Anyone use Vonage?

Those of you already in the UK - does anyone use Vonage? I have them here in the US and the UK rates look pretty good for my needs. Any comments? I was also wondering if anyone has taken their US Vonage phone adapter and used it in the UK?

Yes to all of the above.  We brought our US adapter with us and use it daily.  It's been really handy, and I think it removes that OMG INT'L LONG DISTANCE freak out that people have about calling, even though rates are so much lower than they used to be.

ETA:  we only use it for calling to/from the US.

 I had a terrible experience with them.
Apparently it is only "free" to call certain area codes in the UK, and I did not know this.
My mom had set the vonage up to be billed to and automatically debited from her bank account. I called my ex in Guildford all the time, thinking it was free..
 Two months later, my mom checked her account(shes not really on top of things financially), and vonage had taken out over 3000 dollars!
We were never able to get it back.
 Just be careful!

*This was years ago when they first came out, it could be different now.
 

Dangerface, thats awful!!  I'd have to imagine it's different now though.  I use Vonage (and have for a year) to call my boyfriend in Glasgow all the time.  I've never paid more than $40 for the month... unless I've dialed his cell phone.  Its free to UK and Ireland land lines.  Pricey to mobile lines.  I've set up a virtual number local to my boyfriend but I think he still gets charged, so anytime he calls, we just hang up and I call him back.  We never have connection issues either.  I've been quite happy with them!!

I posted this before, but I'm a very happy Vonage customer.  I didn't get it until after I moved to the UK, so I don't know about using the US adapter here.

For us, it's the cheapest option, and call quality is good.  I think our highest bill since we got it almost 2 years ago was around £20, and that was due to calling mobiles.  It's usually around £11 or £12/month.  I also love not having to worry about habing a BT phone line.  We recently moved, and the house we moved into had no phone line.  We got our internet through Virgin, so as soon as the internet was hooked up, we had our phone again, and didn't have to pay the £120 or so to have a phone line put in.  Having a US virtual number has been great too for friends to be able to call me.

The other thing I love about it is their customer service.  The few times we've had to call them about something, they've dealt with it right away and were great to deal with.  That's a huge bonus in my book since customer service can be so hit or miss these days.

I loved Vonage in the States.  It was also good here up to about 2 or 3 months after I moved (we had it for about a year before I moved here so that we could both call for free).

I don't know if our current problem is because of the setup here (my brother-in-law has it in his room) or if Vonage quality has gone downhill.  Both my sister and my parents in the States have had problems with it.  The problems my parents have could be blamed on technical inexperience.  My sisters' problems, not so much.

However, when I was still in the US, Vonage was great with fixing problems that came up.  Again, not sure if this is still the case.

Advice:

1)Read the contract.
2)Be on the lookout for auto-renewals.  If you are planning to quit the contract, make sure you know when you can.
3)Make sure that the people who are using it know how to set it up, reboot routers, check for problems, especially if you are not going to be around to help them out.
4)Make sure you know what's covered and what's not.  Mobile numbers, premium numbers, etc., all matter.  Also, not all plans cover all countries.
5)Make sure your internet connection is up for it.  I had a standard cable connection, and I guess there were some sort of filters slowing down my connection.  Time Warner had to come out and fix it (Adelphia originally set up the connection).
6)If you are replacing your landline and you use DSL, you will still need a phone line for the DSL.

I had a terrible experience with them.
Apparently it is only "free" to call certain area codes in the UK, and I did not know this.

Were you calling a mobile number, by any chance?

Remember that in the U.K. cellular works on the "caller pays" principle, whereby calling a mobile phone from a landline costs more than calling another landline.  The cellular user is not billed at all for incoming calls (or does not get time deducted from "inclusive minutes," as the case may be).

This spills over to incoming international calls, since BT or the other telco here charges higher terminating fees to the originating telco, so naturally the latter charges more to call U.K. mobile numbers. 

In general, inclusive packages for calling into the U.K. will include only regular landline geographic codes - those starting with 01 or 02 (i.e. numbers starting 011 44 1 or 011 44 2 as dialed from the U.S.).   Mobile & personal numbers (07), special rate numbers (08) and so on will often cost much more.

I don't know if our current problem is because of the setup here (my brother-in-law has it in his room) or if Vonage quality has gone downhill. 

The problem with all VoIP services over the public internet is that you are at the mercy of the network.  The internet was simply never designed for time-critical data such as live audio transmission, because it has no guaranteed maximum packet transit time. 

Your setup might work fine on one line, but not on another in the house next door which is getting service through a different ISP and which will be subject to different routings, different contention, etc.

Actually, it's more than likely the set up in this instance.  My brother-in-law has a free-range chinchilla in his room, and the chinchilla loves to chew on cables and cords.  

He claims he's replaced any frayed/chewed cables, but I think that the Vonage base is screwed up somehow.  

Skype works pretty much fine provided the internet is working fine.  There's never a time that the Vonage is working fine.  Vonage used to have a connection tester on their site for anyone who is interested in testing their connection.