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Having the second scout is important if you have additional rooms to have phone service in or desire a separate telephone number to keep track of calls like a buisness line. Otherwise all your incoming/outcoming calls will be grouped together as well as many of your new functions. If all you want is extra phone service in the house, then consider the Panasonic portable phones.
I bought an extra Ooma Scout to use in another room. It is an EXCELLENT buy. Works instantly when you plug it in.of course you have to have the Ooma Hub for it to work. It has voicemail, line 1 and line 2, and is just like the Hub.
I started to figure a cheap alternative way to have Vonage throughout the house, we have a two story townhouse so going up and down stairs for the phone was not an option,but on their website they gave instructions on how youcan go to the outsidephone box, disconnectthe phone lines comming in to your house and then set up the Vonage into one of the phone jacks and use all the other jacks as extensions. I bought this device on a whim, I had just spent 45 minutes on hold with my local phone company. I went and ordered it on a whim and even had it delivered two day express shipping.I received in two boxes,one had the ooma hub and one scout and the other had an additional scout(for upstairs) I opened them and the first thing they tell you to do is register before hooking up anything, so I went to the site registered the unit with my current phone number and proceeded to hook it up.The one thing that surprised me aboutthe ooma was that there was no need to disconnect the outside phone lines into the house, the unit's signal overlays on top of the regular phone line signal, this was great because I did not have the need to move any phone jacks forthe security system. All was ok as long as I did'nt have to deal with their customer service which totally sucks.
When you buy the unit you get 60 days free trial of the premier service, I enjoyed having two lines going at the same time, with no degradation in the signalon either line, the voicemail is better than anything I have seen. They made life easy by allowing online paying of your bill, a nice feature except their site was down 99% of the time, and if you wanted to pay by phone they charged a convenience fee of 5.00.My lastdealing with them put me over the edge, It was time for this company to go away for good.I had purchased and set up a Vonage phone system about a year prior and used the lowest price system whichwas 14.99 for 500 minutes. I was calling to have them changemy account to the 24.99 a monthplan. I am writing this review to let people know that first I am not affiliated nor a sponsor of ooma. system.I recently did have a hiccup inthe system with the call waiting feature, and the ooma people told me to expect this at times until your number is ported over.One other thing I forgot to mention, since this system has a signal that overlays the phone co. The phone co.wanted 150.00 to move the jack and set up the line,my answer was get lost.Later that night I was browsing on Amazon for a new cell phone, when all of a sudden up popped on the screen the ooma device, I started to read about it and it really got my attention.
I finished hooking up and all the units lights went blue, which means that they are working and that they are all synchronized together. One thing that is unique to the system is the dial tome you get, its like a sort of jingle that flows into a dial tone (strange).I havehad this unit in my home since December, and it has not failed or performed poorly since,The features that come with it are better than the phone company's and better priced.
signal, you can keep a cheap line for local service and for the security system in case the internet goes down, this phone line is good to have as a redundancy for 911 calls which the ooma unit will use if need be.There is really more than I can say about the ooma other than try it, goto their website and readthe info and watch the videos, and you too will see like I did that this is a no brainer. I did break away from ma bell years ago when the phone co.s were deregulated and smaller telecom companies sprouted up selling the same service cheaper.I bought into this and had this phone system for years.
Log in to ooma lounge to retrieve messages or set up your phone, have a wav file sent to your e mail account and listen to your messages, I have mine come to my pda phone and I amable to return an important call in little to no turnaround time.Of course there are all the nice features that you get from the phone co. This was a great solution, but one minor problem, my home security system was not compatible with Vonage and what if I lost internet service while away from home,the security system would be worthless.
I proceeded to price out moving the existing phone service to the one jack that the security system uses and use Vonage throughout the house. but with the ooma hub and scouts using the features is easier than the phone co.
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The Scout is a 4" by 3" device designed as an extension to a main Ooma VoIP Hub. In Ooma's defense, I did get a replacement Scout with postage paid for the return of the defective unit.Potential buyers of the Ooma system should read my review of the ooma Core VoIP Phone System with No Monthly Phone Service Bills since their internet/home configurations may not be well suited to this option. You can also replay your voice messages on this auxiliary until by pressing the arrow.
Although you won't need this if all you have is one cordless telephone set with a single base station (the hub automatically connects all those handsets), you will want to purchase one or more Scouts to connect the corded/wired phones in your house. It took another month or so for Ooma to send me a replacement. Once you have the Hub installed to DSL or cable modem, you can then add as many Scouts as you want to connect the phones throughout your house using the internal telephone wiring.
The unit automatically detects and connects to the hub.My Scout did stop working after about three weeks of use, whether because of an undetected power surge or simply hardware failure. The Scout takes mere seconds to install, provided that you already have a phone and telephone line in place. The buttons allow you to call out on a second line if the first is in use; simply press "2," and you get the Ooma dial tone.
Although the Scout is a valuable and easy to install device, I took away a star for its unreliability and Ooma's unenthusiastic customer service. I love that I didn't have to buy special phones and that I could use my existing phone number and landline back-up.
this does not work without the HUB which is like 200$ so this instrument is worth less without the 200$ hub.
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