Customer Reviews

Magicjack Phone Device - Magic Jack VOIP Phone Device

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I've made a big effort for more than a year to love my Magic Jack, but now I'm giving up on it as anything but a tool for occasional use. It works very well for some things, and not others.

We tried to use it as a substitute for an AT&T land line. Our main phone number is a Google Voice number (We've moved four times in five years, so having a Google Voice number that never changes is convenient.) People call the GV number, which forwards to the MJ, and also to any other phones we want it to ring, including our cell phones.

The system works for us about 80% of the time. But sometimes it's an awful hassle.

Pros:
- cheap, small, sturdy
- decent voice quality with moderate broadband (lousy quality if you don't have the speed)
- local number that you can call from anywhere (I use it overseas to call N.Am. numbers).


Cons:
- Computer has to be on for MJ to work. This is a huge disadvantage. We turn things off at night, and are sometimes not prompt about turning on the phone in the morning. It's like the stone age, having to turn your phone on and off. Also, when the computer goes to sleep, or crashes, or has other glitches, the MJ sometimes fails to wake up properly, and if you don't check the line, you might think you have phone service when you don't.

- You can't disable its voicemail function, or change the number of rings before it answers. This plays hell with other VM functions on our other phones. If you use MJ as your only phone, this might not be an issue. Since we forward from Google Voice to MJ and to other phones, it's a mess.

- Very bad customer service. Essentially no customer service. A forum of users is a help, but MJ personnel don't seem to contribute much if any to the forum. The online chat is not with MJ people, it's with other users, and the times I've tried it, no one else has been online.

- On my MacBook Pro, the only way to reboot MJ is to unplug it, wait a few seconds, and plug it back in. The restart in the MJ menu doesn't work.

- MJ will send voicemails by email, but to only one mailbox at a time. When I'm away from home, it would be handy if my wife and I both could get the voicemails, but MJ limits us to one or the other.

- The sound functions can be bewildering. If you use handsets, and also want to use a headset, you'll never get it straight, I predict. I can't. I have to go into control panels to switch from headset to handset. It leaves me hearing the other party but they can't hear me, or vice versa. You can make it work, but it's anything but easy, and easy to get confused. Friends often complain to us and laugh at us about our screwy phone system.

- MJ is behind the curve. Other devices are fast overtaking them, and there seems to be no upgrading on the horizon. Some of these issues could be fixed with better software, some with an improved device. If improvements are coming, there's been no announcement to users like me.

We really don't want to go back to AT&T, with all the hassle involved with moving, and paying their rates, and blah blah. But MJ is not the solution.

I'm going to try an Obi, which gets high reviews on Amazon. If that doesn't do it, we'll try a NetTalk Duo. Neither of them requires a computer.

Fingers crossed...

This is a good product for the price, but the customer service is horrible. You cannot get a live person to answer a question. They claim to have live chat but the button does not connect you to anyone. It is really difficult to find "My Subscription" on their website. I have been sitting here for an hour this morning simply trying to figure out if I can get another number and renew my subscription. I am renewing until I can find a similar product that is just as cheap. There is also no way to give the company feedback on their customer service. If there was simply a contact form on their website, I would not have posted this review.

MAGIC JACK PHONE REPORT: Does MagicJack Work? Is Majic Jack Right for You? Same as free report at [...]I have a Magic Jack that is still under a 30 day "Risk Free Trial" offer. That comes after you sign up for a year and they have your money. Once they get the money they refuse to give you a RMA number to return it. Actually, there is some fun in listening to the excuses,something like catching your kid with his hand in the cookie jar. I have spent more than 4 hour trying to get their "RMA" to return the jack which is not working in my area. GOOD LUCK zero rating

