I bought my Ooma in 2012 on Woot after a disagreement with my cable company about the cost of my internet phone line. My cell does not work in my home so I need a landline. It was easy to set up, the line is clear, my monthly payment is only fees/taxes and costs a little over $4/month, and it connects my address to a 911 call. It was a refurbished item and continues to function perfectly. Also, I was able to pay extra and have my phone number grabbed. Love my Ooma - one of my favorite purchases.
Me luvs ooma too! The free service (while paying my local monthly taxes, about $4 a month) is killer. It is incredibly reliable and I can only recall one outage in the last two plus years.
If you are on the fence, get off and get one!
My wife really loves the fact that you can still use 911 unlike some other services. Add a battery backup to your router and the ooma and it will rarely go down, unless a drunk hits your neighborhood power pole. But then nothing else will work either.
Just got one of these two weeks ago, refurbished, through the mothership. I love it. I had a Skype account prior with a FreeTalk as a bridge between my router and a home phone system and had to reset the thing regularly. So far so good on this, and the voice quality is much better.
I signed up for a year of premium and ported my old Skype number over. They quoted me 3-4 weeks to port; I think it took about three days.
The only issue I’ve had was that the original number they gave me (prior to porting my old Skype number) was already owned by someone. Even at 9pm I was able to work with their support folk over chat and had the issue resolved in about ten minutes.
Another huge thumbs up for Ooma here as well. I bought mine on closeout from the Mothership just over a year ago and it works great for me. I will admit that purchase and porting my number cost me about what it would have cost me for almost four months of regular service from the phone company but I have saved hundreds of dollars sense. My old bill was almost $60 now it’s about $4.25 and you really can’t tell the difference.
Something others have not mentioned is the Ooma app for your phone that allows you to make calls from your smartphone as if you were calling from your home phone. This can be handy if you are someplace where you have WiFi but no signal or Internet but no voice signal. If you upgrade your Ooma service you will be able to receive calls made to your home phone on your smartphone as well.
The upgraded Ooma service allows you to do a lot of cool things besides receiving calls while you are out and about. They have a really cool blocking feature that gives you access to a huge database of known numbers of telemarketers and collection agents, as well as a list of scammers that other Ooma users have reported, finally you can also block anyone that you just don’t want calling you. Sometimes it’s worth the extra cash for this type of service.
This is from my Ooma Dashboard
$491
Saving since November 2014
Have two identical Ooma setups, two identical cable modems and service level (>15mbps) and was getting a loss of voice on one. The setups are at two separate residences. I had to put the one Ooma between the wifi router and the cable modem to get it to work. Otherwise, after initial equipment costs, I am now saving over $30 a month off of the old landline and DSL setup we just had. Service through Ooma chat is great and very responsive.
By now, I’m not sure why “everyone” doesn’t have one of these. Just looked at my dashboard. I originally paid the full retail price for mine of about $150, but got traded a $50/month phone bill for a $4 one. My ooma dashboard says I’ve saved $3051 since Dec 2010.
I know the stock market has done pretty well in the past 5.5 years, but I bet not too many normal people have turned $150 into $3K over that time. For me, this has been a great product. YMMV of course.
If I lived in an area where my cell phone worked, I would not have bought my Ooma. Even at only $4.24 that I pay, I would stop my service if my cell phone worked at home. But I am out in rural Ohio where no cell phone providers have service and I was tired of paying $30+ a month for phone service. The Ooma is great. Great call quality and I’ve never had an issue with it not working on my refurb unit I bought here.
You can get a brand new Obihai OBi110 from Amazon for about the same price and get Google voice for free, just no 911.
What a bargain price. I paid double for a refurb little over 3 yrs ago. Works well as long as my internet connection is clean. Cost $4 month tax.
I’m considering this one very seriously, however my issue has been an unreliable WIFI connection. In the evenings, when everyone else gets home and gets online, my WIFI tends to lock up with “website not found”, etc. Will Ooooma work with this kind of problem, or do I need to wait until I change ISP before I connect Ooma?
