Magic Jack Feed Back
I got the Magic Jack phone doo-dad today, and it works like a charm!
It’s about the size of a Tic-Tac box with a cable attached. One end of the cable has a phone jack connection, the other end has a USB connection. Plug in the phone, plug into the Magic Jack and wait for the software to install.
I had a glitch on that last part. The software wouldn’t auto-install because I had that feature turned off as a security measure.
They had a link on their website for Magic Fix which I ran a couple times before the installer finally launched.
The only drawback is the limited number of area codes to choose from as your “home” number. I picked Boca Raton, Florida because I’d like to live there.
Since we intend to us it only for outgoing long distance calls, it’s a non-issue.
I attached a cheapo phone and the quality of the call was excellent. No echo, no delay, no static. It was a better quality call than using our cordless landline. Far better than any Skype call.
Don’t call me, I’ll call you – free.
Leave your phone number in my comments, an area that is kind of like a toilet stall.
UPDATE: During the install, the set up for Magic Jack changes your default external sound. If you want your speakers to work, go into the control panel change the default for sound to your speakers.
My friend got his and ran into the same installation difficulties as I did. This is not plug and play – or even plug, run install, and play. It requires running upgrades and their “fixer” program and trial and error.
UPDATE 2: I went to their website and looked at the reviews and I don’t think these folks are scammers because of the glowing review from (among others) PC Mag.
UPDATE 3: Scariest story yet:
In short, it not only has one agree to ads with its paid-for system, but claims that the ads are necessary for it to work. It will also snoop on your calls to target ads more accurately, and has you sign away your legal right to take it to court if it defrauds or otherwise harms you. Delightful.
It gets sexier. When you access Magic Jack’s instant web help page, a bizarre series of “compatibility tests” take place first, reporting lies like “Your Magic Jack is functioning properly” even if you don’t have one installed.
UPDATE 4: Nice write up in Twice.com, the official newsletter of the Consumer Electronics Show. They might have spent more time on the customer service angle, however. Thanks Bob.
UPDATE 5: Anybody using Magic Jack with Vista and wireless? How is that working for you? Easy-Peasy?
UPDATE 6: http://www.magicjack.com/techchat/ is where I found a live chat for tech support. Since I don’t have an issue with Magic Jack, I don’t know how good they are with their support. But it debunks the statement by many that there is no tech support. They may not be good, but they are available!
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yeah there are lot of cheap stuffs that you can buy on e-bay these days including those made in china stuffs ..
Reposting Tzippy’s comment:
I don’t understand all the negative comments. I have been using Magic Jack for three years now and very happily not paying the phone company, or Vonage for that matter.
You do need a high speed internet, maybe part of the problems? I have taken my computer on vacation, set it up with a portable house phone and, bingo, free phone calls from all over the country.
I also have a wonderful choice for local area codes and I know they are expanding all the time.
I also use it for my office line. Conferencing is easy and clear as a bell. They did have it down for a bit recently for upgrades, but I didn’t mind, they emailed me in advance to let me know it would be down. Hey, IT at my company pulls systems down all the time to update.
Anyway, sorry if you had a bad experience. I would recommend this to anyone. And no, I do not work for Magic Jack, just a very happy customer.
Well, I’m flummoxed on the commenting deal. I’ve check tzippy’s comment and it’s not spammy and I even responded to it thinking it might kick it into place.
Not sure what to do!
Wow, something weird happening with commenting. Let me see if I can figure it out!
Thanks.
well this is interesting! Now I see my comment just submitted, but I don’t see the comment left by Tzippy on September 2:
quote:
Author: Tzippy
Comment:
I don’t understand all the negative comments. I have been using Magic Jack for three years now and very happily not paying the phone company, or Vonage for that matter.
You do need a high speed internet, maybe part of the problems? I have taken my computer on vacation, set it up with a portable house phone and, bingo, free phone calls from all over the country.
I also have a wonderful choice for local area codes and I know they are expanding all the time.
I also use it for my office line. Conferencing is easy and clear as a bell. They did have it down for a bit recently for upgrades, but I didn’t mind, they emailed me in advance to let me know it would be down. Hey, IT at my company pulls systems down all the time to update.
Anyway, sorry if you had a bad experience. I would recommend this to anyone. And no, I do not work for Magic Jack, just a very happy customer.
unquote
just in case it got deleted… I also have had magic jack for over 3 years and it works fine. There have been a few times when I have had to contact the support using the online chat when I have had had connection problems and since i use an Apple computer have had to reset some things but usually things are great. I also took mine to Europe for the first time and just plugged it into my friend’s apple in Paris and called friends here in Los Angeles so that worked fine too. I also am not a seller or person involved in the corporation. I don’t have a cell phone but am wondering about how that works and if it is already part of this package. Also at one point there was supposed to be a way of getting a so called personalized phone that could be something like edsline instead of using numbers assigned…but I could never find how to set that up if I wanted.
It all sounds great and I have saved hundreds since I finally got rid of sprint for long distance. I am a happy user.
thanks everyone… please give feedback re cell phones if you could.
ed
I just checked the site after receiving a comment yesterday Sept 2, 2010. Why doesn’t it show on this list of comments? The last one showing on you site is from Marinie dated July 17, 2010 at 11:06pm “i bought the Magic Jack……. Softphone voice mail will start answering calls again.”
What happened to this comment? Why doesn’t it show? Has this reached the limits of capacity for this particular Magic Jack topic or what? Could the owner please address this and reply to me asap? thanks.
I bought the Magic Jack a few days ago at Best Buy. I have a new computer and am running Windows 7. It installed fine, but there is no sound on the Softphone. I am able to receive calls and dial out fine though and got the voice mail set up. I followed some of the suggestions from various websites such as resetting my modem and changing USB ports, but it didn’t work. Then I rebooted my computer and now the Magic Jack Softphone doesn’t seem to work at all–voice mail doesn’t pick up calls and send me an email, but instead allows my answering machine to pick up on the 4th ring, so I am fine with this. I’d rather have my answering machine pick up anyway. I haven’t rebooted my computer again or changed USB ports–I suspect if I do, the Softphone voice mail will start answering calls again.
@maysoun: give it lots of time to load, it takes a while. Restart and then walk away and come back later rather than staring at startup. Good luck.
My Magicjack says signing in for long time But not logging in Not able to get ready to call status problem: My license is active through APRIL 29, 2015
Mike,
What service did you get to port your landline # to? AT&T wants 25 cents per minute (for the actual length of the forwarded call) and they were the only prepaid that I could find that had call forwarding. I figured that could cost as much as $25 to $30 month, just not worth it. WHere did you find this deal? Thanks for your help.
I have been seeking all over the place for your help and advice… I’m thankful anybody likely has got the answer to this type of elementary concern. You will have very little idea how many internet websites We’ve also been to during the last hours. Thank you for the tips
Mike: no that’s a clever work around. Thanks for the tip!
The MJ website has said for a long time that they are hoping to be able to port your current landline # to your MJ. My MJ phone # is for a town 40 miles away and I like my old home #. I just bought a prepaid phone ($19.95), ported my old home # to it and forwarded the calls to my magicjack. Problem solved for $40 a year. (Less than one month of landline) When magicjack makes porting available, I will move the number from the prepaid phone.
MJ didn ‘t like my Dell computer, but it’s working great on an old emachines.
Hello from Germany! May i quote a post a translated part of your blog with a link to you? I’ve tried to contact you for the topic Magic Jack Feed Back | Baby Boomer Going Like Sixty, but i got no answer, please reply when you have a moment, thanks, Gedicht
magic jack customer service is awful. we got it for 5 years term but after 2 month they suspend it and said if you want to use you should pay for minutes again!and even didn’t answer us properly ang hang up the phone to us!!!!!!!!
i got a question for the you, post? i mean why did you write it because I think its not on topic compared to the rest of your site. Thanks for your time.
This couls trun out to be really true and useful
Hi,
I’m an American in Spain – my dad sent me a MagicJack and I love it! American study abroad students, expats, and many businesses would love this here – but here are few if any resellers in Europe as far as I can tell.
I’m trying to find out if I can be a sales representative for them here. Does anyone know if I can do this? I don’t think I want to be a reseller and stock inventory – rather I’d just want to be the sales rep for B2B sales to retailers.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Phil
Doug,
Please read the responses to your exact same post that you posted to DSL Reports. You are dealing with a completely different company. This company is not affiliated with the Miami-based MagicJack which does not sell an ATA nor does it cost $212.00. It is a wholly owned Cnadian company, apparently formed after the beta phase of the USA MagicJack. One of the respondents at DSL reports has given you a telephone number for Canadianmagicjack. Please follow-up there. Good luck to you.
I ordered the magicjack ata from canadianmagicjack.ca on Jan 28th 2010, This is now march 28th still no unit has been delivered, I tried to get a refund from paypal but the time has lapsed for opening a dispute.
