Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Ooma Telo VoIP Free Internet Home Phone Service. Affordable landline replacement. Unlimited nationwide calling. Call on the go with free mobile app. Low international rates. Can block robocalls, black

Top positive review

Ooma First Impressions

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2016

My main reason in moving from POTS (Plain Old (Landline) Telephone System) to Ooma (VoIP) is to BLOCK those annoying nuisance calls. With this in mind I intended from the start to get the Premier service over the Basic. I knew right up front what I was doing. This whole topic was made very clear to me by the Ooma website. As to the website, it was very helpful in explaining how I could integrate Ooma into my situation and to explain what I needed to get it started. This took hours, not minutes, because this was all so new to me. But, after I had spent the time, all the necessary information was right there on the website. When the product arrived all the time spent beforehand was well worth it. It made installation and set up go quite smoothly.

I've only had Ooma a few days and it is not yet totally integrated into what will be my former landline system. I am in the process of having my landline number ported. In the meantime I purchase the HD2 handset so I could begin to use Ooma and to use as my personal phone when my present cordless phones are connected.

Activation went very smoothly with one hiccup. The instructions that came with the Telo were very easy to follow. The hiccup came as I went thru the online activation process. It would not accept my credit card (part of the activation process). I tried several times with different cards. I ended the process thinking that acivation was not successful. I called Ooma Support and they were very patient and helpful. It turned out that activation was succesful, but the credit card was not showing. They stayed with me while I repeated the activation process on another browser. This did not work. They then told me how to log into my account online and insert the credit card information. Everything was a success and I was very happy with Customer Service.

I later went thru the online process to Port my landline phone number. When completed, I wasn't sure that I had done this right. I used the online Chat service and they confirmed that they did not get this order which was all I wanted to know. I thought I knew what I did wrong and repeated the process online. This time it was successful and I got immediate confirmation. Ooma tells you that it could take 3-4 weeks for the number to be ported. It is already scheduled to be done in a week.

I decided to use Linx to connect my present cordless phone system to Ooma. Setting up Linx was very easy and went according to the enclosed intructions. I haven't connected my cordless phones yet. I'm waiting till my landline phone number is ported.

I purchased the HD2 handset to use to get used to Ooma while awaiting the number port. I also want it as a private phone for my own use. I don't exactly like the feel of the buttons, but it seems fine. I did have a problem where the batteries went dead after a few days. I called Customer Service. They thought the problem was with the batteries that came with the unit. They quickly offered to send a whole new handset (for free exchange), but I opted to just buy a new set of name brand AA rechargable batteries for $10. This was the problem. Again, good Customer Service._______NOTE: Since I wrote this I found that the new batteries also weren't charging. I accidently solved this by unplugging the charging cradle from the PLUG end (it didn't help to unplug from the cradle end).

So basically I am totally pleased. Everything is working fine. Setup was very easy. The phone sound quality is fine. The whole process of going from POTS to Ooma has been painless. Customer Service was great. My one bit of advise is to put in the time studying what needs to be done to get the system up and working before you open any boxes. Depending on your understanding it could take hours. The website has everything you'll need to know. That time spent is well worth it.

ADDED NOTE: The porting process went very smoothly. It took 6 days. I then set up my home phone system using both Ooma HD2 handsets and my original cordless system that is probably 15+ years old. I used Linx to hook up my non-Ooma cordless phones. I've actually liked the way with which the Ooma phones work in my setup that I've added more of these than I had originally intended. I also used Linx to attach a Medical Alert system. This was all so easy to do and worked out extremely well.

I ended up with a few very minor things that I couldn't figure out. In these cases Ooma Support by phone and chat resolved these very quickly.

Now I'm just waiting for the silence of blocked nusance calls. In summary, starting with deciding on which VoIP to go with right thru to getting everything set up, I am very impressed with Ooma. As a bonus I got a great customer service rep at my original landline carrier and she made sure my other internet services, minus the phone, stayed in tact and that the full cost of what I was paying for the phone was removed. IMPORTANT: If I hadn't contacted my original landline provider's customer service I would only have saved $5 off the cost of the bundled phone. The customer service agent advised me to move internet and tv to a different bundle and I thus saved $30. She also set it up as an extension of the original contract so that I wouldn't have to pay a termination fee on the original bundled services.

Update: Have had Ooma for about 2 weeks now and NO MORE NUISANCE CALLS, which was my main reason for making this change.

43 people found this helpful

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

Gadget Guy

Works great once it is configured - BUT THEN OOMA BRICKED IT!

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2014

My original, 4-star review appears below. I am changing it to 1-star because:

1. Ooma apparently pushes updates to your Telo, and there is NO WAY to know when they are doing that. The updates are scheduled randomly (according to the L2 Tech Benna I spoke with on July 27, 2018 at 4:37pm). And they can take HOURS! I would expect Ooma to not take me offline at a random time (just as people were rightfully upset that Microsoft Updates sometimes took their computer down while they were sitting there working on it, but at least they knew it was rebooting).

