when reading that they were not replacing customers as fast as they were losing them. Also, the way I wanted to do business evolved away from their service (which is not their fault). I was increasing concerned with their service and the issue of porting the number. First, for untold reasons my settings continued to change for no apparent reasons. For example, the voice message on my auto attendant would just disappear or be replaced with one that I recorded a year or two earlier. Also, the hunt sequences I set up would just change even though I had not accessed the system. The calls to my main number set up years earlier would just automatically be directed to my second line. Strange. Vonage’s call center neither knew what was happening, or for that matter cared. That made me want to leave and leave quickly. But, what was upsetting was after I decided to leave there was just holly hell to pay to get Vonage to release my phone number to another provider. I went through three different providers over 8 months. I dropped the first two because they said the delay was that Vonage would not port. I did not believe them at first, and so terminated the first two. The third told me up front that it typically takes them 2 months to port the number from Vonage as they are uncooperative. In fact, it took almost two months for them to accomplish this task in regard to the 3rd provider I retained. The answer ultimately is do not port your number to Vonage, but then just directing your number can be problematic and more expensive in that you have to maintain multiple providers.
(By the way. In my research, do not port your number to OneBox. OneBox, as they informed me, does not port numbers. They will buy your known office number from your carrier and OneBox owns it from then on out. If you later want to leave OneBox they will not agree to necessarily let you have the number in that it is considered their number. They may or may not let you buy the number, at their discretion, but even if they do the price is in the hundreds of dollars.)
Chuck — Thank you for your comment and as always I appreciate all views on the post we have. Whether they be good or bad. I especially want our readers who have had bad experiences with products we might mention here on HOW to certainly voice their experiences. We all need to be better informed consumers and only by exchanging information can we be.