Comments on: How To Get [Basically] FREE Home Phone Service!

By: J. Money

J. Money — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 14:36:01 +0000

In reply to Dale. Creative! Thanks Dale :)

By: Dale

Dale — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 02:01:42 +0000

Hey J$ and family penny pinchers!
An option for around the house ‘phone’ is getting an android phone without cell service. Then use the TextNow app which does voip over your home wifi, or any good public wifi. It is pretty simple and easy, and totally free (minus the phone). Don’t buy the Sprint network based cell service though, unless you live in the one place covered by that network, or unless you want to buy a new cheap phone (as little as $10 for the phone, and $13 for one month of cell service), then cancel the cell service but keep the phone and use it just on wifi.
At home we use callcentric voip, it’s been near 10 years on that. It’s about $10 a month total including the calls we typically make. I should maybe cancel it, but it’s got our original home number ported to it, and it does voice mails to email, so it’s good for being mobile. It was about $30 to port the original home number to it. It does do the e911 service. . Oh, I bought a voip adapter, Grandstream Handytone, that was $30 or so. Before that I had a hacked voip router for $40?
Sh!t, so I’ve spent about $10*12*10 = $1200 on home phone service in the past 10 years. We’ll have to have a home meeting about this…..
At home, to avoid family fears about power outages, I keep a UPS running the cable modem and the voip box. It lasts at least 6 hours, and if the power is out that long then the cable service is usually down by then too anyway.

Dale

By: J. Money

J. Money — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 14:00:30 +0000

In reply to earlwallace. Yeah, def. a con when losing electricity. At least it's usually far and few between? I always figured I could go in my car and charge up my cell phone in those cases, but you never know...

By: earlwallace

earlwallace — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 19:09:21 +0000

Great article! I have been using ooma for over a year on a low bandwidth Uverse line and it is nice. The ooma box adjusts voice quality with bandwidth availability making consistently good voice quality. I do want to advise DO NOT give up a landline if you have one. Our cell towers and internet went down during a bad storm and the power was off for days. The landline has its own power source which came in handy for possible 911 calls and pure convenience. I have 2 voip services along with cell phones and the landline.-earlwallace

By: J. Money

J. Money — Mon, 28 Mar 2016 15:50:25 +0000

In reply to Rose. That's why is said it was "basically" free :)

By: Rose

Rose — Sun, 27 Mar 2016 15:16:08 +0000

In reply to Chris. yes you can use the computer when using the phone service which is another bill service we all have to use Ooma phone service, although 4.00 and a lil over is not too bad considering at&t phone service is way too much, which we don't have to have the internet.. and that's good too..

By: Rose

Rose — Sun, 27 Mar 2016 15:09:24 +0000

THat is not true that ooma is totally free..I have ooma and they charge me a fee every month..and so free means free as in paying nothing once we buy their equipment, we stll have to pay them everyone. So don’t off like we don’t pay after we buy their boxes cause we do have to pay Ooma each and every month and Ooma is always going up on our bill..Mostly every month Ooma charges a different higher amount from our account. OK yes, Ooma is not totally free..that is so false advertising..

By: J. Money

J. Money — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 17:26:53 +0000

In reply to "Mad" Max Speedwell. Haha, rock on... Just saw an email come from you that I'll check out in a few, but I love that your brain is always on and looking for those savings! You can always try to restore an old RV or something too to live in instead of hotels maybe?

By: "Mad" Max Speedwell

"Mad" Max Speedwell — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:47:50 +0000

Well… I did it… I hacked Ooma… maybe. Went to Search Tempest and took a 3,500 mile trip around Craig’s List. Didn’t have to search all 3,500 miles. I found a few Ooma boxes at low prices ($50, like new!”). Assuming a used Ooma box would be “provider approved”, it would be possible to pay for Ooma in less than two months ($27 x 2 = $54). Of course the Ooma hardware does use a few pennies of electricity each month…. Did also find Google voice, plus phones for $100. A service the seller stated he preferred to Ooma.

Not the next step, but a future step… hacking my hotel bill. Long story short… my wife & I spend about thirty or more days each year in hotels. We would prefer to save that horrible expense. One day I was moving rigid foam insulation board and at the same time happened to recall a magazine article from about 1958 (ok, I’m not a “Spring chicken”). A light bulb moment! Should cut our hotel bill by 60%! I have most everything in place to implement the savings, now I just need to dedicate a few hours (150 plus hours) to realize the savings. Somehow I need to get that “hotel hack” up & going. Despite the high cost, it would break-even at about four months! Woo-hoo!!

-“Mad” Max Speedwell

By: J. Money

J. Money — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 15:10:18 +0000

In reply to SL.

Hah – good point actually. This has happened once so far with us, and you’re right – the phone stopped working. Fortunately the cells were charged and the outage only lasted a handful of hours around bed time, but if it was a long one it would be more troublesome.