2. If taking your phones offline for hours was not bad enough, the update BRICKED my Telo. By bricked I mean no calls come in, no calls go out. According to the L2 Tech (Berlin,? Not sure I heard her name correctly) and then her supervisor, Glen (I spent about 30 minutes with them on the phone just now), I have to wait until Monday before their Engineers will even look at this problem, with no working phone system until they figure things out!! Sure, I could use the Ooma iOS app (and I am), but if that was the solution I desired, I'd just use Google Voice and forward calls to my mobile. That is NOT why I am paying Ooma $15 per month (with the majority of that prepaid on an annual basis for the premier plan). Ooma's reps keep telling me the Telo isn't bricked, it's just rebooting.... endlessly. In this sense, I still view it as bricked (it is unusable for its intended purpose, and no amount of rebooting fixes it).

3. The coup de gras: Not only will Ooma do NOTHING until their Engineering team figures this out, even if I buy another Telo and have it delivered today, they WILL NOT transfer my phone number over. Why? Because that could change the bug and they want to solve it. Commendable in some way, but that puts me in an INDEFINITE HOLD waiting for my phone to work until they can debug things.

I offered to give them my old Telo for debugging on their premises (send me a shipping box, with prepaid return label), but still the answer is no.

When you brick someone's system with an update (ESPECIALLY one they have no control over installing), I would hope that the company would do right by their customer and not only facilitate my request, but credit my account for the cost of the new Telo (since their actions bricked it). What would you think if Google or Apple pushed an update to your phone that installed without your ok (or even WITH your ok on a supported device) and it simply rebooted endlessly? My guess is you'd be pretty pissed... I know I am.

Ooma's approach is just not acceptable. They have my money. They bricked my Telo. They will do nothing more until their engineers come in on Monday (system has been down since Friday afternoon), and even then they said they need to wait for the engineers to solve it. I might want a working system sooner, but they will not take any action that might get me there . To think I was considering Ooma's request at one point to be a Brand Ambassador... I'll become an Ambassador now, but will be talking about their terrible service instead!

* UPDATE *
With no help from Ooma, I started fiddling with settings. When I turned off the DECT radio, things worked again... for a little while (1 -2 weeks). Then it died again. I got Ooma Tech Support back on the phone and they sent me to another L2 tech. After examining my configuration, he asked me to change the INTERNET CONNECTION TYPE from Auto to DHCP. Things have been working fine since then. Wow, at least I found one L2 tech who could help me!

=========== Original Review ========================

The out-of-the-box setup experience could use improvement, but once configured, this works like a champ!

OotB: I followed all of the quick setup instructions. There were two issues:

(1) MAC Address as printed on the bottom of the unit was WRONG (off by 1 in the last couplet). How do I know this? I checked the MAC address in my DHCP tables. I created QoS rules to give Ooma the highest priority on my network, and had to change that rule to match the actual MAC address. This is not a huge problem, but there is really no excuse for printing the wrong MAC address on the label.

(2) After connecting everything and then plugging in the power, the Ooma box flashed red for a few minutes. Then switched to flashing alternately red & purple. These two conditions are not covered in the Quick Setup info. I used Chat to talk to an Ooma support person who told me that was fine. Again, there is no excuse for not documenting this,

After I got past #2, the Ooma Telo has been rock solid (past week). I will update this review if that changes.

A request to Ooma: PLEASE provide an online User's Manual in PDF format that we can download. You did that for the old Ooma Hub; why not for the new Telo???

47 people found this helpful

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From the United States

TrueGreen

Ooma First Impressions

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2016

Color: BlackPattern Name: Phone ServiceVerified Purchase

43 people found this helpful

Helpful

Cycling Through Life

Bye bye AT&T!

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2016

Color: BlackPattern Name: Phone ServiceVerified Purchase

After years of regular land line service, we finally made the switch when we had enough of AT&T intermittent service in our area, while charging us $60 per month, half of which are taxes and regulatory fees.

I looked at various services - those through Comcast (our ISP), as well as services from Vonage and Magic Jack. At the end of the day, I selected Ooma based on the reviews listed here. Working for a networking company, I am familiar with the effect of the network on the quality of the home telephone service and connected experience. Many of the readers here seem to run into issues with wireless connectivity. In our case, we didn't have the issue. Before I go into the review, let me just say in general, when you are experiencing issues with your VOIP service, your video streaming, your music streaming - most of the time it is not the service, but your network and how it might be configured.