I have email magicjack in Vancouver, Where I purchased it, and have been told “we are understaffed and will look into this next week” Well that was 3 weeks ago and still no word.I have sent an email demanding my $212.00 back and have not heard a word. What the hell is going on with this company.
When I ordered it back in January I cancelled my home phone figuring the 30 days notice with bell would give me my magicjack around the same time the 30 days were up as the website says 4-6 weeks for delivery..Well that did not happen.
I am still without a phone line in the house and the wife’s not happy about that at all. Where can I call or email toget some action on this bogus scam going on from the Vancouver location.
Thanks in advance
Doug
How do you manage voicemail? Is it stored online somewhere? The only comparable service I’ve heard of is Google Voice… which is tough to get accepted into. Great info here though.
I’m impressed that you think it works so well … I thought Skype had the best VOIP calling… Going to have to try this out…
Yeah, Chuck is absolutely right. If the connection glitches for just a millisecond, the fax is usually lost, and is dropped. It’s definitely tough to do over VOIP. If you have a really strong connection though, it can be a super cheap alternative.
.-= Jarome Sweeney´s last blog pithKeeping Your Magic Jack Performing Optimally =-.
You may not ever get the fax to work. Success with fax machines using a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Phone) line like MagicJack, Vonage, or others appears to be very hit or miss. Voip protocols allow pieces of data (packets) to be dropped (lost) without ending the transmission. Fax machines require all those pieces of data or they will error out of the transmission. I have a Brother MFC 420 CN that seems to work most of the time for faxing on MJ. That is not to even remotely suggest it would work with your setup. Good luck to you. Have you tried any of the services like Efax?
I just bought a magic jack and I am trying to use the fax with it! It’s an older fax(Lexmark 4200series) so I tried to “slow” it down and turn off the error thing…still not really working … trying to send, it even says sending page the error …. Is there a fax machine that compatible to magic jack that i could just go out and purchase?
I have had magic Jack for about 3 months now..I love it i canceled my land line, I did have a few problems hooking it up a little bit but i got on the live support and they helped me get it hooked up…i have nothing bad to say about it. The reason i had problems hooking it up was because i run nortons and nortons was interfering with installing it. I have never talked to anyone on the phone but i got good results on the live chat thing… I don’t work for them or anything but my family and i love it. If anyone wants to e mail me you can emeraldw7@yahoo.com and i do have yahoo messenger under emeraldw7. I live in Hill City South Dakota and vonage won’t work in our area so thats why we have magic jack.
I have been running on Vista and working like a charm.
Anybody try using MJ on vista? I would like to buy one but not really sure it can support vista or not.
@Joan: Thanks!!! How do eliminate the b/s background programs?
.-= GoingLikeSixty´s last blog pithTurns Out Magic Jack is a Cell Phone Tower! =-.
I’ve had the Magic Jack for over 1 year, and except for an occasional annoyance here and there, the device has performed well. Sound quality of calls and features have been excellent. I believe most user problems are cause by the following: Inadequate system (CPU/MEM), using lower than USB 2.0, Inadequate internet connection speed, security and firewall issues and finally, too much unnecessary b/s background programs running that do not need to be there. Eliminate and/or fine-tune these issues and the Magic Jack works like a charm.
@Lorry N. Thanks for the feedback. I am just now in the process of writing an update. Still all good.
Just reading your comments and wanted to let you know that I bought my Magicjack in Brantford Ontario. It was bought at 638 Colborne Street East. There email is magicjack@bellnet.ca. and I think that they ship as well. I had no problems getting the magicjack from them and they where very helpful.
Did you get it at a special price? The reason I ask is, you could have bought it at any Walmart or Radioshack.
To J Evans, I to had problems receiving my MagicJack from Victor, then I undertook a negative ad campaign against him and sent him a copy of each post. I received my MagicJack three days later.
Hope that works for you
Few weeks ago, I have ordered magic jack, but yet to receive my order. Victor of Magic Jack is one rude individual and completely not professional. I filed a complaint with my bank and hoping that credit card company will refund the damage, also noted here that Better Business Bureau has received several complaints in regards to magic jack.
But wait, what about the update that said it was screening your calls? Is there still the possibility of this doing that?
Working feverishly to apply my 4 in 1 HP fax to MJ. Any help out there?
And thanks to you ‘Sixty’, doing a great job with this.
James, Tell us your computer specifications. Also what version are your USB ports?
Thanks
i got magicjack and can’t get it to install nor work so then i exchaned it for another one and i still cant get it to work!!!!!
nor can i get to the web site magicjack.com
any help please
We bought a MJ 2 years ago. It has worked flawlessly since day 1. We bought a 2nd one for our business computer & it works flawlessly. Our 1st MJ runs on a Compaq desktop w/XP, the 2nd on an HP desktop w/Vista. When we travel, we take one & use it on our Sony laptop w/XP. We have had zero probs. Both VM systems work perfectly. We dumped our land line & strictly use the MJ’s for both personal & business needs. We used the online support once, the operator was perfect to us. We ordered both units via the website. We are elated with this product 100% & have recommended it to several people who got it & have had no probs. We now save about $900 per year in phone bills & fully operate our home business from it flawlessly. The peace we have achieved from not having to battle with phone companies has been a God-send. We feel the entire human race should get a MJ & put those bastardly phone companies out of business permanantly & be able to save all the money & headaches we have. We recomend this product at a 100% level. A good word of advice – once you get yours, put your MJ # on the No Call list for telemarketers as we did. Everyone should have one of these gadgets & be able to take a nice little vacation on the money usually given to your phone company; we did.
I guess the “take away” from this is… don’t buy from online or from the TV ads… buy from a “bricks and mortar” store where you can return it.
GoingLikeSixty…also wrote this…Waterboarding is Torture: Mancow
Magic Jack is a ripoff; the communication is very bad and is overseas. I only used it a few times, as it was not working; I have been unable to get this issue resolved, and felt it was not worth the time or money; they are asking me to renew the account for another year; I have stated to them that I was not interested, and they would not tell me whether or not my account has been closed, rather, telling me it is under “review?”…Also, they will not refund the money I had in the acct. For International Calls, saying it is their policy, and yet not telling me where this “policy” is stated…
May 25, 2009 4:21 PM
Is magi jack installable in my compaq laptop? For I really wanna try it myself. Hope that it is compatible in many ways.
College Savings 529 Plan…also wrote this…Getting Past Contribution Limits for 529 College Savings Plans
Yes.
I just received magic jack today. So far so good. The only problem i had was when i was checking to see if it worked and i called my cellphone from the MJ phone. I did not get a dial tone although my cell was ringing. Also it didn’t go to voice mail. So i unplugged MJ and then put back in USB port and it worked perfect. Tomorrow i will be using my other MJ at my work. I own a bar and it has not had a phone line in its 45 yr existence. Since we added a kitchen i wanted to see if the MJ actually worked. One question i did have which worried me about using it for my bar. When i call from my cell to my house through MJ it rings 2x and goes straight to my answering machine…. I cannot have that happening in my kitchen at work. Anyone know the reason? Also can anyone recommend a phone i should use in my kitchen with MJ that has multiple lines so i can put people on hold when writing an order for food that will be compatible with MJ?
Raj
Have you ever gotten to your voicemail using a telephone?
You do this by dialing your 10 digit MJ number from any phone, including one hooked up to your MJ. As soon as your hear the recorder message, hit the star(*) key on your phone. You will be asked for your pass word, which is 1234 if you have not changed it and it is a new MJ.
After you have entered your password, you will be taken to the voicemail menu where you can change your password and/or listen to your voice mail.Good luck.
More Questions, bring them on!
My voicemail goes straight to my email address that I entered when I first got my Magic Jack.
Sorry about the confusion.
@Raja,
Have you ever been able to get into your voicemail?
@Chuck W: If you are talking to me, yes I have by following the instructions on the website.
But I have not tried to change my password.
Have you ever been able to get into your voicemail?
@Raja M Riaz: this isn’t an official tech support site, but perhaps somebody can help?
Anyone?
I cannt access in my voicemail password is not working and how can i change my password
I have been using mine for almost a year without problems, however, I would like someone to confirm or deny something for me:
For those of you who have recently purchased Magic Jack either a Radio Shack, Best Buy, or now, Wal Mart, could you please look in your Windows OS Control Panel>Add/Remove programs and see if the Magic Jack is now listed as being uninstallable?
When I got mine, there was no way to uninstall the program and also the End User license said that they can do whatever they want with your information and calls made and received. Has that license changed any at all?
It’s been a year and I was just wondering if anything has changed regarding license and uninstall program,
Thanks.
@Sandra: I RAWK.