MagicJack now offers a MagicJack+, which does not require a PC for operation. The MJ is shipped with an Ethernet cable and an AC adaptor that plugs into your wall outlet. The MJ plugs into the AC adaptor. The phone and Ethernet cable then plug into the MJ (the Ethernet cable, of course, has to be plugged into a router). The MJ+ costs $69.95 plus S/H, compared to $39.95 for the regular MJ (which requires a PC on all the time). For the extra cost, MJ advertises that no PC is required, and that you can port your current landline to the MJ. However, their advertising states nowhere that the landline porting costs $20 up front plus $10 per year. May still be a bargain, but they do not tell you this until after you buy the MJ+ and try to port. I'm not sure why MJ feels that they need to be so deceptive about the porting ability. Also, they claim that the 30 day trial is "100% risk free" and that your complete satisfaction is ensured. Why then do they make the customer pay return shipping if they decide not to keep the MJ? I fail to understand how this is risk free, and I am definitely not satisfied. I did use the MJ+ for a short time. I found the voice quality to be pretty clear, but the volume was very low, making it very hard to hear. So, I can't really rate the quality of the service, but it really doesn't matter. As a company, I find MJ to be very dishonest - one of the worst companies I have ever dealt with. However, unlike other reviewers I was able to get an RMA on their web site without any trouble. I haven't shipped the MJ+ back yet, so we'll see how easy it is to get a credit back to my charge card. Meanwhile, I strongly suggest that everyone go into a relationship with these people with their eyes wide open. For MJ+ you will pay more than their advertised fees. Caveat emptor! Where there is smoke, there is fire. I have no reason to believe that dealing with MJ on an ongoing basis will be any better than the first hour. My recommendation is to skip MJ and use netTalkduo.

My one year subscription will be over June 8th and I haven't used this more than one hour at most. Every time I tried to talk on it, either I heard the voice cutting out or the other person complained of my voice cutting out. I have tried all the solutions that tech support offered but nothing fixed it. So, I just lost $43.00 and a lot of time. By the way, my sister has the same problem and hers is on cable modem and mine is on dsl.

I just moved into an apartment and I wanted to save money on a landline phone service. I already have two working cell phones in the apartment so having a primary line working 24/7 was not a priority for me. I thought about Vonage but balked at a monthly fee. So I went to Radio Shack and bought the Magic Jack. After only 10 min, I had the unit set up and was making phone calls. For me, this was an easy purchase to make since $40 included the unit and 1 yr phone service. And the quality of the audio was satisfactory enough to me. What buyers should be aware of is that the jack is dependent on software running on the computer. So if someone is using a slow computer regardless of how good the specs are, there will be periods where service will begin to break up similar to having cell phone service cut in and out. For instance, I was talking fine until my anti-virus initiated its weekly scan and my call went to crap. Another way to see this is to open your running resource chart to see the CPU usage at the time. Also, it would also be inconvenient for users that don't have a dedicated computer at home that can be on all the time for the service to work. If users can understand this concept and limitation, it might clear up some of the complaints that some users have.

BEWARE, I called the number on TV and order the Magic Jack that was on 10/16/11 by
10/18/11 I had three charges on my account $108.00, $112.42, $112.00. All though there should not have been a charge for 30 days, an then only $69.95, thank God for my Amazon Chase they called me right away to verify the transaction.

Seldom works.
When it does work, it works poorly.

I tried every thing I could think of to make it work. Today I put it in the trash where it belongs.

Note: Most recommendations have been recened after owning magick for barely a week.

After few months, they go bad and you hear choppy sounds within few minutes of talk and then the other end can hardly hear you, sounds like Darth Vader. Customers service is the worst.
Don' t buy, sound too good to be true, well, this one is bad and not true.

I bought my first magicjack in 2008, it works perfect for one year, so I decided to buy a 5 years subscription (BIG MISTAKE). The magicjack stopped working during its second year of usage. Then I bought another one for my mom. It is in good condition, but the membership expired one year ago and It had been very difficult to renew the membership (impossible). I tried to renew the membership several times, I went into the "live chat help" several times and it has been impossible to restart the service. Once I spent more than an hour with a live chat agent and he can not restart the service. Then I Finally tried the skype service and it works good. I have to pay two cents a minute when I make an international call but it is good and it works. The magicjack simply does not work. Don't buy it.