MagicJack - Am I just lucky or is MJ trash?

[salemrosti]

I am not a technical person but I used the original MJ for two years in my basement and never had an ounce of trouble with it. My basement doesn't work well with cell phones and we dropped land lines years ago. I needed a way to make those rare faxes to folks that don't like email attachments and MJ worked with my ancient "cheap" fax machine.

Recently bought the MJ+ thinking we could drop Verizon Wireless' VOIP phone service. I'm a cheapskate - what can I say...

Anyway, the MJ+ worked out fine with the free temp number, it was about $45 investment I was prepared to lose it. My gosh this is so "Cheap".

Since my wife doesn't like change I tried the porting feature to grab the Verizon Wireless number and live with the extra MJ costs attached to that. Woo, now I've discovered the "help / untrained" staff on the chat line. Also, nothing is explained on any MJ site or the FAQs concerning the basic port process.

Well on my second try porting worked fine but I am waiting a few days to see if this works OK before calling Verizon Wireless to kill their Voip service. I'm using a Panasonic phone with two extension and its been performing OK for the last twenty four hours. We hardly get any calls so the only test calling in were from our cells to the MJ+, again OK thus far. We've made calls to our work numbers and left ourselves messages.

Bottom line is I am looking for an opinion (good and bad) that if the thing is working is it not a good idea to go ahead and call Verizon Wireless and drop their phone service today.

Most of the stuff in forums anywhere on any subject are the horror stories. Believe me we have had horror stories on the Verizon hub (my wife loved that thing). It took us over a year, multiple calls and a chunk of my life to be able to talk more that 15 minutes on the Hub without it cutting off (router issue discovered). Anyway, I know that a lot of folks are having problems with MJ and I empathize with every one I've read so again I ask you your opinion - it's cheap, it works for us and it serves the basic purpose we use it for - keep it or trash it.

My cheapness says keep it.

Thanks,

[KMNugent52]

Hi salemrosti,
Due to the inherent nature of internet help forums it's more likely that you're going to only hear about the problems people are having. It's a 'grain of salt' thing.
We've been MJ customers for 3 or 4 years now. We DO keep a cell phone for when we're away from home.
MJ does once in a while have a problem with receiving calls (the caller can't hear us). The resolution is to just call the person back.
Ours works off of a dedicated thin client with a powered hub. 1 wired cheap-o-supreme-o phone and 2 Uniden DECT 6 wireless phones.
My vote: definately 'Keep it'.
HTH -Kevin N.

[RobQ]

No landline for almost 3 years. Had original MJ then got the MJplus, for almost 3 months now connected to ASUS WL-330gE Wireless Router with no problem whatsoever...

[Matt9876]

I have good service from both my MJ/MJ+ devices, the MJ+ works as good as Vonage except for no voice mail indicator.

Me and the wife also have a cell phone as backup, no land line since 2006.

[shushwap]

Just picked up a magic jack plus the other day... I wanted it to fax with more then anything... Sent out a 11 page fax the first time I tried it... Seems good enough to make calls with... I will keep mine for now.. The price is right...

[salemrosti]

I didn't expect the great responses. Hopefully we can share tips in the future on any new features they might offer but if it stays as is and the price stays low enough I'd still be glad to keep using it.

Thanks for your time to respond,

[mjplus2000]

I vote keep it all day long. I've had only 2 minor issues. One issue was fixed in a matter of seconds and the other was fixed by the engineering group within a couple days. Too be honest I forget that I'm even using the magic jack. Works just as good as my landline did(knock on wood).

I also agree 100% with KMNugent52. Usually the people that are happy with any type of service don't post it on the internet.

[mjplus2000]

Well on my second try porting worked fine but I am waiting a few days to see if this works OK before calling Verizon Wireless to kill their Voip service.

I'm assuming that your verizon viop service was disconnected when the port went trough? Just curious if you mean that you'll port it back to verizon if you're unhappy with mj?

[cell14]

I would ( and will ) trash it. When I started with it back in 2008 it was a great deal simply because there was nothing comparable out there. There are other choices out there now.
But , off course, if you really happy with it and nothing else works better for you, just keep it.

[3digitiq]

Am I just lucky or is MJ trash?

This is a 2 part question.

Am I just lucky? Hard to tell. Is your health good? Are you upside-down on your mortgage? Does your wife nag? You be the judge.

Is MJ trash? No. Mine works perfectly, better than my landline did, for 1/12th the monthly cost. If yours doesn't and you can't figure out why, even with all the help available on the internet, send it back.

No brainer.

Hope this helps.