Saving on Your Phone Bill

My latest venture to save money has been in the area of the phone bill! As I mentioned in an earlier post we switched to VOIP with Vonage almost 3 years ago. Why? Instead of paying a home phone bill of $40 for just a home phone, we decided we needed long distance coverage, and lots of it. We moved away from all our family and friends and didn't want to lose touch. Vonage has 2 plans, 1)$19.95/month all calling features, and 500 minutes long distance anywhere in Canada or the US 2)$39.95 for all calling features and unlimited long distance. After a year we decided to pay one year in advance and thus saved another $100. So, our bill is $32.95/month...not bad, until I heard about MAGICJACK A family member uses it and has been quite happy with it. We are already familiar with VOIP and it's challenges and feel for us it is a good trade, so I started researching. I found out you can order it online for $39.95 plus shipping and handling.

One year of free local and long distance calling to the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, along with all the other great magicJack features are included with your initial purchase.
As, I did more research I found that the issue people had sometimes was receiving it quickly. The 30 day money back guarantee starts as soon as your order is placed. Then, I found it was available at London Drugs for $49.95 and they will take it back in the first 2 weeks. So, I headed to LD to get one. I was surprised to find they had completely sold out. They already had a waiting list for their next shipment! The LD employee told me they have been carrying them for about a month and haven't had any returns. The next day I was able to get one.
Pros
1)VERY EASY to install...plug your phone cord into the MAGICJACK and then plug the MAGICJACK into a USB port on your computer
2)Cost for the year $49.95 plus tax plus $10 for a Canadian area code, this is about $5 a month for a phone line and unlimited long distance, as well as voicemail, caller ID,and call waiting.
3)You get to pick your number(from a list of available numbers)
4)Year 2 you just pay $19.95 for the whole year!!!!or you can sign up for 5 years and it's $69.95, $13.99/year $1.17/month
5)anywhere you can get high speed you have your phone!
6)your messages are online in your email
Cons
1)The area code for Canada is our area code, but not a local call for people in our area!
2)VOIP isn't perfect so there are sometimes issues
Solution for us. We don't want the people we live in the same area to have to pay long distance to call us, so we will change plans with Vonage, switching to $19.95/month($240/year seems like alot now!)We will keep the MAGICJACK and forward all our calls to our Vonage number to the new number. Total cost this year $300(saves us $100 this year).Total cost year 2 $260 or $22/month. For us this is a good savings and because we use so much long distance, well worth it.
Comparisons
Shaw
Telus(from their website)
Nothing I found at Telus or Shaw could compare long term. I will wait to use it for awhile before I would sign up for 5 years. They say it's a limited time offer...we'll see.
PC Magazine did a review on it, you can read the article here.