@You are more than welcome! And, thank you for the email you sent me about blogging. It got buried and I didn’t see it until today. 🙂
BTW…I typed “I love Magic Jack” in Google and guess what came up first? I’ll give you “Sixty” chances to get it right. -)
@Sandra: Hi! How cool that you got MJ and up and running with no hassle.
On a Mac!
Awesome.
Thanks for the report.
We got Magic Jack this past Friday and we LOVE IT! I downgraded our VoIP service to basic local service…only because we have a special savings plan with our Electric Company and it has to be connected through a regular phone (only $10 a month). We receive and make phone calls with it and all is crystal clear, messages are easily retrievable, and we had no installation problems on our Mac OS platform. We’ll save $540 a year. I’ve been telling everyone about Magic Jack.
I’m skeptical about some of the negative responses, especially about the one regarding trying to get back $120??? Magic Jack is only $49.95 and that includes the first year of $19.95 service–what did this person do, buy 5 Magic Jacks at once?
Oh, and Sixty, I’m sorry I wasn’t following your blog in January! My 14yo ds told me about Magic Jack around then and I was skeptical so we didn’t get it–oh, the savings we could have had already! 🙂
This site is one of the best I have seen about the MJ. I tell everyone I know about the MJ.
Echoing problem can be solved for many people with this utility published by the MJ VOIP chip manufacturer: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21433580-Line-Echo-Canceller-Utility
You have to install it, then run it and activate it. You used to be able to get from the mnfr web site but they pulled it, maybe because it was a tacit admission that there was something wrong with the chip. In any case this seems to be working for me.
@Jay
@Chuck
Good point. Anybody that still types all caps isn’t a good candidate for Magic Jack.
I never had to change settings, and wouldn’t because I don’t like that kind of stuff.
The only tweak I did was to move the Magic Jack from one USB to another.
Hint: Don’t put USB into any port other than one in the back of a desktop. This may have been improved in an upgrade, but don’t chance it.
Jay,
I am 100% in agreement with you. Obviously not the item for a person like Marcos.
Melissa,
Hopefully you are not still waiting for an email from MJ. That is not how you get your telephone number.
Contact the forum again if you are still having problems. Someone will help you.
I just read Marco’s comment. I believe that he is right! If you do not have a clear understanding of your computer, and how peripherals work, then please do yourself a favor and don’t buy this kind of stuff. I myself have had my Magic Jack since January, and I am completely satisfied with it. It has worked well with the exception of a few issues that were caused by the settings on my computer which I have fixed. For those of you that just bought your Magic Jack and are on this site to try and learn how to fix some issues you might be having, there are some good posts. About the only thing I want to add is that as cheap as this device was, I am tickled pink. I have already since January more then paid for the 5 years of service that I paid for.
I just renewed my service for another year. I didn’t have the problems you had. It’s not for everybody, that’s for sure.
Point: Verizon is $50 a month? For that price I could have had 4 years worth of Magic Jack service. Just sayin’
Goinglikesixty…also wrote this…Springtime Colonoscopy
DON’T BUY IT-YOU WILL BE SORRY. THE AUDIO QUALITY IS TERRIBLE-PEOPLE COULD BARELY HEAR ME-I HAD TO SHOUT-PLUS THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN EVER CHANGE YOUR VOICEMAIL GREETING, SHOULD YOU DECIDE TO DO SO. THE TECH SUPPORT TOLD ME TO DO THE VERY SAME THING I DID WHEN I FIRST SET IT UP-THE RECORDING TELLS YOU IT TOOK-THEN YOU ARE STUCK ONCE AGAIN WITH THE VERY GREETING YOU WERE TRYING TO CHANGE-THERE’S NO WAY IT CAN BE DONE. I GLADLY WENT BACK TO MY VERIZON SERVICE WHICH IS SO SUPERIOR TO THAT SUCKY PIECE OF JUNK CALLED MAGIC JACK!! IT’S LIKE THE OLD SAYING ‘YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.’ MY VERIZON SERVICE IS WORTH EVERY PENNY AND AT LEAST IT IS VERY DEPENDABLE AND THE AUDIO QUALITY IS MARVELOUS. NEVER AGAIN WILL THERE BE A MAGIC JACK IN MY HOUSE OR IN MY LIFE.
When you first set up Magic Jack i think it will ask you if its for Inbound or Outbound or rather Magic In and Magic Out.Like mine i use it for outbound (Magic out) All the people that i called never charge for long distance even in differrent area code as long as i’m the one who is calling.Except when they call me (inbound), unless its the same are code since i choose Magic out.Well that’s what i know about it.
dont buy if you want people to call you because it is long distance for anyone in your area .Area codes are very limited to none for my area. so then it also eats up minute if you call cell phones if you call them which is free between cell on sme carrier
DON’T BUY THIS PRODUCT! there customer service truly sucks! they run you around in circles. the product works the during the free trial time then it does an upgrade it won’t work properly. you can hear them but they can’t hear you. customer service has you doing the same thing each day you contact them.
@Melissa: Hope you got the email and are on your way to free calls. It’s too bad Magic Jack customer support isn’t better. Let us know how it works out for you!
GoingLikeSixty…also wrote this…Geeky Animated Graphical Interchange Format Monday
I ordered my MJ months ago after seeing it on TV and doing a little internet research. I have heard of people using theirs while on vacation in China with no problem except where internet was spotty.
I’m finally hooking it up (fear of failier kept me away). Waiting for the email with my ## and nothing coming in. I’m going to go to bed and see if it’s there in the AM.
TC,
I don’t give out my MJ number either. You can always have people call you on your cell. BUT, for returning or initiating calls use MJ. That should save you cell minutes and perhaps allow you to reduce your cell plan. Not quite as convenient but might save some $$$$$.
Here I am again,
I have 900 free minutes(free weekend and after 9:00PM minutes) on my cell phone + 10 free anytime numbers. So even though this is inexpensive and a good concept it isn’t saving me any money. If people could call me without having to pay long distance charges, I could reduce the minutes on my cell and save some money. At this point I’m afraid to give out my MJ number for that reason.
Thanks for the responses.
I’ve been saying it for a year. If my neighbor calls me, it’s long distance. I have quit using my MJ line the last several months. My cell phone is all I use. I’ve asked several times about the 50 miles away prefix that I received but always get the run around. The phone system a great concept but has flaws that should have been taken care of well before it’s inception. Customer service is a joke. Though, they seem to have plenty of money for advertising, they have limited resources for Customer care.
Yes, Magic Jack has been slow for number portability. As JRATT says, better to say nothing than to overpromise and underdeliver.
Me too. I didn’t renew after my one year was up, but left it installed. I used to use it for long distance calls, or times when I was talking to tech support and didn’t want to tie up the other line. I think I will renew if for that purpose alone.
JRATT,
Do not hold your breath waiting for number porting. They have been saying for months (or longer!) that number porting is ‘coming soon’. In any case they will not be porting numbers for cities or towns where they do not already have a presence. Before you order again, please contact someone on this list to see what prefixes are currently available in a particular area code. Someone who is already an MJ user can look that up for you by going through the routine as if they were going to change numbers and find the choices available. I hope something opens for you that is local.
Here we go again. I ordered a MJ again after finding out that the 406 area code for Montana. was now available. I received my MJ and then found out the only prefixes for phone #s (only 4) are 100 miles from my city. long distance charges would be charged for me to call my MJ home phone from my city. that is stupid. I sent the MJ back. They credited my visa card a few days later. I want to use MJ and get rid of my phone bill. I will order a MJ again when you can port your current phone # to MJ. some time in 2009.
There are ways to avoid seeing the softphone (where the ads are) The Terms of Service indicate that the ads are part of the deal. Putting your entire conversation in this forum is a waste of bandwidth. Do your research.
Actural Tech Support Call…Chat.
You are now chatting with ‘Stela’
Stela: Hello, how may I help you?
Robert Spaulding: Hello,
Robert Spaulding: Will you provide an ad free version of the software?
Stela: What do you mean Robert?
Stela: Please be more specific.
Robert Spaulding: I mean software that is not trying to sell me more service or displays advertising while it is running.
Robert Spaulding: Approx. 1/3 of the software screen is dedicated to an advertisement. I would really prefer not to see this at all.
Stela: Many other VoIP carriers do not have dedicated telephone networks, and lease this service from other companies. This can result in higher costs and poorer reliability.
Robert Spaulding: do you speak English?
Stela: Yes.
Robert Spaulding: Approx. 1/3 of the software screen is dedicated to an advertisement. I would really prefer not to see this at at.
Stela: Each magicJack costs USD $39.95 plus shipping and handling. This gives you one year of calling to the USA and Canada. Standard shipping costs USD $6.95 that takes 4-10 business days (excluding Saturdays and Sundays) while Priority shipping costs USD $10.90 that takes 2-4 business days (excluding Saturdays and Sundays). You can purchase an additional year’s service for $19.95. You can also purchase, Platinum plan, which gives you 5 years magicJack license at $59.95.
