I’m very happy with my Vonage account and consequently wouldn’t trade it for the world. I have had a couple of what I consider to be minor problems, easily remedied:

• caller i.d. time resetting, which I covered here;
• a constant busy signal, mentioned here.
• sometimes, I will get a “#” appearing in the phone display. When I check for a dial tone, I get a beeping. To cure this, I unplug the phone’s power supply and plug it back in. Problem solved. I have absolutely no idea why this happens in the first place.

ZDNET’s Rick Fairlie has come up with several additional troubleshooting tips for one’s Vonage phone. Read about them in his column here.

Updated below

I had a Vonage dial tone, but every time I tried to dial out, the dial tone would continue on through the number-pad entries, and the dialed number would sound busy. The dial tone continued sounding in the background. I was unable to connect to any dialed number.

I rebooted my modems and the Vonage modem, but still the dial out problem persisted.

As a last resort, I unplugged the power supply from my telephone, and then plugged it back in. That solved the problem in it’s entirety. I’m not sure why that solution worked. Possibly the problem had something to do with the phone’s circuitry when I turned off the power via the fuse box in order to install a ceiling fan.

All in all, I’m happy with my Vonage account. It’s much cheaper than a regular land-line telephone account and includes all the features in Vonage’s basic fee that would be cost-plus with other providers. Vonage is also much cheaper than those solutions sold by cable television and internet providers.

The only other issue I’ve encountered is the caller id time-set problem, which I covered here.

Update: I’ve had this dial tone problem occur one more time. Rather than reboot everything, I merely unplugged the phone’s power supply from the wall socket power outlet, plugged it back into the power outlet, and everything was good to go one more time. Why is it happening? I don’t know, but I consider it to be a minor annoyance.

Update June 25, 2009: I picked up a new Vonage V-Portal to replace my old D-Link VTA adapter. Upon installation of the V-Portal, I discovered that the modem’s internal time zone was set to Alaska time. I called Vonage customer support and had them reprogram the V-Portal to the Mountain time zone and I was good to go.

The Vonage customer support numbers can be found on Vonage’s home page, at the bottom. Click on the “Contact Us” link.

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I was having the usual trouble with my caller I.D. time being reset every time I received a call. I searched the internet for the obvious cures, but none worked. Why do people who have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about profess to have solutions to problems?

Here’s why some Vonage customers have that time resetting problem with Caller I.D.: each Vonage telephone modem comes pre-set with a default time zone.

Here’s the solution: call Vonage customer support and ask them to reset their modem to your time zone, and voila! Problem solved.

Don’t bother trying the internet solutions that you find should you search online for answers to the problem. None of them work.