Our home network setup is a little unique from most of the reviewers here. The instructions assumed that most people have an integrated wireless/router. Our home network consists of a wired router (no wireless), a separate 24 port managed switch with PoE, and 3separate wireless access points, several intelligent power distribution units (basically intelligent power strips). In our case, we connected our Ooma via Ethernet cable instead of a wireless connection. Working for a high end networking company in the smart home/pro AV industry, I always tell our resellers that if they could, a wired connection is preferable to a wireless connection. In addition, we connected our Ooma hardline to the switch, instead of the router (you could connect to either, but in our case we wanted to put it on its own separate VLAN).

Because we connected it hardline instead of wireless, we didn't run into many of the network issues people seem to have. When people have issues, it is typically due to poor wireless signal coverage within the house, wireless interference, improper wireless router placement.

For those people that have a managed switch in their homes like we do, we put the Ooma on its own separate subnetwork or VLAN (to segment different traffic types and keep them within their own subnetwork) and QoS (to prioritize network traffic, with telephony traffic with the highest priority). I setup the Ooma on VLAN2 , with the video/audio streaming on VLAN3. In order to use the Ooma apps to make calls within the house from my smartphone, I also enabled intervlan communication as the wireless portion of my network is on VLAN 1.

Setup was very easy. I activated the service, selected a phone number in my area code. Then connected in the Ooma to the network. In under 5 minutes, I was up and running... Granted, I know networking, and but even then, other than where to connect it to, I didn't draw upon my networking knowledge (my day job). So easy, my wife can do it.

It's been about 3 weeks now, and so far everything is solid. Voice quality is superb and crystal clear, like landline service. With the premier service activated for a free trial, I enabled the service to block telemarketers and robocalls. With that, I noticed the telemarketer call volume drop off significantly.... we still get a couple of robocalls daily (like the current IRS lawsuit scam going on in our area at the moment), but I put those on the call blacklist. One "downside" to VOIP service is that you cannot use it do fax transmissions. You may need to do faxing using internet based fax services like efax.

We also ported our landline number to Ooma, and it took 3 days.. much faster than I had anticipated. We waited the weekend, and told AT&T where to shove it (my wife finally had her revenge when she called to discontinue service).

That said, there are some things I wish Ooma would do

1. Enable the Ooma Telo be powered by PoE (in addition to AC powered). This way, it frees up an electrical outlet and allows you to place the phone in a spot without having to be near an outlet. In addition, it removes the need to have a uninterruptible power supply for the phone, and a separate one for the network devices (unlike the landline phones, which can still operate when house power goes out). Granted, this feature will only be useful to a very small subset of Ooma's customer base.

2. I wish the Ooma had a way to add calls to the personal blacklist from the mobile app. Many times I am at work, and with the call forwarded to my phone, I would like to add it to the personal blacklist from there instead of having to login through the web browser.

But all in all, this is a great product. The instructions were clear and straightforward. Activating the account, porting your phone number over, and just using it was easy and transparent.

16 people found this helpful

Helpful

Greywolf

Not a land line

Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2024

Color: Includes an Ooma HD3 HandsetPattern Name: Phone ServiceVerified Purchase

Works good. Sounds good. I think the big issue is the provider. Only issue I have is the connection dropping for no reason. Don’t think it’s the phone problem but the providers problem with the connection. I would recommend this phone regardless of the call dropping issue.

Helpful

E.Swope

Simple, inexpensive way to cut the cord

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2016

Color: BlackPattern Name: Phone ServiceVerified Purchase

We have had problems with our phone provider basically forever. Whenever it rained (and it rains here almost every day) our line would get fuzzy,or go out altogether. We'd had a package that included internet service, and when that went out and they told me it would be a month before they could fix it (but we had to keep paying) we replaced our internet, at which point they jacked our basic land line fee to $200/month, without notifying us. We received a bill for almost $500 the next month. Hawaii is it's own planet. the phone co. and electric co. have seats on our PUC.

Not long after we received that bill Amazon had the Ooma on lightening deal, and I bought it to check out. We'd wanted the land line for duplication of service, . Nothing here is reliable . We tried the Ooma with our landline for a month, and satisfied that we are getting a good signal and that it worked despite all the wireless equipment in our home, we ported our number over.

My experience has been ~ 99% positive.
Calls are clear; as clear as on our landline or actually better most of the time.
The range is the same as on our old system. We are, in fact using our old system. (We had DECTIII phones)
I have only had a call dropped once in several months

*The* only downside is lack of emergency service, which I discovered when we had smoke coming from the attic, and it is a potentially big downside, so make sure you have cell or something which will provide that, or upgrade service.

I am very glad to not be receiving $200 phone bills any more!
We paid $30 to port our number, but it would have cost us $30 to request a local number (Hawaii is quirky in many ways). This charge does not apply to anyone else, and would have been waived if we upgraded to premium.... which we may do, now that we know the service is reliable and otherwise satisfactory.

