I've been using Vonage for a while, and though it is certainly less expensive than "the phone company" there are some issues they should address.

Email Option

One can have voicemail messages delivered in email. This is generally very useful, BUT

• often too quiet even with output at maximum
  
• no direct link to take action; needs
  
  
  • link to user's vonage voicemail page with brief login stop, not the whole home page
    
  • a way to mark the message as heard to stop the phone's indicator from blinking
    
  • a way to delete the message from the email - not "send to trash" but really delete, OR an option do choose one or the other disposition
  
  
• in short if email receipt is enabled it should not be necessary to go to the website to take further action
  

Company Website

One embarks on a real wild goose chase to get a customer service phone number. They interpose a series of useless "help" options and NEVER display a customer service number. I finally had to call the sales number and demand a transfer.

Navigation is illogical and changes as one moves around the company site(s), often with no return link even to the home page.

New windows open for no apparent reason.

Voicemail management is painful.

• "deleting" a message one has already heard on voicemail does not stop the phone indicator from blinking
  
• I learned from a painful tooth-pulling session with customer service that "delete" is really "move to trash" - that changes the message's storage pointers but does not mark it as heard/deleted
  
• if it said what it meant there would not be a problem.

Connecting Problem

There is a serious latency of up to two seconds when answering an incoming call. I have learned to pause one second before saying "Hello..., hello..., hello..." until the caller speaks.

Positive Features

Rock solid call forwarding and "find me follow me" features. I can forward to any phone including mobile and have virtual presence.

Live Service

"Halloo! This is Stephanie..." (subtext: I am in India, my real name is something else, and I've just finished a six week course in sounding like an American, with which I'm attempting to overcome twenty years of trying to sound British.)

All very nice people with great patience (no doubt everyone they talk to is already angry due to the reasons enumerated above), but they're so highly scripted that they cannot take much initiative, and one suspects they don't have a clue about US geography or telephony expectations.

VOIP in General

Voice over IP telephone suffers from a duplexing problem. Think of talking on a CB radio and having to say "over" to allow the other person to talk. Same thing with VOIP: When one user has the channel, the other does not. If one is talking with say, Hugo Chávez, or someone else who won't "just shut up" one cannot get a word in edgewise.

On balance...

I'm sticking with it. Compared to other five-year-olds I know, it's fairly mature. They do have a customer bulletin board; I wish that senior management were participating instead of apologists, but maybe they have other things to do.