ooma Core VoIP Phone System with No Monthly Phone Service Bills Review

This is a great product, as long as it works. I received the product last month, and had it running within 5 minutes. Everything worked great, and I thought Ooma was going to be a company everyone is familiar within 5 years from now. The call clarity was great, and my network speeds were barely affected. I began to tell everyone how well it worked.

About a week ago, the device just stopped picking up my connection off my cable modem. All I saw was the 4 top lights lit and the Ooma tab blinking red. I double-checked everything as anyone else would when trouble shooting a down device. I reset my cable modem, reset the Ooma box, and then reset the router... no luck. So I make sure my internet connection is working by removing Ooma and connecting my cable modem straight to my pc/router. Everything is up. I go into the setup.ooma.com page and see if the device is grabbing an address from my cable modem. It's not, so I put a static address on the Ooma box and attach it to my home router. I am able to ping everything else on my network, except the Ooma box. So the Ooma device is not grabbing a DHCP address and it is not working with a static address, and the connection is showing connected under the Modem port on the Ooma box physically and through the setup.ooma.com page. Everything else is fine on the box except that.

After going through this process, I setup everything back to how I had it initially, and I call up Ooma Tech Support. Wait about 5 or 10 minutes, and get a hold of Support. The wait was normal so I didn't mind. I tell the guy on the phone what is happening, and he immediately begins to rush me saying that a firewall on my router is blocking the Ooma box. I told him that's impossible because the Ooma box is connected directly to my modem, and not to my router. I told him the internet is up, and it isn't grabbing a DHCP address from my service provider, he asks if I restarted the modem and Ooma hub, and I told him I did. He says well if you did all that, then it's a firewall. I told him I did, and there is no firewall, and he tells me that's the only thing that can cause it to stop working. I asked him if there is a possibility the hub went bad, and he said no. I asked him again to make sure I heard this right, and he said "That's correct." I told him "So Ooma has developed the only infallible electronic device known to man?" He then tells me to restart the Ooma box and while I'm doing so the line disconnects.

I call back, and I get the same exact guy again. I pretend like I didn't know who I was talking to before and start the conversation again. He changes his tune this time. He actually begins to go through the trouble shooting steps as he should have the first time, and none of them are working because he is trying exactly what I was trying before. While he is on the phone, I guess he didn't know how to use his mute button for my line, because he was talking to another tech while he was talking to me. He was cursing and wondering why it wasn't working, and I kept recommending different things I can try while on the phone with him. Unexpectedly, the line disconnects again. Both times it showed up Call ended, and I have rarely ever been disconnected from my cell since I have been through tech support calls working with Cisco and HP for work.

I go on Amazon's website to make sure I can return the thing still since it looks like I am not getting anywhere the Ooma's perfect product that obviously has something wrong with it. Luckily Amazon makes it easy to return it, and I setup and ship the product out 20 minutes later. Glad I save all the boxes...

I work on a team that maintains a Fortune 200 company's network across multiple states. I trouble shoot network problems all day long, and I have a lot of patience. I never got mad, raised my voice, anything. They just couldn't support their product as they should have. There should be a standard operating procedure that tells a tech to setup a repair or replacement if all of their trouble shooting steps fails. I think that because the company does not generate a great amount of revenue after the initial sale that they definitely do not want to spend anymore on sending or replacing an item. Just my opinion and I'll make sure to put it out everywhere I can so all of you who do have the product, and can't return it, don't get the shaft either.


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