Setup was fast and not terribly difficult.
I purchased the linx at the same time. It was not really necessary. (and I wish that I had instead bought the bluetooth, which would have been more useful).
Yes, we could have gotten voip from our cable internet provider, but the $10/ month fee would have increased quite a bit after the first year. I do not have to worry about it with the Ooma.

I would recommend this to those looking to cut the cord, so to speak ;) It is a reliable, simple, inexpensive solution.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Gadget Guy

Works great once it is configured - BUT THEN OOMA BRICKED IT!

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2014

Color: BlackPattern Name: Phone ServiceVerified Purchase

47 people found this helpful

Helpful

A. N. Other

Top Quality VOIP phone service, no fees (except Uncle Sam)

Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2023

Color: BlackPattern Name: Phone ServiceVerified Purchase

Note that my units were purchased direct from Ooma. They make a great system, the model based largely on revenues from purchase - which means they'll never be as profitable as ones that charge $40/mo forever, but they've managed to stay in business, so far. I've bought three. At the time top rated VOIP, yet only monthly charge for base service is taxes (!) amounting to under $6/mo in my state. For bells and whistles beyond voice mail, add $10/mo. Needs internet of about 2 MB or so. The original handsets remain solid too. A tip for those hard-of-hearing: Speaker phone output is from the earpiece, so if you can teach them to use the speakerphone button, they may manage without requiring bluetooth/hearing aide solutions,

Can't comment on tech support, never needed it except for advice. No degradation of function in 6-10 years of use, depending on unit.

I haven't looked at the current market, but my impression is that unless you're willing to depend on a continuous connection to an active computer for your phone service through a "magic jack" for free service, that this is the best AND cheapest VOIP out there. They also have business solutions too, which I haven't used; I suspect more appropriate for small businesses than large corporations but not my area of expertise.

Depends on functioning internet AND a power source. A dedicated VOIP can help for the latter, and this thing can't draw much current, so a sizable UPS unit for the Ooma Telo plus the internet router should keep it in juice for quite awhile. But it's not a true power failure phone, and also won't work if the physical or satellite internet feed goes down.

My legacy land-line provider, Centurylilnk just refused to repair our copper phone lines we'd used for power failure service for a family member who absolutely needs the ability to call 911 (better yet, after disconnecting all equipment, the Centurylink equipment was placing repeated 911 calls and we've needed to ask 911 to ignore them while porting the phone, then the guy Centurylink they scheduled to fix THAT no-showed). Where land-line providers pull the plug (ours were probably installed by Alexander Graham Bell), your best power failure option is probably cell service - or a satellite phone or emergency satellite beacon (which can be had for under $200, or iPhone 14 Pro, which has that capability) and a solar charger.

10 people found this helpful

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Cryptapocalypse

Working so far...and expect it to pay for itself soon

Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2014

Color: BlackPattern Name: Phone ServiceVerified Purchase

After I decided to buy my own cable modem (without telephony) instead of renting one from Comcast, I lost the ability to use VOIP with Comcast, so had to find an alternative. Following the recommendation of a family member, I bought this unit and set it up. So far it has worked very well. The instructions are quite good. It seemed to have a bit of trouble getting an IP address from my router initially, but within 10 minutes after I cycled the unit, the logo turned solid blue on the top and the phone worked fine. I am opting for basic ooma service, so I had to pay $40 to port my landline number from Comcast, but it was worth it to me versus keeping the free number I selected through the ooma website. The website indicates that the transfer will take 3-4 weeks, which is lengthy for something that should be simple by now, but maybe that estimate is way on the cautious side- time will tell.
Some considerations:
-If you want transfer your phone number, don't disconnect your phone service with the current provider until after the transfer occurs. If you cancel phone service with your current provider, you will not be able to transfer your number- it's out of your control and back in the number pool of your current provider.
-ooma won't work with an Ackerman security system, so keep in mind you might have to go with a cell phone-based upgrade to your security system. It's much safer anyway, but it does decrease the monthly savings when switching to ooma. The cell service option will cost $10/month more, but I am still money ahead.
Cost comparison:
+$10.00 for cell phone upgrade to security system
+$ 3.85 for monthly ooma taxes and fees
-$ 7.00, no more monthly comcast modem rental charges
-$ 32.00, no more Comcast phone service
Net savings is about $25 per month; I spent $160 on the ooma and $150 on Netgear modem plus $40 on the port ($350), so I will break even in about 14 months. That's OK with me, and worth it to break away from having to use a substandard Comcast modem while getting an upgrade to our security system at the same time.
Update- as soon as the phone number ported to Ooma, Comcast automatically raised my monthly subscription rate to internet and cable to $200, so I had to call them and go through the process of getting the monthly rate down. Comcast subscribers- be prepared.
AUGUST 25 2014 update- No problems with the phone except when I continually lost my internet connection. Off topic, but we just switched to ATT Uverse service and at least in my locale the internet stability has been much better (no drops whatsoever in more than a week). The final straw was when I was charged $60 for a Comcast service visit when the tech could not find anything wrong with the signal strength, so he informed me he had to indicate that my equipment was to blame. I didn't understand that meant a $60 charge. I know other people have the exact opposite experience, but if you are dissatisfied with your current Comcast service, it's worth a look at ATT Uverse.
OCTOBER 2014 update. Ooma box has worked flawlessly, but discovered that the company automatically signs you up for a higher tier of features that you get free for a month, but then your credit card begins to be charged at a higher rate. Just be aware that you will have to call and stop higher tier service if you don't want those features.
MAY 2015: I haven't had any problems with the unit except very rare internet connection drops. BTW, it took me 6 months to get the $90 Comcast owed me back from them- after three calls and hours on the phone, plus a FAX to their "Consumer Service VP" or whatever their title is, I finally got the check. I have to say that Comcast's very poor customer service reputation is well deserved in my personal experience.