Stela: 3:19
Stela: Please disregard the message.
Robert Spaulding: Is there a chance that you will address my original question?
Stela: Thank you for your patience. I will transfer you to a higher level of support. Please hold while I transfer you.
Please wait while I transfer the chat to the best suited site operator.
You are now chatting with ‘Haley’
Haley: Hello I am Haley the supervisor.
Haley: Please hang on for a while, let me read your chat with Stela
Robert Spaulding: Approx. 1/3 of the software screen is dedicated to an advertisement. I would really prefer not to see this at at. Will/ Do you offer and ad free version of the software?
Haley: My apologies Robert, but magicJack is designed to be like that.
Robert Spaulding: Thanks, that did not seem too hard. Hopefully you will reconsider in the future.
I have had Magic Jack for a few months and it works great. I have it plugged in to an old Dell Laptop that I was going to give away. It even has USB 1 ports.
I leave the laptop on all of the time without the batteries in. It is connected directly to my cable modem. I have had no problems using it this way.
I love tech stuff that saves money. This is one of them. It is like having your own phone company for less than a few McDonalds Senior cofees per month.
I think the problems folks have with Magic Jack are more related to their computers not functioning well than MJ itself.
Any one interested I have a 5710 HP thin client already set up for magic jack for sale. It comes with a new Magic Jack and a Hawkins Broadband booster key Board and mouse. Everything for $200.00 + Shipping. If Interested email me at t4feb@atlanticbb.net or go to this link (http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/t4feb) and check it out. I also have a HP 5720 that will be setup the same way as soon as I finish it. Thanks
@All: I have no reason to think Terry isn’t 100% legit, but AS ALWAYS, buyer beware.
Please go to and then bookmark this site: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MagicJack . It is written by a very knowledgable guy on one of the support forums. This wiki is extremely helpful. The author is also willing to be very critical of some of the ways that MJ does business and I think m ost of us will agree with his point of view.
If you are looking for full flavored support from a $1.66/mon. phone service with free lopng distance, you will be very disappointed. Go back to the phone company. If you are willing to do a bit of work and investigation, most of us (not all) will be very satified with the result. For the few that are unwilling or unable to do a bit of work, send the thing back. Now. We have no time for your drama.
Just in case your wondering, it is UDP ports 5060 and 5070 that need to be forwarded.
You may also need to do this if you have a router hooked to your cable internet, I had to with mine with my Netgear wireless router.
Jeff
Jeff…also wrote this…Managing Wireless Networks On Windows Vista
I started out with MJ after 1 daughter bought hers 3 years ago. Flawless install on mine. Moved MJ to another PC a few months later and had to run the fix.
I ended up buying 3 more and giving them as gifts to friends on limited budgets. All worked but 1.
Verizon DSl kept telling me it was MJ..MJ said it was Verizon. After 2 weeks of frustrations I FINALLY found the reason WHY MJ will not work for many-it is the Verizon Default DSL Modem FIREWALL SETTINGS that BLOCK MJ. Once a savy MJ tech told me the fix it worked instantly!!
One will have to user their web browser to login to their Verizon DSL modem (Get username and PW info from Verizon if you do not have this needed info).
Once the port setting is adjusted to let MJ through the issue is solved.
I am a PC support analyst and very techy but until I knew to change the the DSL port settings I was hosed.
I can understand people saying the product is good but what you need to remember is at some time you might need help, then you will understand what others are saying.
I say good on those who have no problems, but there might come a time and thats when the eyes are opened up.
One can not call any online chat support if its not given and you only have to read all the reports about not getting help and so on, so this alone is not support, a true business that runs with honesty will have more than just an online chat open for you, think about it there is a reason you get nothing more.
It is simple to read from a hand book anybody can do this, and i ask you to think about it, thats all you are getting is something to do with trouble shooting, ask a question and you get ” I understand”, serios i can read them like a book myself now i know right when its coming and never fails, then you get can i help you with anything else? hang on you havent helped me in the first place why are you trying to give the flick.
As i said im happy for those have find this product good but still be warned….I hope it stays good for you or your going to be on your own.
Hi, Chuck:
Thanks for your suggestions. I tried the first one – via the MJ support link – which involved disabling the MJ click sound in my Control Panel. Then phoned a friend who only heard one beep in our five-minute conversation (that’s progress!). I’ll check back periodically to see if the expert have figured out how to resolve the issue. Susan
This forum needs spell check as my old brain is getting worse it seems. Susan one easy test is to direct wire your laptop to your router and see if that helps. In the link I sent you there is a phone number that will echo back to you so you can hear what recipients are hearing without calling some one for a test call. Again, Good Luck.
Susan,
You are not alone in this problem. It does not appear to have a definative solution. Check out this site: http://www.magicjacksupport.com/how-to-rid-of-annoying-beep-sound-t3349.html . There are a couple of really knowledable guys trying to fix this but with only moderate success. Good Luck
I have had MJ for the last six months. The first device had problems and MJ tech support mailed me a replacement device. It worked fine for a while but recently I have heard complaints by callers who notice a random beeping noise at their end. I use a wireless high-speed Internet provider, have the MJ device hooked up to my laptop, and a portable Panasonic DECT 6.0 phone – with 5 handsets – (which is analog) hooked to the MJ device. Would a noise filter help to reduce the beeps that callers hear? Any thoughts on how to improve the noise quality are greatly appreciated.
One last thing. I would suggest that you buy your MJ from Radio SHack or QVC or BEst Buy so you can use the store’s return policy. MJ has a very bad reputation for processing returns. They 30 day free trial is frequently 1 or 2 days. They handle billing so badly that I think it is worth it to pay up front at a local retailer and then rely on their returns.
@Chuck W: excellent advice about buying retail rather than online. MJ’s worst problem is their return policy.
@ Curious: I’m a satisfied user and will be glad to check prefixes for you. I use my Magic Jack for outgoing calls only, so it didn’t matter. If I were buying today, I would be more concerned because Magic Jack can be a great alternative to landlines.
Curious,
Yes you can receive calls also. When you recieve the unit and plug it in, it will ask you to register/activate with your email address and a password. You are then asked to select an area code ( and maybe the prefix ie the first three numbers of your phone number). You are then assigned a telephone number that others may use to call you. Remember you must have a recent windows PC or Intel based Mac, and a broadband internet connection. Understand thatthere will be long distance charges to those that call you IF your new MJ number is outside their local calling area. It is very difficult to find out which prefixes are available in MJ until after you buy. If you decide you want to buy it, leave a message here and some one who is also an MJ user will see which prefixes are available. Any other question? Ask away. I have had mine for about 7 months with very little problems. Good Luck
I see that you can dial out with Magic Jack but can you receive calls with this too? How can others call you through this? Do they assign a phone number or anything that you can give out? Or does it only take voice mails?
If anyone knows about receiving calls through this, please let me know.
Thanks!
I have had my magicJack for 2 days, and I love it, only had on glitch, and it seem to be when i checked my voice mail, it started windows media player, after that, had a problem making a call, I rebooted and then it worked great again, I am very please with it, i have a vtech system in my house, which consist of on base station hooked to the magic jack, and then two remote handsets that only plug into a standard, 110 ac outlet, all three phones work great, no noise, no static at all!
WOW … LOOK AT ALL THE COMPLAINERS …. People – this is a ” man made ” electronic device made by a HUMAN … invented to ” cut your phone bill cost ” while makin’ him some MONEY in the process. The item is NEW and has a few bugs …. but what do you expect for a $40 device & $20 yr / renewal … ????? …… a human call center ? 24 hour live phone support ? – that’s why Vonage & Skype exists and cost more !!! When MagicJack was invented I don’t believe the guys were sitting around on Windows 98 / Windows 95 or some 10 year old computer tryin’ to get this to work. Look at what you have / look at what you need to get the device to operate for you.
The earlier version of ANYTHING is ALWAYS ” a test run for dummies ” …. those are the ones that have BUGS in them & the techs use the first few batches to work out the issues. ( Remember early beepers, cell phones, laptops, …. even home video game units had glitches first go out ). The newly manufactured MJs are made ” a little ” sturdier …. and have a mini cord to keep u from having to plug the unit directly into your cpu port & damage it.
People – THIS THING IS GREAT FOR THE PRICE ….. if you have high speed DSL , updated Windows & a port with sufficient power then you should have FEW PROBLEMS. I’ve had my MJ for a few months & have cut my home phone bill IN HALF per month though I still have local service / internet …. but the MJ has managed to SAVE ME MONEY …. and ain’t that what this is all about ????
