Back in May 2005, I took a what turns out to be a very risky chance on Voice over IP when I signed up with SunRocket. They offered a myriad of features for $199/yr (with unlimited US/Canada calling) plus free phones if you paid in advance. After "testing" it for a couple of weeks, I decided to have our main phone number ported over to SunRocket, abandoning our Ameritech land line.
SunRocket was actually my second test of VoIP for home - prior to them I had a Vonage number but was very unhappy that their outbound caller ID didn't/couldn't/wouldn't any time soon show my name. As someone that heavily relies on caller ID to help screen calls, I just wasn't comfortable with the response we'd get (answering machines all the time) if we dialed out from a Vonage line. So I packed up the Vonage analog telephone adapter (ATA), sent it back, and canceled the service.
My first clue about VoIP services should have been when I never got my $50 back from Vonage upon returning that adapter. Flush. But no... I got sucked in by the low price SunRocket was offering and got wowed by their web portal where you could control the features, block unwanted callers, customize inbound caller ID, and on and on. I figured, hey it's only $200, and we'd be saving a ton of money compared to when our Ameritech bill was running $70+ each month for pretty barebones service.
There were lots of bumps in the road with SunRocket early on that first year. Lots of service outages that were pretty annoying, some periods of horrible echo on the line, etc. But things appeared to be settling down somewhat into May 2006 when I renewed for another year. Our cell phones worked as a fine backup for outgoing, and I had our families pretty well trained that when SunRocket was down, just use the cellphone. (A lesson that some family members have had a hard time unlearning -- they just use the cell now even though it's usually not nearby when were home). It was a trade off- for cheap service I was willing to put up with some bumps in the road. Of course, it'd have been better without those bumps, but I knew going in that residential VoIP was still bleeding edge stuff compared to plain old telephone service.
As we entered May 2007, there had been some murmurings that SunRocket might be in trouble. The company's original founders had bailed out and the folks that were brought in to replace them were from America OnLine - a company that makes lots of folks with IT experience get uncomfortable. Figuring again that the worst case scenario would be that I'd be out $200 (actually $204.11 with the fancy new mandated FCC fees) if something bad happened to SunRocket. So I ponied up again.
When we got home from one of our summer camping trips, I learned that the demise of SunRocket was likely only days away. A rumor that ended up being 100% true just a few days later.
That started the odyssey of trying to a) keep our home phone number, b) get a new phone service, and c) try and get my money back. What a frustrating journey it's been so far. And no, almost two months later, it's not quite over yet.
But I have learned a lot in the past couple of months -- details of which I'll be providing here in coming days.
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