1,119 people found this helpful

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C. A. Freeman

Junk

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2014

Color: BlackPattern Name: Phone ServiceVerified Purchase

As I have said in other reviews I get very few calls on my landline (most go to my cell phone). That makes it hard to test this unit but so far so good. The unit was a breeze to hook up and get online. That's where the fun ended. I immediately signed up for the premier service to get free number porting. I had two numbers temporarily assigned to me while the porting process was going through. One number I had for my main landline and the other was for my fax machine (which I still haven't got the function). When the number was ported I had to call tech support and have them separate the two numbers for the fax & the landline. The Telo only supports four wireless peripherals so I had to use an ethernet cable to connect the fax machine. I had to make several more calls to tech support (very frustrating as their tech support is outsourced, in all probability to India). There were also several other stumbling blocks which required more calls to tech support. Some of them were handled with the chat feature and some were done by landline. Generally it was a quick process and I think I now have the unit where it should be. I'll work on the fax later but for now the Telo is doing what I bought it to do, make and receive phone calls. It does that job quite well, call quality is comparable to or better than my landline plus all the other additional features with the premier service makes it a really handy device. I can receive my cell phone calls on the Telo handsets, I can set it to notify me via email or SMS of any voicemails. It has a robust call filtering system based on the Ooma community or you can set it to block certain numbers which can also be uploaded to the community database. Pretty slick. There are many more features with this unit that are explained on their website or here on Amazon. If you're going to cut your landline and go with VOIP this is the way to go. Cost wise it's a no-brainer.

Update 12-20-14
I have had my ooma long enough to say it's a complete failure. I put off buying into the VoIP hype for quite a while. I heard too many horror stories about services like VONNAGE and others to make me gun shy. What prompted me to give ooma a shot was all the cutting-edge features. After reading all the positive reviews I decided to make the plunge. I bought the Telo, wireless and Bluetooth dongle, and four handsets. A real gamble I must say for the amount of money I spent. I immediately signed on with the premier service to get the free number porting for my landline. I also wired my fax machine into the Telo and using distinctive ring and a second number I was back in business....... wrong. I do have to say when this thing works, which is hit and miss, it's fantastic. And that is the main problem, it is very undependable. So far today I've had to reboot the system twice because it lost the connection. Yesterday I had to do it three times. Other bugaboos: the phone will ring and all it will show on caller ID is searching for base. When I go to call log it will show that the call actually came from itself, weird, how does my own phone call itself? Other times I will get an outside call and the handsets will do the same thing..... Searching for base. Other times I will get the "no VPN" or "no management". As far as tech support, if you don't speak the Indian language have a lot of Excedrin handy. I have made numerous calls to tech support to no avail. Basically it's a low grade way to get rid of the customer. What they're saying is "if you force us to support our product were going to do it as cheaply as possible, after all we already have your money".
It makes no difference what the problem is they read off a list garbage on their support screen that applies to every problem you could possibly have. Tell them the fax feature doesn't work and their reply is reboot. Tell them there's a meteorite bearing down on your house and they'll also tell you to reboot. Generally rebooting is what I do when this starts to have problems. Tell that to tech support and it flies right over there head.

In all honesty I have tried my best to like this product. It has all the features I like, it's economical, and it's cool. But it fails to the point these features are meaningless. With my century link phone I at least knew that it was going to function, with the ooma it's a crap shoot. Fortunately I get a lot more calls on the cell phone so when the ooma fails in that regard I've always got my phone nearby. As far as the nonfunctional fax system goes I have signed up with a web-based service for my faxing.

If not for all the money and hassle I invested in this system I would throw it in the garbage. Many times while getting jerked around by tech support I have came very close to calling century link and getting my landline back.

At some point in time ooma may correct all these problems, but until then I would avoid this system and stay with something you can depend on.