No company is trying to GET RICH off you in a couple of years and leave ….. THEY GET RICH FROM YOU & STAY IN BUSINESS TO STAY RICH !!… I’m sure MagicJack will FIX tha glitches when they acquire better Electronic Technicians as they grow…….. HAVE SOME PATIENCE PEOPLE / All issues are just steps away from fixing.
AND I LOVE MY MAGICJACK ……. only had ” ONE ” issue with a BEEPING noise ( that I couldn’t hear ) in the ear of whomever I was talking to and had it eliminated with ONE LIVE CHAT CALL ….. the upgrade link was loaded / run …. and i haven’t had a BEEP in anyone’s ear since. ALL PROBLEMS CAN BE RESOLVED …… GIVE THIS THING A CHANCE TO WORK.
And for those ” SHAKY ” on buying from website ….. then buy it at RADIOSHACK or even BEST BUY ……..
MJ used to pop-up with every call until I downloaded the MagicBlock. If I made or received a call, MJ would pop-up from the system tray in front of whatever program was running, a pain in the butt is if plaing an online game. Since downloading MB, however, I haven’t had that problem, or any others (yet).
I have never seen a pop up either. It is just the program starting.
I have an Imac and i have never had any ad popups at all…maybe it is a windows problem???? all i get is their own small ad next to the phone pad and that is okay.
@Ed: I think some people are thinking the splash screen on start up is an ad. They might feel better if it just was a spinning gizmo while the program launches. I’m on a PC and there are no popup ads – or pop under ads either for that matter! 🙂
I’ve been using Magic Jack for awhile – it’s OK except for the ads. I found a free software to block or disable the pop up advertisements, check out Magic Block at Download.com or just Google it
HEY JEFF ….. U wanna know how to ” BEAT ” people having your credit card info ……. HERE’S A SECRET …… go by your neighborhood Walgreens ( or Wal Mart ) and get a PREPAID VISA / MASTERCARD ….. load the card with exactly how much u need on it & let MagicJack get their funds ….. the card will cost you around 5 bucks a month for fees BUT IT BEATS GIVING OUT YOUR REAL CREDIT CARD …… THIS BEATS THE SYSTEM – TRUST ME …… its also good for doing your purchases online & on EBAY site …..
COME ON PEOPLE ….. Use ya brain & beat the system ……
GET A PREPAID / LOADABLE CARD to do business with ANYONE you have a ??? with …… they can’t charge the amount MULTIPLE TIMES if you dont load the card with extra money …. if they try …. THEY ARE REJECTED !!!! ……..
( I should be PAID for this knowledge i’m giving out …… hahahahaha….. )
Funny thing happened yesterday after I posted. I attempted to call my home and my call went straight to the magic jack voice mail. No big deal I figured maybe my wife was on the phone. But then I remembered I had call waiting. So a while later I did get a hold of my wife on he cell phone. I asked her to pick up the MJ phone and call me, but she said she didn’t have a dial tone. Hmmmmm! “Okay, turn on the monitor”. She did, and the computer had rebooted. Ahhhh I had a Microsoft update, and the computer rebooted. So she logged back in and the MJ was back in business. After I got home I went into my computer setup and turned off the Auto Microsoft Updates. I elected for it to let me know when there is an update available, and I will take care of it myself. I am still a happy MJ user. So for you MJ users “Turn off Automatic Microsoft Updates”.
Interesting, MJ is now available at Best Buy down here and at bestbuy.com as well. Ymax/MJ don’t mind waiting a while for a credit or debit card number, after a year, you’ll need to renew your subscription so they will get a number at that time.
JB
Jeff…also wrote this…Are you using Smiley Central or MyWebSearch or Popular Screensavers from Fun Web Products?
I TOTALLY AGREE WITH OKINOLE but you have to do your own research ……. After many nights of seeing the 30 minute infomercials i said ” What the hell … let’s give it a try “. And seeing the nightmares that folks are “somehow” having on the websites with their credit cards I’m gonna let you all in on a secret. FIRST ….. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PURCHASE THIS FROM MAGICJACK WEBSITE ….. THEY HAVE THEM AVAILABLE AT RADIOSHACK …… YES – RADIOSHACK !!!!! Once you purchase it YOU DO NOT HAVE TO INPUT ANY CREDIT CARD INFO TO ANYONE. I then plugged mine into my USB PORT ( cpu using Windows XP ) …. and within 2 minutes it was ready on its own. I was able to dial out / call in to my new number as much as i wanted. I tried TO DO as many ERROR CAUSING things as most of you previously stated BUT HAD NO SUCCESS IN SCREWING UP THE MAGICJACK. I moved the device to another port, I turned the cpu off & rebooted BUT HAD NO LUCK IN …. FAILURE. Come on people – for $20 bucks a year … this is great !!! I have not yet fired AT&T totally but I have reduced my services to HIGH SPEED INTERNET & local service only which has CUT my bill IN HALF!!! If you have a TRUE high speed connection & a computer that has Windows XP or Vista you should be able to have little to NO problem. TRUST ME FOLKS …. I’M THE BIGGEST SKEPTICAL PERSON IN THE WORLD and I WOULD NOT LIE to you …… THIS TRUELY WORKS !!! The sound is “crisp” ( Hint : It sounds even better if you use a corded phone but most want the freedom of cordless so be sure to buy a 5.8 ghz or better for best sound ). Take it from me – possibly the best $40 bucks i’ve ever spent & expected MUCH , MUCH LESS …….. I’m buying a few for family members ( before someone UP tha price tags ). This is a great device created to get the ball rollin’ on giving the ol’ telephone company …. THE AX !!!
AND THAT MOVE I AM BEHIND 100% …. if we all get this the the phone company will have to LOWER their prices …. remember – no customers / no company.
MUCH RESPECT TO MAGICJACK / YMAX CORP. for this money saving device.
@Okienole: Great report! Not only because the MJ worked, but sounds like you gave it a solid test of all the features. Thanks for sharing.
(I have no affiliation with Magic Jack. The ads that appear here are served by Google.)
I have a Dell Optiplex GX620 P4 2.8 Ghz w/2.74gig Ram (500 Gig HD) ATT DSL – I purchased the Magic Jack a couple of weeks ago after reviewing their commercials during the bowl weeks. I only wanted to see if it would work. Well I received it and plugged it in to one of my front USB ports. After about 2 minutes it had conducted a self install. I entered my user info as requested. It asked me to select a 3 digit prefix number. I had selected from OKC since it was closer to me then the others. It then said I would be up and running within about 20 ninutes. However that was misleading because I was up and running within a minute if not faster. Okay, so far so good. I had also set my computer up so that it would not hibernate, as suggested in other forums. Now I made a call to my brother in Florida, and it was crystal clear. As I was talking with him I was also running about 3 other software programs and just to see what I could do to screw up things I put in a dvd and started watching a movie. I was still able to talk with no issues. Okay I then turned the monitor off and went to bed. The next morning I got up and picked up the phone expecting not to hear a dial tone. I heard a dial tone loud and clear. I went to work. I called my magic jack number and the voice maill came up. I left myself a message. About a minute or so later as I was checking my email a message from Magicjack came up. I had a voice mail. I opened the wav. file and sure enough it was my voice mail I left. After the first week with no issues found I then unpluged the magic jack from the front of the computer and plugged it into one of the USB ports in the back. You know (Set it and forget it)! It rebooted and was ready to go. I then called ATT and cancelled my long distance service. Okay so why didn’t I cancel my phone service completely? I do things in steps. If in 6 months I don’t have any issues I will then terminate my ATT phone service altogether. I will update my status as issues or such might pop up. But so far they get an A as far as I’m concerned at this point. We’ll see if they can maintain that grade.
I have been using MagicJack for about 3 months and have read all the blogs about it key logger and disclaymers. I have had good service for the most part. Depending on the time that I call I get less that the best connections but for the price, I can live with it. To get around the keylogger and sending of information back to them, I have it installed on a wireless network in a computer thats sole function is the magicjack. The only internet access is to do the windows updates. It is installed on a separate VLAN so it does not interact with the rest of the network. Let them see who I call.
Well, I ordered and received a MajicJack a few months ago, but after reading all of these posts about the spyware I never installed it. In fact I never opened the package it came in. NOW, January 1st, I was just charged another $49.50 and I never set up an account. What a scam. I will be definitely be making a visit to their West Palm offices to lodge my complaint (if, in fact, they do have an office there).
Ed
Florida
Hey goinglikesixty. Are you sure you’re not a shill for majicjack? You certainly sound like one.
Betcha this won’t get published.
Hey Travelingatfifty: You sure you aren’t a total idiot? You certainly sound like one. Bet nobody cares if it’s published or not. Troll.
I am using MJ since June 2008. My overall evaluation on a scale from 0 to 10, by 10 being the best I give it a 5.
