Thursday, June 23, 2011

Ooma: Still a good deal, just no longer a great deal

Seems Ooma has decided to increase their fees. These are supposedly all taxes and fees that are being charged to them, but I'd note that their primary competitors in the VoIP arena do not charge them. Ooma now charges $30-$50/year in taxes and fees, but the service charge for MagicJack (which is lousy, but still a competitor) is $19.95/year, and netTALK is $29.95/year, both including any taxes and/or fees.

Now, one could argue that Ooma's equipment and service are both better than either of those (and this is definitely the case for MagicJack), and that the cost is still well less than most competitors (such as Vonage at $19.99/month), but I wonder why Ooma has to charge these junk fees when closer competitors don't.

For those unfamiliar, Ooma promises free phone service for life, after the purchase of the equipment. But some time back, they added the asterisk: Taxes and fees are required. These started at, if I remember correctly, somewhat under $12 a year.

Fortunately, some older users (such as myself) got grandfathered in with no annual taxes/fees - for now anyway, but some that were $12/year, who had been considered grandfathered at that rate, just got news that their costs are going up.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the post. I am also grandfathered too. However, I'll think twice to recommend Ooma to new people. OBIhai has a new and flexible telephone adapter. Currently works great with Google Voice (free in 2011) but it can also work with most VOIP providers.

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  2. Let's help it a better deal by getting Google Voice on there, replacing the Google voice mail. Here's some hope we can "leave no Ooma behind":

    http://clothsoup.blogspot.com/2011/11/leave-no-ooma-behind-google-voice-mail.html

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