Update 12-28-14
I have now downgraded my rating to 1 star & labeled this mess as "junk"
It works for outgoing calls, but only hit & miss for incoming. Phones rings & it says on screen either "enter phone number" or "Press button to join conversation", or sometimes "searching for base". Either way you've missed a call. The cell phone transfer feature is equally as flaky. Tech support is useless.
I tried my best to like this system, lots of neat features, but is just too buggy for something you rely on. I will probably just port my number back to a landline & ditch this piece of junk.

Update 3-16-15
I have now official downgraded this mess to -0, even though Amazons stars only go down to 1. Missed the last 2 calls because I couldn't get to my extension phones fast enough. every phone rang (even the fax, which BTW doesn't work either) but when I picked up the handset, closest to the telo, all it said onscreen was "please enter number". This is odd because usually it says "searching for base". This is the handset closest to the OOMA, about 6". Fortunately 90% of my call come to my cell & 10% to my landine of which 10% are junk. The part that irritates me is what I paid for this train wreck & the time spent trying to make it work.

Update 2-10-16

It seems to be functioning a little better since my last review. Its hard to tell as the vast majority of my call are cellular based. The next step will be to port my OOMA number to my cell phone. There are some really good features that OOMA has I just wish it was more dependable. My recommendation is only go with OOMA if you have a backup system like a cell phone.

update 5-7-17

After almost a year and a half I decided to upgrade the ooma system to three stars. That means "it's okay". Since the last time I reviewed this system I've had very little problems with it. Of course I still get very few calls on it so it's hard to be objective. It does seem to be staying connected a lot better than it used to. The other day I was cleaning my desk and accidentally bumped it, bad move. The thing went off-line and I had to spend the next 20 minutes trying to get it back online. Unplugging and re-plugging both the Bluetooth adapter and the power cord. Finally it came back online and has stayed online since then. As I previously mentioned the ooma system has some very excellent features. My main complaints have related more to the hardware side of things than the actual service. If the hardware wasn't so flaky I would give this system a five star review. Maybe I just got a bum unit. In all honesty though other reviewers had nothing but praises, so it's a mixed bag if you're looking to upgrade your Telo system.

80 people found this helpful

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LFoD-NH

Unreliable

Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2018

Color: BlackPattern Name: Phone ServiceVerified Purchase

Great concept and just fine when it works, but you can't count on it working when you need it. Having spent about 5 months with this now, I seriously doubt their SQA knows what the hell they're doing and judging by some of the things I'm seeing, I doubt they review their code before moving it into production. Note that the following reflects the features one gets with the premium service (phone and home security), not the free service. The premium service is quite reasonably priced, IMHO.

The Phone:

It is kind of a neat concept that combines an Internet phone service with a home security hub. On the phone side, we have numerous issues. For example, one time there was some kind of routing problem so we couldn't call my in-laws in Florida. That took days for Ooma to solve. We bought 4 of their handsets too, but that's not strictly required as you can connect other phones to the phone jack on the back--even wire it into the house wiring. Unfortunately, some of the handsets would get hung up in a weird state that required me to pull out the battery and restart the handset. It'll also. Occasionally we can't make calls. Occasionally we can't receive calls. Some times only one side can hear. Some handsets don't display caller ID. Recently the hub has been out of service briefly because they're performing updates...not that big a deal if that will fix things. Sometimes you need to simply unplug the hub and plug it back in to restart it. Not good.

It's that you get a second phone number with Ooma and when you use their handsets you can have two simultaneous calls going. This has turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing, because we get a lot of calls for the previous owner of the number, which we constantly have to block. It would be nice if we could do a blanket block for incoming calls on just that number, so we could simply use it as another number for outgoing calls, or if in addition to blanket whitelisting or blacklisting, we could do it differently for different numbers. So, we could allow all incoming except explicit blacklists on our normal number and blacklist everything except what's in our phonebook for the other one.

Other things I like: (1) I like cloud-based voicemail and being able to get home voicemail notifications and listen to them while away. (2) I like being able to make calls using my phone while away. It's convenient if your phone doesn't have WiFi calling. But, it's not always reliable, just like everything else.

The handsets are not all that functional and the user interface obviously wasn't well planned, making it less obviously navigable than our old Panasonic handsets. It would be nice if the interface were better designed and had the functionality one can get on with the website, including managing blocked numbers and things like that. Another annoying thing is that the handset keys don't repeat when navigating menus, so scrolling is a pain. When it works, thankfully most of the time, the call quality is good.

Home Security:

The handsets, as well as the sensors use DECT-ULE. DECT-ULE is not as common for home security sensors as Zigbee or Zwave, but it seems to work very well. It's pretty long range and it is a pure star topology, not a mesh network. This is a an unmonitored system, that is no one is professionally monitoring your home security. Instead you use your phone to get alerts and it has a nice integration with the phone system so that you can press a key if you set it up to get a phone call on an event to call 911 WITH YOUR HOME NUMBER that is on-file, so 911 knows where your home is. You can get alerts via a phone call, push notification, SMS (and inside the house announcements). From any of these it's easy to call 911. The system, through your app has multiple modes like "Home", "Night", "Away", and "Vacation". You can turn it all off and you can establish custom modes too. Each mode can have different notification for different sensors. Another nice feature is geofencing to your phones. So, if all your family's phones leaves your home it uses Geolocation to automatically change to "Away" mode and then sets it back when you arrive.