I have the feeling MJ suffers from PMS and is very moody. I have days it works like a charm and then I have days I seem not be able to make calls. When dialing a number I sometimes receive all kinds of weird messages, like:
Your WIMAX connection is working fine.
or
You must first dial an area code.
or
This number has been disconnected. (but I can dial it from my regular landline)
Also at times it just rings and rings and eventually disconnects.
Another issue I have at times is sound quality. It can get so bad that conversations are completely chopped up and it is hard to figure out what the other person says and vice versa.
Then again, I have days it works just fine. Sound is ok (but never a 10 … most I give it is 8), I can dial all numbers, even the once that did not work the day before.
Summary: You get what you pay for. It has saved me some money already, but I will not abandon my landline at this time.
If you are willing to deal with lower voice quality and the hassle of not being able to dial certain numbers at certain times it is not a bad investment.
I hope that as MJ gets more popular, they will work out the kinks.
@Oliver: interesting and odd. I don’t doubt your experience but it is puzzling that your MJ “comes and goes.” I think you’re the first with this malady: most (like me) have no problem or it just fails completely. I hope you have some luck figuring it out and will return with suggestions.
At some time during the night, I lost my internet connection, and the next morning majicjack would no longer startup. I tried to reload it, but it would not reload either. When I chatted with the majicjack tech, she had me change a few settings in the registry, and then reload majicjack, and everything worked just fine. And still is. I only wish I had printed out everything she had me do so if I run into this problem again, I might be able to repair it myself.
Chuck: I had my MJ pluged in the front it did not work that great they told me to plug it in the back and every since then it’s worked just fine. they took the old one back and sent me a new one in 2 days at no charge just to make sure. C K
Glad you had a good experience. What exactly was the problem and what did they advise you to do?
Hi Everyone. This is the first time I have ever written anything in one of these forums, but I just felt I should relate my experience with majicjack. I just recently purchased the majicjack over the internet. I received it very quickly. I installed it and it worked just fine for one night. Then no matter what I did, it would not work again. I went to the majicjack website and chatted with a tech who walked me thru what needed to be done. Step by step I did what was said, and lo and behold, everything works just as it did the first night. So far I am very pleased. By the way, I use cable internet.
most the things you read that are bad are people from other companys that don’t like MJ becouse it only 20.00 per year. and the service from MJ it’s getting better with time. and other people will tell the truth about MJ. Stay well. And Happy MJing
My Service has been great with MJ. when I call I talk with the owner and he puts me the right person to talk to. Its working great. just plug it the back of your computer NOT the front.. Happy MJing .
After all I read about Magic Jack I glad I didn’t buy one na d beleive me I WON’T BUY ONE. Al the problems wit refunds and poor service…………
Sorry for not being clearer. Task Manager is part of the windows system. Easiest way to get to it is to hold down the CTRL,ALT and DEL keys at the same time. A window will pop up labeled WIndows Task Manager. Click on the tab named Processes, scoll down until you find Magicjack.exe. Right click on Magicjack.exe and run your mouse over set priority to select priority to high and left click. Done. That doesn’t fix aall problems but helps in many cases. Good luck.
From your start menu, click on control panel. In control panel click on power options (or something like that) Depending on your version of windows (and maybe your computer manufacturer ((sp.?))you will be offered the option to ‘time out’ your hard drive or go into sleep or hibernate modes. It does not make any difference what you monitor is set to do but everytrhing else needs to be set to ‘never’ if you want your MJ to work all the time. Otherwise you may need to restart your MJ after you strike a key on your computer to get out of the sleep or hibernate mode.
@Chuck W: OK, thanks, done! (did both!)
Not taken as arguing1 Thanks for hosting the forum. There is a site called ‘testyourvoip.com’ that will help you see if your interent speed is adequate for voip (voice over internet protocol). I think if your run this for a satellite connection you will see that the upload speed is far too slow. Thanks again for the forum.
@ Morgan,
Are your power management settings set to “always on”? Go to Magicjack.exe in the task manager and set the priority to high. That will give MJ priority over other processes trying to use the internet.
Chuck W: I don’t have a problem with MJ, but I want to see if the settings are “always on”. Where is the task manager? (Former Mac guy still learning the guts of PC)
No, do not try to use over ‘satellite intetrnet’. GL60 is correct that it is the same internet but it is not the same speed. There is too much ‘latentcy’ over the satellite connection (=lag time between when you speak and when you are heard). You up speed has to travel 47000 miles round trip and even at the speed of light it is to slow.
It might work some of the time but not most of the time.
@Chuck W.: thanks, don’t mean to argue, just learn. Seems that if MJ works on DSL, it would work with sat. Maybe sat. speeds are much slower than I realize.
I bought a Magic Jack from Victor at themagicjack.ca from his office in Hamilton. I had difficulty with the Jack and used the US online help. Two hours later after them having me screw around with the registry of my comp etc…it still didn’t work. I took it back to Victor who turned out to be a great guy and he gave me a new one no questions asked. He was packing up about 20 jacks as I was there so I have a hard time believing a lot of the horror stories. I would deal with this man again.
Does anyone know if MJ will work with satellite Internet? I’d like to get one for a friend of mine who uses Blue Sky.
@David A.: I have no experience, but am going to say yes… it’s the same internet, you are hooking up through your computer, so I can’t see why it wouldn’t work.
Also, beware that your calls will be dropped continuously which is not funny when you’re on hold with your utility company.
We HATE Magickjack. It’s anything but magical. We live in Houston and after 2 weeks have not been able to receive 1 call. My friends and I all purchased together and we are all having this problem. I can’t believe that they can even charge for this!!!! What a waste of money. I have a new computer, runs fast, brand new cordless phone too. However, when I pick up the phone there’s never a dial tone. Takes me about 5-6 tries to get one call through.
After hearing a story on NPR, I purchased MJ through their website. IT arrived a few days later, hooked it up with new problems and almost immediately chatted with a friend across the country for 45 minuntes with flawless reception. I have to say that it felt pretty great bypassing the phone company and not using my calling card.
That said, the entire web site purchasing experience was pretty lame. They need to hire some better web developers along with marketing and customer service personnel. Also, there are a bunch of unanswered questions like, what is my “location” used for (will it be published? (Most ecommerce sites allow you to supply a billing and separate shipping address.) Also, it what point during 2009 will my land line phone # be able to be transferred to MJ.
@Miket: Your number won’ t be transferred. The number you picked is the number you are stuck with.
Nice that you supported NPR
I just purchased a “Magic Jack” at Radioshack.
I have not installed it yet. The salesman at Radioshack said he bought one and has no problems
with it. He even told me that I could buy a
5 year plan at $59.95 through Magic-Jack, instead
of the $19.95 per year. I haven’t checked yet.
It does say on the package that you can send one to
a “relative, etc.” overseas and it should work
fine. After I try it out, I’ll send one to my
cousin in Ireland and see if it works out.
I feel safe by buyer it from Radioshack on their
Credit Card in case I have a problem, I’ll just bring it back to them! Dan, Ridge, NY
@Dan: if Radio Shack is selling them, seems highly unlikely Magic Jack is a “scam” like so many other posters have accused.
Excellent suggestion – Radio Shack will have to stand behind the products you sell. Good advice.
As a student from the old school, not being able to call a company which makes a product to MAKE phone calls sounds highly suspicious.
Nope, mine doesn’t work, either. VERY choppy audio most of the time.
Since I am not that technically equipped, I’m stuck with a product which works only SOME of the time.
If it CAN work correctly some times, certainly it can work that way ALL the time, just wish I knew how to tweak it.
I’m done with the “new” AT&T, will NOT be going back.
@Mark Edward Marchiafava: if you like paying $49-59-69 per MONTH just to have someone standing by, the Magic Jack isn’t for you. Remember this a one fee deal: so they have to run a shoestring operation.
REMINDER: I am not compensated by Magic Jack – the ads that appear are served from Google and I only get a very small cut – IF they are clicked on.
Hello there,
I can not get MJ to work on my computer. Once I plug it in my computer freezes. I tried tech support and they just said my computer is not compatible, but I also bought one for my mom who has the exact computer as me and hers works fine. Any ideas?
I am also getting freaked out by some of the comments I have been seeing. They listen to your phone conversations?! That’s a bit freaky. I have also seen on other blog sites about the credit card issues after ordering MJ. Unfortunately I already ordered it.
@Smiley: I’m not tech support, but make sure you give it plenty of time to load and run. What may appear to be freeze may be just slow loading. It does take a while.
Or you may have a conflict with your Anti-virus. Try disabling that for a test.
I would like a usa tel # to call for billing questions. I have received two charges on Credit card and I only purchaced one magicjack. Do you have a good number avaialable for the USA side? There support links in there web site stink. I tried for an hour for the online support and am stuck in a endless loop.
