magicJack (2008 Product of the Year)

List Price: $39.95 Discount Price: $39.00

Features:

• Free international calling to the U.S. and Canada. The magicJack is portable and can be utilized to make free calls to any phone in the U.S. or Canada from anywhere in the world.
• Individuals outside the U.S. can be called on their magicJack phone number from the U.S. for free.
• Free Follow Me. This feature allows users to send their incoming calls to up to three other phone lines all at the same time.
• Call forwarding, caller ID, call waiting, voicemail and Enhanced 911 all come with the magicJack and are included free.

Customer Reviews:

MagicJack does what it claims [Posted on 2008-06-22]
I gave this 4 stars rather than 5 because of their customer support, which is only available thru an online chat service.

I made the purchase thru their website and declined to pay the extra 3.95 for express shipping. The unit arrived in 3 days anyway.
I had a problem getting it to work, I kept getting an "error 3" code message whenever I tried to call a number.
After spending quite a while with the online chat person, she said to reboot and try again later on during the day.
Then I decided to check things out for myself, it turned out that it was my firewall "Comodo" that was causing the problem (even though I turned it off) after I uninstalled the firewall program, I reinstalled it and then it recognized and allowed MagicJack to make phone calls.
So it was not the fault of the unit but my firewall.
For a company that allows you to make phone calls over the net it's seems strange you can't call them!

Anyway...since I got it working it operates flawlessly. I have made many long distance calls using my cordless phone I have hooked up to it and it sounds just like a regular phone on both ends of the conversation.
No skips, no echo, no noise.

Didn't work as hoped, but for the price... [Posted on 2008-07-09]
I had hoped to remove my land line and use service with this device exclusively. However --

-- lots of dropped calls. In the middle of a call, suddenly nothing.

-- windows machine must be running at all times. The problems with this:
--a windows machine running all the time? That's difficult.
--a machine running all the time. That's a lot of wattage.
--if not wrapped into a windows service, a power recycle will not get your phone service restarted.
--if it ran with Linux, I could use a older machine and the service would likely run more reliably. Maybe in the future.

-- call quality for me was good to very good 85% of the time. I have business calls for which I need 99.9% of the time very good quality.

-- no local numbers for my area. This means all local numbers I dial are long distance. No extra fee, but a lot more number punching.
This probably sounds like a bad review, but at $40 it will be worthwhile for lots of people. I'm back to a land line for now, but play with my MJ from time to time to see what advancements they might be making with reliability, quality, and number availability.

not mac compatible [Posted on 2008-07-10]
If you havwe a MAC - forget this magicjack. It doesn't work and there is no help on the support side. Except to say "sorry for the incovenience"..I ordered it through Amazon and checked twice to see if it said MAC and it DID. But when it arrives it tells you that it is a Mac Beta site and only compativble with Intel Macs AND YOU HAVE TO USE A PC TO DOWNLOAD THE SOFTWARE THAT MAYBE WILL WORK. I am so disappointed and anxious to find something like this that will work with my MAC Powerbook.

Very Unhappy [Posted on 2008-07-20]
I have returned my MagicJack because every other time I tried to use it I had to reboot the software. It became a royal pain. I also had a very difficult time communicating with the return service personnel. They still have not refunded my money a month after they received my magicjack back, and I had to have the credit card company investigate.

poor magicjack customer service [Posted on 2008-07-21]
For the first three weeks after I installed it, I raved about Magicjack to one and all. Then voice messages came through blank. After several attempts, I reached the Magicjack customer service chat line and, after an hour of fiddling, it worked. A couple days later, I was unable to dial out or read voicemail. I reached their customer service chat line and spent 2 and a half agonizing hours being asked to do various fixes over and over again. I unplugged and replugged at least 8 times. I installed the update twice. I reformatted magicjack, etc.... I was asked to tell them the text of the error message I was getting on five occasions even though I said each and every time we tried a fix that it was the same error message. Nothing worked. At the end they refused to let me talk/chat with a supervisor or to send me a replacement. I saved most of the chat on a file. I have just reviewed it and think my comments are fair and balanced. I have taught many microcomputer courses and have even written software.

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