[QUOTE=bebop, post:11, topic:556077]
I’m considering this one very seriously, however my issue has been an unreliable WIFI connection. In the evenings, when everyone else gets home and gets online, my WIFI tends to lock up with “website not found”, etc. Will Ooooma work with this kind of problem, or do I need to wait until I change ISP before I connect Ooma?
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This will depend on whether the problem is actually your WiFi, or your entire bandwidth from your internet service provider. The Ooma connects via a wire to either a modem, or router, so wireless (in terms of the base station) is not part of the picture.
The Ooma does require a certain level of bandwidth to function properly (probably 2-3MB down, not sure on up), so if the problem is more in terms of your overall internet connection speed and not just WiFi, then that would be something that might either also need to be straightened out with your ISP, or this device may not be the best option for you (if that ISP is the only one in town).
Bought my Ooma from Woot quite awhile ago now (2011?). Also refurbished. Still running great.
Ooma suggests that it is placed between your modem and router so that it gets priority bandwidth (it then sends any remaining bandwidth to the router to be split amongst devices). I personally prefer to handle my own QoS needs, but if you’re having call quality issues and aren’t super tech-savvy, this is a simpler potential fix.
Ooma’s base station can be plugged in to a home’s existing phone line connection so that standard phones can continue to be used (once the land-line connection is cut off from the home). Alternatively you’d need to have a single phone’s base station w/wireless satellite phones throughout the house, or buy Ooma’s own wireless phones. The solutions for that range from least expensive to most expensive. I currently am using two Ooma wireless phones. Realistically the Ooma phones only provide their monetary return when you pay for premium service, of which I don’t. But I still enjoy the $4 monthly bill. 
good timing, I was just looking into getting an Ooma.
I believe there are 2 models or versions of the Ooma device. Is this the latest version? (is it a HW or SW difference)
We’re at two years now; the Ooma dashboard shows $811 in savings. The big feature for me? The blacklist, and I do NOT mean the one with James Spader. AT&T charged us to block numbers, and then limited it to 15, which really didn’t put a dent in our multiple daily spam calls. Ooma, on the other hand, has a community blacklist (so you never even get the calls) as well as a personal blacklist (250 entries) and it now supports NoMoRobo. And it’s dirt cheap, even with the Premium option - $9.99/month. And the voice quality is great.
Check out the web site for a full list of features. It really is as good as we all say it is.
[QUOTE=lanameyer, post:2, topic:556077]
My cell does not work in my home so I need a landline.
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This is my story too. Ooma has been great.
But now… Verizon gave me a free “micro tower” which connects my cell through my internet service. So I’m scratching my head wondering why I still have my Ooma service.
Maybe it’s because I have 4 cordless phones laying around the house, and my cell is on “airplane mode” when I’m home, so I can preserve battery life (yes, I’m really lazy about recharging).
So there it is.
Get Ooma if you’re lazy like me.
[QUOTE=jimmythewoot, post:14, topic:556077]
The big feature for me? The blacklist
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That service is NOT free. For free blacklisting get a Google Voice or RingTo or other similar service. And forward those to your Ooma.
I’ve had Magic jack since 2009 (had 2 lines but let the first one expire after 6 years (it was a burner number). Using plus now. Also using PCPHoneSoft during campaigning times to cut out unwanted calls and other calls during phonespam months (spring for example). And it allows lots of other off the radar changes. I had picked magic jack back in the day because at the time, it was pretty much the ONLY voip service that could handle faxes. Both in and outbound. just my 2cents.
As far as blacklisting, you can add numbers, prefixes (example, you can block all calls from 844*, 888*). You can block a specific number, call forwarding is easier to get at, etc…
I know you can make calls to Canada but will this work from a Canadian residence or does it only work when based in the US?
[QUOTE=bblhed, post:5, topic:556077]
I will admit that purchase and porting my number cost me about what it would have cost me for almost four months of regular service from the phone company but I have saved hundreds of dollars sense. My old bill was almost $60 now it’s about $4.25 and you really can’t tell the difference.
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Are you saying that it cost nearly $240 to port your old number over to Ooma?
Not sure where you got that out of what was written… but porting is free if you subscribe to their premium service or inexpensive if you don’t.
Yeah, I’d like to know if this is the earlier model too. Surprised that the model # isn’t listed in the specs…