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Conclusion:
If you’re truly in the market for a small office/business phone system, with a one-time upfront starter kit price of $249.99, and a recurring monthly $19.99 fee for each activated line for unlimited calling to the US and Canada, the Ooma Office is quite attractive. It wouldn’t take long before you start realizing the savings, all the while getting a very impressive feature and functionality benefit for your small office staff. With it’s extremely simply setup, to its very intuitive management web portal, there just isn’t much not to like about the Ooma Office. With the Ooma Office product, Ooma essentially has an “office phone system in a box” that literally anyone can setup and administer. The negatives listed below are pretty minor, but were worth noting.
Pro’s:
- Extremely easy to setup
- Expandable
- Impressive included features
- Crystal clear voice quality
- Voicemail to email
- Call forwarding
- Excellent range on the Lynx devices
- Virtual Receptionist is more feature rich than expected
Con’s:
- No way for staff member to toggle their own call forwarding on/off
- Ooma Office Manager web portal can be a bit slow to respond at times
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I bought Ooma Office a week ago and was very excited when I received my hardware and registered online.
My first disappointment was the bate and switch tactic of Ooma. The video uses an example with “Claire’s Cupcakes” and says Ooma Office redirect calls, “for Claire, press one” as one would expect from an office phone system. What the video does not say is that “for Claire, press one” is an extra $9.99 a month and “for Jane, press two” is an extra $9.99 a month and “for Jill, press three” is an extra $9.99 a month etc…
If you do not buy extensions you pretty much paid $250 US for an answering machine.
Then, the problems started. First, I got a 404 error when trying to access the “virtual receptionist” settings on my account. Then I found out that anyone calling my Ooma Office got cut off after 20 seconds.
Calling customer support ends up in the Philippines where you are greeted by totally clueless people who only know a few basic things. Beyond that, the only thing they are capable of doing is submit a ticket and tell you not to expect any resolve of your problem before 24 to 48 hours. SAY WHAT?! 24 to 48 hours????
Well, nothing happens even after 48 hours. When asking to speak to a supervisor you will be redirected to speak with a Filipino supervisor and his crying baby.
I was so disappointed with the customer support by phone that I tried my luck by e-mailing Ooma, only to receive a useless e-mail telling me I have to call customer support.
After a week of irritation and useless tickets, phone calls and e-mails, we finally shipped the Ooma Office back to Palo Alto for a refund and decided to pay a bit more and go with Verizon’s Virtual Communication Express. No more calls to the Philippines, no more Ooma.
The company totally messes up with the worst nightmare support that renders the product useless. I would highly discourage anyone from buying Ooma.