CRAZ8

We are moving soon, and need to be fairly mobile during the move time, we decided to switch our phone to VoIP and picked Vonage as our provider.

We transferred our existing home number to the account. This should have taken 20 days, but actually took about 10, so I had to dig out the Vonage box from our new condo and bring it back home on Wednesday to make sure we had phone service on Thursday.

At about lunch time, Verizon switched us off. Sometime in the evening, Vonage switched us on. Sucks to be out of touch for most of the day, especially when you’re expecting calls. Verizon customer service was less than useful during this time – “you’re not our customer anymore, goodbye”.

Our new service seems to be running Ok. The phone line is a lot louder now, so the volume on the phones have all needed to be turned down.

Our Verizon service was $48/month with taxes. We have the $15 service with 500 minutes and a $5 virtual phone number too, so our total monthly bill is $23.64 – less than half.

911 service is an interesting problem. If you move your device for any length of time, it’s a good idea to change your 911 address to something useful in the case of an emergency.

So far, Vonage is a big thumbs up from us.

For the remodel of our new condo, we’ve looked at a lot of plumbing fixtures. These things are crazy expensive. And there are too many choices.

Here’s an example: The pieces to make our master shower work – temperature control, shower head, valve, hand held piece, volume control for hand held and head – about $1500 total (plus installation!)

I can live with $3 gas!