Thanks in advance for any assistance you can give.
@Aktim: no telephone numbers! Protest your credit card charges would be the only way to get their attention.
magicJack supports 3-way (conference) calling.
Calls must be incoming.
When you have two incoming calls (one on hold), press ## to start a three-way call. Press #* to end the three-way call.
Please check Ebay for thin clients that are set up for MagicJack. .
Also Terry, a poster here, seems to have indicated that he has one to sell?
For a thorough discussion of thin clients, please see another forum where there is a section devoted to thin clients.
I’ve been reading the reviews on the MJ, and am thinking about trying it. Between regular phone service, cell, and internet, we are drwoning in communications costs. We have a home network (1 PC and 2 laptops) running on broadband, which we have trouble with from time to time as it is, so I’m wondering if the solution to this would be the thin client that was discussed earlier. I’m not super tech savy, so I need very detailed information, or a “turnkey” type solution. Does anyone have some advice for me? If you are recommending products, can you please include a specific name or link that I can reference? Thanks so much. Your posts have been very informative so far.
@Lisa: Me Too! I like the idea, but would want “turn key” or “plug and play” (or very close.) Hopefully somebody will take up the challenge!
@Carole: Thanks for clarifying. Yes, AG’s all over the U.S. are bombarded with complaints that they are investigating. If the FL AG moves forward, please come back and post a link so everyone will know.
Thanks.
HI THERE! THE A.G. WAS NOT ANNOUNCINGH THEIRT PLANS—THEY WERE CONTACTING PEOPLE WHO HAD CONTACTED THEM AND COMPLAINED ABOUT MAGIC JACK—AS I HAD DONE. I WAS TGE KNUCKLEHEAD WHO ANNOUNCED THEIR PLANS, LOL
CAROLE
Typically whenever I have any isssues with my MJ it is due to my internet connection and not the MJ. So remember this when you automatically think it is the Majic Jack messing up. For Gods sakes people, this is a $20 device that I bought just to see how it works. I figured if it was good enough I could drop my phone line. If it wasn’t I’d play with it and throw it away when it died. We buy things everyday for more than $20 that really aren’t what they were supposed to be. Overall, I am very happy with my Majic Jack.
Hello there: I had trouble at first with the MJ and then I pluged it in the back of my computer and it’s been fine every since and that was about 6 month’s ago. and now I have 2 MJs. Don’t plug it the front. Happy MJing..
I GOT A LETTER FROM THE FLORIDA STATE’S ATTOTNEY’S OFRICE. THEY ARE PLANNING A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST MAGIC JACK FOR DISREPTUTABLE PRACTICES.
JUST THOUGHT I WOULD LET YOU ALL KNOW SO ANYONE WHO WANTS CAN CHECK INTO IT.
WISHING EVERYONE A BLESSED HOLIDAY SEASON!
@Carole: I doubt that the AG would announce their plans. Doesn’t make any sense. Can you provide a link to a source orther than you?
I have had my magicjack for about a week and everything was ok until today. I get nothing but dead air and the connection drops after about 20-30 seconds. I spent more than 7hours chatting with different tech reps, which is the only way to contact them, and still no service. It was always the same thing, same steps over and over and I get told to wait about 30min to an hour and try it again. The last rep I connected was very rude and arrogant. I am very disappointed as I loved it until today. I am going to give it a few more days to see waht happens. I do have to say though for the most part I connected with the tech chat very quickly and most were very polite and helpful in attempting to resolve the issue. I hope it get’s working as it is my only current line available.
@Ellen: How odd. Very frustrating that it would work and then quit. Don’t doubt it, but seems that MJ might have offered to replace it or refund your money. Good luck. Read the comments here, lots of advice that MJ doesn’t provide via tech support.
I will give magic jack at least a year of running before I get rid of the main land line. I use magic jack now just for the business phone. I just need more business LOL
@Chuck W: Hey, cool. They are that cheap? Hee. Very tempting, but I know so little I would surely get screwed! Very tempting.
Terry, That sounds like a great turnkey solution for anyone who would like a trouble free MJ.
GL60,
A thin CLient (TC) is a complete but small computer (about the size of a modest dictionary)that has no moving parts hence it uses minimal energy and is very close to silent. It uses solid state memory for a hard drive(usually 1Gb or less) and 512Mb of RAM. It runs a version of Windows XP called WinXP embedded that is pared down for use on this machine. For varioustechnical reasons, it needs no virus or adware protection, almost never needs to be rebooted and is very stable (no crashes). If you don’t like using your main computer for MJ and its annoying pop-up and/or don’t like leaving it on 24/7, a thin client is perfect. They run anywhere from $75 to $150 on ebay depending on , among other things, the amount of “hard’ drive spaqce and ram. Once set up they don’t need a key board or a monitor! It really turns your MJ into a complete solution for long distance or maybe as a replacement for your land line. My brother has now gotten rid of his landline and reduced his cell plan since he bgan using an MJ on a thin client.
@Terry:
@Chuck:
for those of us who don’t have a clue what a thin client is… it really is too bad, that for some people, having MJ requires this kind of knowledge.
Yes Chuck your right my home phone is the same way,I don’t know what I was thinking of but anyway the thin client is the way to go with magic jack but the booster took care of all the problems I was having with the choppy voice but never the less its all good now. I also have a HP5710 thin client that I set up for magic jack and am grabbing another magic jack and booster to go with it and putting it out on eBay already set up and ready to go. The thin client is the way to go on the magic jack phone.
My Cox Cable Digital phone does not run through my router. It is on a separate line that joins a cable junction box outside the house. Perhaps that helps.
My MJ is on an HP5700 1Gb/512Mb tc. It is the best thing I could do for call clarity. I also built one and sent it to my brother who was having the ” choppy calls” problem. Now his MJ works like a charm and his wife is no longer on his case about using the MJ to call her kids all over the country.
The Thin Client path is probably the best sol;ution although the addition of the Hawking unit can’t hurt!
Well Chuck I guess all tips help and I’m glad if this one helps someone out there. I also forgot to mention that I run everything on broadband (Atlantic Broadband) in which case our regular phone system is through the broad band company and as we all know it runs through there modem. So I have 2 phone systems and all works flawless.
@Chuck: thanks for the tips.
@Terry: Cool that you really are getting the power from MJ with booster and garage phone! That’s awesome. I just have a dedicated phone right into desktop running XP.
I have had the magic jack now for about 6 months. At first I was having all kinds of problems with voice breaking up on calls out going as well as incoming. I tried everything to fix the problem but none worked and was ready to place it in the trash can. Well I read on one of the forums about a thing called (Hawking Broadband Booster) so I got one and all my problems went away as far as the magic jack calls incoming and outgoing. It works flawless now. My phone is a GE Dect6.0
with one phone in the house and the other head set in my garage without a problem. I run my magic jack on a HP 5720 thin client by it self. I should also mention I am running a server along with 2 other computers and also the thin client on a linksys router and the calls are flawless with the Hawking Broadband Booster. I would recommend this if your having problems with voice breaking up. Hope this helps someone out there.
Rich,
Click on the menu button of your softphone for the MJ. Make sure the telephone has a green dot in front of it. Make sure your volume slider for both the microphone and the speaker are between 1/3 and 1/2 of maximum (higher than that seems to mess up voice quality). For whatever reason, sometimes after windows updates, the volume sliders get messed up. Good luck.
If that doesn’t work, go to http://www.magicjacksupport.com and do a search for your problem. There are more fixes from knowledgable people on that forum.
@Rich Lang: you’re screwed. There is no tech support. Nobody is home!
No way to get your money back from MJ. Hopefully, you paid by credit card and can get a refund that way.
Too bad, many of us are having great success with MJ, but then there are people like you who aren’t.
If MJ would only set up some way to get tech support! But I guess if they keep selling with crappy follow up service, why bother?
Thought my MJ was working fine. However,come to find out that I am not able to make outgoing calls. When I call, I do not hear ringing in my ear, however the phone I am calling is actually ringing. If they pick up, they don’t hear me and I don’t hear them. My MJ # comes up on their caller ID.
I have tried different phones (including the mounting cord), changing usb ports, switching users on the computer.
Sounds like it’s a bad unit. MJ’s chat is no help.
It is obviously no good to me, because I bought it for long distance calls. Does anybody know who I can contact to “talk” to about this problem, or have them send me a replacement?
I live in Arizona.
we’ve had MJs Address for 8 to 9 months and all there phone #s and all the owners names but thanks any way. thats old news..
Hi to all,
I found this contact info on MajicJack and wanted to pass it on to help you to track down this company. I hope that it helps.
Here is contact info info on ymax the company selling magic jack
State of Texas
Mailing Address
Primary: Mailing / PO Box
YMAX COMMUNICATIONS CORP.