Reliability is the same issue as we have with the phone--sometimes its just not functional. Recently we were on a week long trip away from home and all of the following happened: (1) The home hub rebooted because of maintenance. (2) The garage door sensor lost connection with the hub. (3) A water sensor detected "tampering" (4) Most annoyingly, the hub claimed to have lost connection to the Internet, even thought the Internet is functioning and we have battery backup and a whole house automatic generator. Here's some advice, Ooma:

(1) Don't do any freakin' maintenance on the hub when I'm away or on vacation. It's too risky and leaves the system unprotected in the interim.

(2) The garage door sensors are 3rd party V-Tech sensors, but sold by Ooma. They seem to have the most problems maintaining connection and that's annoying, but they usually reconnect...eventually.

(3) This is a common problem. There's a little button on the back of these sensors so that when they're removed the button goes out and you get a "tamper" alert. Unfortunately, if you're unwilling or unable to screw these in the adhesive is simply not strong enough for some applications where there's humidity or heat.

(4) Yeah, that's unreliable hub. If I was home, I'd simply unplug the hub and restart it. But, I'm not so I can't. Since it's lost connection with the Internet how is Ooma to do this remotely. Reliability is critical to this application folks! I can't help think that the software update remote maintenance might have been responsible for this.

We've had other issues too. For example, on another trip I wasn't getting reliable notifications. How do I know? We have someone come by daily to look after the cats. Support isn't as bad as I was lead to believe, but it's damned tedious. Notifications are not reliably immediate or delivered in-order. Laughably the times on the notifications don't take into account local daylight savings time, yeah really. Pairing new sensors is odd and seems to hang. You got to get out of the app and back into it to get confirmation. UI on the home security app seems nice, but it's actually annoying because it uses a "slide" metaphor to slide between modes, but then it requires one to slide through other modes...Let's see, "I want to go to a special mode. Which way do I slide? Oh, this way? No, that way? Damn, it's now in vacation mode. Damn it!"

Summary:

This has a lot of promise and "Free" is a great deal, or would be if it was perfectly reliable or your home phones are not that important to you or, if you're using home security you have a small home or apartment. Even the premium service is reasonably priced. There's a lot of promise here and a decent amount of functionality. But, it's got issues:

(1) Reliability is poor and it fails in weird ways at bad times. That's not something you want in your home phone or security system.

(2) Use cases and user interfaces not that well thought through.

(3) Adhesive for sensors is insufficiently strong.

They could use more features and more sensors. Not sure why they don't also have Zigbee integrated into this for home automation purposes. But, PLEASE, just make it rock solid reliable. I can live without new features. Reliability should be Ooma's #1 priority.

I've got a lot invested in this system: the Hub, 4 Ooma handsets, and 14 sensors. Judging by the number of hub updates recently, it looks like they're working on the software and I'm hopeful that it'll get more reliable. I was thinking about getting the ButterflyEye cameras, but no way am I putting more money into this until I'm confident that they've straightened out the reliability issues. I just don't have confidence in the their software development processes. I'll give them another year and if it hasn't improved significantly by then I'll be looking for both a different phone service and home security system.

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Electronicbuff

Ooma: Great for Voice communications but not totally ready for Faxes or Alarm Systems

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2016

Color: BlackPattern Name: Phone ServiceVerified Purchase

The Ooma phone service got better after a few adjustments but still wasn't able to hit the mark for me.

I wanted to use it to replace my VOIP line service that I'm getting from Wide Open West (WOW) cable service. My cable provider recently decided to raise their prices again, this time by about $15 a month. Before making a switch though and porting my phone number I wanted to make sure I had a viable replacement. With my current cable service from WOW my fax machine and alarm system function perfectly 100% of the time. I decided to order the Ooma and put it through some tests while retaining my working service for a six month time period. This would allow a good over-time comparison.

PHONE LINE CONNECTION:
I powered up all of my phone jacks in my home and they work perfectly. I'm not a fan of one or 2 cordless phones that have to be found. We have a phone in every room of the house including one out in the garage.
To Make Your Current Phone Wiring Inside The House Work With Ooma:
1) Disconnect your home lines from the Bell System line going to the telephone pole.
- This is usually as simple as opening up the box outside your home and unplugging the phone connection
- If there is no plug outside in the phone box simply follow the phone wires from the pole into your home and disconnect the incoming line from the rest of the phone connections for inside the house.
2) Plug the phone line into the Ooma box and then plug the other end of it into a wall phone jack. This will power up all of your phones.
3) If you have older phones with the bells, I suggest you silence all but 1 or 2 of the phones so you don't pull too much power and make the Ooma base unit struggle.

