Ooma Telo VOIP - Free Home Phone Service $145 at Daily Steals

I used ooma for a few months. The service was pretty good but be aware of a few things:

- The service is never free. Their lowest tiers still charge a few dollars a month to cover taxes.

- They will automagically put you in their premium service so remember to check your credit card statement.

- They also have an $60 "activation charge" on used equipment so there's a big disincentive to termination and resumption of service or to sell the adapter on Ebay.

I decided to bite the bullet and dump the Ooma service anyway because a $40 OBI110 device let's me use Goog voice as a voip service with rehgular phones and it is currently FREE of ALL monthly charges. I was still able to get a $100 for my Ooma adapter from some Ebaytard even though I clearly stated there was a $60 reactivation charge.

Still, if you're a Vonage customer and want a real home VOIP service that's cheaper, this ain't a bad deal, even if you go with Ooma premium. The Ooma service did work well while I had it and Goog voice drops calls more often and has no 911. I use Goog voice only as a 2nd/office phone.

I have had this for two years and have the premium service ($115) a year. This has been the best phone service that I have had. The best part is that it allows you to check your messages over the internet from your smart phone or computer, allows you to "blacklist" callers that you do not want calling your home (telemarketers, political calls) and it gives you a log of everyone that calls your house so you can tell immediately whether the contractor or comcast rep that "says" they called actually called. Finally, the customer service is outstanding. No dropped calls, no echo and ported my phone number free of charge.

I've had a Telo for 16 months and the service has been great.

However, my Telo died last week (the "1" and "2" lights only issue).

This is a good price, but I really recommend buying it at Costco instead. $180 there, but you can always take it back when it breaks and just get a new one. The forums seem to indicate that Telos usually break about a year and 1/2 in.

the cat knocked my Telo off to the floor. It popped apart but snapped right back together and is still working. Most of the time the calls are great. I don't even hook up my MagicJack anymore, just get the messages as wav files in Gmail, not bad for something that cost $12 a year.

My ooma just died a week ago. Good thing it was still under warranty.

@rkpoo: How you manage to pay $12/year? I assume you are referring to the tax. But I'm paying 3.49/month which is higher than Skype or magicjack.

@homelessz Sorry for confusion. Telo replaced magicjack. I got 5 yrs of MJ for $60, so now I only give out MJ number to use as a voicemail only system. It emails me the voice messages as wav files. I pay same as everyone else for Telo, use it for all my home calls.

I've had mine for 9 months. It's pretty much paid for itself 3 times over. A couple months ago it started to malfunction. Now it randomly starts playing messages over it's speaker. I'll probably try to get it replaced when I get around to it but as long as I can still make and recieve calls, check my messages online and manage it remotely I'm in no hurry.

I'm tempted, yet all of you seem to feel the unit dies or malfunctions within a year or year and a half. Not so great in my opinion.

Rahenry: Suggest you go to Amazon and look at the reviews there. A much larger review pool, and the last time I checked, they thought Ooma was pretty good.

I've used the previous version (Hub and Scout) in a two-line setup in our home for 20 months now; works great. We've saved $50 a month.

I like my service, as I am a cheap bastard, but the call quality is sometimes poor, and tech support is rather inconsistent. Still, $3.44 per month, verses the $88 I used to pay.... no brainer.

I've got the original hardware that pre-dates the Telo and it has been rock solid. Best of all I'm grandfathered in for completely free service.