TALK QUALITY:
- The talk quality for my end was perfect. People receiving sometimes commented that they heard static on the line during pauses between receiving words and transmitting them. This was hit or miss but overall I found it acceptable.

FAX MACHINE ISSUES:
My fax machine is only 3 years old and while it works perfect with Bell Telephone land lines in addition to W.O.W. VOIP and Xfinity VOIP cable services, I couldn't get great reliability with Ooma VOIP. With the Brother rep we went through fax options and even tried setting the fax machine at lowest transmission speed (VOIP setting). While this helped greatly with sending faxes (Ooma detects fax transmissions), I was able to get the failure rate down to 20% receiving a fax was more problematic. Another problem I noted, even when a fax was received, was some of the lines of fax text received where thinner (blurred) compared to others. This was consistent on Ooma on all received faxes from multiple services (H.P. faxback 1-888-473-2963, Canon faxback 1-855-392-2666, and Brother 1-877-276-8437) failures. The failure rate was not acceptable to me.
- The reason for the failure is due to the way that Ooma compacts the packets of data and later restores the data packets. Since the transmission is compressed and restored incorrectly faxes often fail. This compression is done much better with WOW Cable and Xfinity. Bell copper landlines do not compressed thus there is no problem.
- Ooma and Brother techs were unable to fine a reliable solution to the problem. Brother simply suggested holding off on Ooma until they were more reliable.

ALARM SYSTEM ISSUES:
Another problem I had with Ooma was with alarm system transmissions. I have a fire/burg alarm at my premises that is monitored 24 hours a day. I have a lineman's headset so I was able to monitor the communications sent by the alarm panel and sent from the alarm company. The alarm dialed the central station without incident and when the central station answered the alarm sent its tones. The problem was that the central station detected the tones (was suppose to be sent in Contact-ID format) but couldn't determine what they were basically saying (once again because of the way Ooma compresses the data packets and later decompresses it). The central station would try multiple times to understand the transmission and finally hang up forcing the alarm to call again and retry the transmission. Normally the transmission takes 2-3 seconds once the central station connects. The alarm tried to transmit a hold-up signal about 15 times and was never able to successfully do so.
Being able to program Honeywell panels I used the Compass Downloader software and reporgrammed the alarm to attemp to talk to the central station using a different language, instead of contact-id, and at a slower pace. Still no luck with even one successful transmission.
- I worked with Ooma on this problem too and they acknowledge it and said they are still trying to work on a way to transmit contact-id signals as this is the most popular alarm transmission format. When they get it working I asked them to give me a call.

OVERALL:
BASE UNIT CONNECTIONS:
- Connection for wall adapter
- Connection for phone line (only 1 phone number can be connected to base. If you want a 2nd phone number for a line 2, available with Premium Service, you will need either to purchase the Linx unit or the Wireless handset from Ooma)
- Connection for network (suggest you plug it into router as a priority device as the throughput is limited if you plug in your router behind it)

PROS:
- Way cheaper than traditional phone service or cable VOIP service
- Fast and friendly customer service
- Worked pretty decent for phone (speaking) services
- Web interface allowed me to see incoming calls, outgoing calls, and time therein
- Web interface allows you to change the dial tone sound
- Web interface allows you to adjust voice mail answering ring count high so you can still use a traditional on-site answering maching
- Premium service allows you to call forward your calls so no one knows if you're in or out
- Unlimited US calls
- Voice mail can be set to send you a text or email (with message playable in email)
- Premium service allows you to block typical phone solicitors
- Premium service allows you to have 2 phone numbers
- Billing can be done monthly with credit card
- Can add a Linx unit and have it set up for the 2nd phone line or it can be on the same phone line as the base with Premium service

CONS:
- Some people complain that Ooma starts all users on Premium and then starts to charge for it after 30 days. Solution: downgrade it before your 30 day free trial is over to basic to avoid being charged an extra $10 for all the options
- Basic service while it has caller ID it will only show the phone number (Names being displayed are pulled from data base for Premium service only)
- Not reliable 100% for incoming FAX transmissions
- Not able to use with ALARM SYSTEMS that use phone lines and employ the most popular transmission format (Contact-ID transmissions won't work due to packet compression), Ooma has indicated that they are trying to find a fix for this problem currently.
- Some people receiving your call may experience static in between words in your conversation
- I wanted the 2 phone numbers. There is no way to get both phone numbers to work from the phone jack on the Ooma box. It would have been nice if they made it a 4-pin and used the standard 2-inner for line 1 and the 2 outside of these for line 2 like we did with bell equipment since the 80s.

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