P.O. BOX 6785
WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33405-6785
Email: peter.russo@ymaxcorp.com
Agent for Process
CT CORPORATION SYSTEM
350 NORTH ST. PAUL
DALLAS, TX 75201
Main: 214-979-1172
Alt: 214-979-1172
Fax: 214-754-0921
Email: info@ctadvantage.com
Contact
YMAX COMMUNICATIONS CORP.
P.O. BOX 6785
WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33405-6785
Main: 561-586-3380
Alt: 888-230-0060
Fax: 561-586-2328
Email: mike.shippey@ymaxcorp.com
Company / Physical
YMAX COMMUNICATIONS CORP.
5700 GEORGIA AVENUE
WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33405
Main: 561-586-3380
Alt: 888-230-0060
Fax: 561-586-2328
Email: peter.russo@ymaxcorp.com
Authorized Rep
YMAX COMMUNICATIONS CORP.
P.O. BOX 6785
WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33405-6785
Main: 561-586-3380
Alt: —
Fax: 561-586-2328
Email: peter.russo@ymaxcorp.com
The MJ seems like it works well. Haven’t had much time to play with it yet. It does seem my internet is moving slower now. Does anyone else see this?
I ordered MJ online and got it in the mail about 5 days later. Got email confirmation of my order and and email letting me know when it was shipped. When I plugged it in to my laptop (Vista) it loaded the software and 5 minutes later (registration time) I was making my firs call. I’ve only had a small glitch so far: for some reason, when I dialed from the phone it would dial 00 instead of my number. I restarted MJ and it worked fine after that.
One concern I do have is the lack of an uninstall. I’ve got it installed on my desk top now, and I’m thinking of removing it and just running it from my laptop in the office. But I want to make sure that I can really, and totally uninstall it. My other concern is about the ‘snooping’ reports that I’ve recently read on other sites. Not sure I want them having information about what I’m buying and all the card information that goes with it. I haven’t paid for anything yet, I pay at the end of my 30 trial period – online.
Matthew
@Rich Lang: Good question! I have the same complaint. Small one, but don’t need the icon on the desktop. Especially since MJ boots on startup. Annoying!
Every time I boot up my computer, Magicjack puts a shortcut on my desktop. Is there a fix for that?
I tried live chat with them several times, with no help.
Other than that annoying shortcut addition at boot up, everything is fine.
CANADIAN NUMBERS ARE AVAILABLE AT http://www.canadianmagicjack.ca!!!!
Hey ken, welcome to the future. When I got mine, I cancelled my long distance from ATT. I’m about to cancel the landline altogether and hook up to my entire house. My Magic Jack performance has been flawless.
To others on the board:
I have read someone state that their magicJack does not work when computer goes into sleep mode. I have a separate laptop running and my magicjack works fine when computer goes into hibernation. I never lose my dial tone. Is this the case with others here?
I got the Majic Jack yesterday. Plugged it in, the program downloaded and now I have a new phone number. I plugged the MJ into my wall plug and all the phones in the house work from this device. For $39 it is great. I will play with it for a while and get rid of my land line once this proves out. The only dislike is that even though my number is in my area code, it is still long distance for someone in my area to call it. There may be a way around that, just haven’t had a chance to look yet.
I have just received my Hawking Broadband Booster and hooked it up and it worked perfect. I was getting choppy voice on calls every day and have done everything that was posted on this forum to clear the problem up but nothing worked. So I invested the little bit of money into a Hawking Broadband Booster and POW it worked. I have the magic jack on a thin client 5720 and so far so good on calls in and out. I also put a filter on the line from the phone to the magic jack and it seems to work just fine. I may try it without the filter and see what happens, but as they say if its not broke don’t fix it. I am running a server as well as 2 other computers on the network and the 5720 so all in all there are 4 total and the Hawking Broadband Booster made things run allot smoother with phone calls and no lag on the network. I would recommend the Hawking Broadband Booster to clear up at least some of the problems.
Hope this helps for this type of problem
Purchase your magicJack from CallAmericaFree.net. They have great support! That’s where I got mine and I’m more than happy with it. They also have a Drivers Page where you can update your magicJack software if you have any issues with it on your machine. I didn’t have to update and it works just fine! They also offer their site in different languages which is really cool for international users.
oh yes, by the way,
An advertisement for Magic Jack was on AMC the cable movie channel recently…
Ed
I am happy to say that the Mac versionof Magic Jack does not have any pop ups at all. All I have is the voice mail reminder in a box next to the key pad.
I also had a beeping sound occur during one of my calls and wondered what was happening. I discovered in the list of calls that a friend of mine had just tried to call while i was on that call, so I am wondering if that was an alert that someone was calling? I don’t see a flash button so it really is not useful unless they add that. I have not had that happen anytime else up to now but will watch out for it.
I have not had any dropped calls and my international has worked fine since I was able to reset things the first few times I tried it…a technician helped me and even did something on their end to reset things.
I know that I have saved about $40, perhaps more. Both my land line and sprint are down to the basic $10-15 a month fee for having the services. I hope to get rid of Sprint altogether soon.
I have gotten them online ….you cannot use Safari and possibly other browsers to get the window to talk with them. Firefox works just fine.
Hope this helps and let me know if you have any feedback.
Ed
I got the majic jack few months ago. It worked for a month fine. Then it dropped the calls while talking. The annoying pop-up comes on several times in hour and it tries to install it again while intrupting the work flow. It has become such a nuisance that I just took it off. Any suggesyion?
@Clifford K: good advice, don’t plug it in a USB extension either. And if it doesn’t work in one USB, try another!
Since I received my MJ I pluged in the back of my computer and it work’s great. don’t plug it in the front.It’s been 9 month’s now and it’s works good. Happy MJing
I use the jack since a year.
Beginning: Wonderful.
Today: 11/2008 – a piece of shit!
Don’t buy.
Why?
The company is anonymous – ( yes the are online – but that’s it – ) with pictures of the management on the beach in FL laughing their ass of – since
A: you never get any support when needed.
Its a lie that you can reach them online !!!!!!!!!!!
B: Cox Company – (and others will follow ) – are sending a nasty tone repeating every second over the line in a frequenzy only to be heard by your ear.
Majic jack it on its end very soon!!
MAGICJACK – For the price it is simply the best. I am an IT guy and used all that are available and including vonage, and still Magicjack works perfect. I just called long distance call to Africa no problem at all. Installation on My MAC took few minutes.
PHONE JACK TEST: I have a land line. I did not disconnect from land line provider when I ran my little test using the MJ plugged into jack to get whole house access that VZ suggested. I did not remain connected and I guess I dodged a bullet.
Michelle, you are an idiot. Obviously, debit cards and credit cards are handled differently. And probably from Visa and not so much from MagicJack. A credit card is authorized for a certain amount. But when a debit card is authorized in the same way MagicJack authorizes a credit card, it takes the money out of the account because it is a debit account and not a credit account. And like I said, this is done from the credit card company side and not magic jack. And I’m with Tom, for this little amount of money, my MagicJack works great. And you Michelle are cutting off your nose despite your face. Just keep paying $500 a year for phone and long distance.
I have been using the Majicjack for about 6 months. While it has it’s minor annoyances. Let me just say that for $46 first year costs and $20 a year after that – it is well well well worth the small issues I’ve had. Sometimes I’ll have to redial a call and the voicemail is not the best but all in all it is an outstanding VALUE. I’ll more than deal with these issues and the tremendous savings. 🙂
Well, I just tried posting something, but said it was spam. Guess my bitch was too long.
michelle: There is no such website for Savings shopping network, there is no way to talk to a human..
Iggy: Please try to contact Savings shopping network because we are affiliated with that
Iggy: We automatically get the money since we can’t put a hold status for such transactions.
I could have sword I had just told him, there was NO website for them, hence no phone number.. no contact, no confirmation.. but im suppose to contact them.
Seems this company does not deal with Credit Cards & Debit Cards the same way.
Iggy: What card did you use credit card or debit card?
Iggy: We apologize for the inconvenience but we automatically get the money since we can’t put a hold status for such transactions. but even if we got you billed we are still keep that bill as a hold /pending on our end. If you decide not to continue with magicjack and you’re still under 30 day trial period, then we will give back the charge as “Refund” thank you for understanding.
Iggy: We only do this for security reasons
michelle: Again, you advertise, You dont pay for 30 days… thats a lie.. I did pay.. you have my money, and I have no devise..
Iggy: You can still get the refund if you don’t like it
michelle: Isnt it interesting, that I am getting a refund with a free trial?
Iggy: You use debit card not credit card Michelle
michelle: Please send me a confirmation of the order, so I know its even been shipped to the correct spot
Iggy: For example when you receive the device and suddenly you use your debit card and now you have insufficient funds to pay the device, did you get what I mean Michelle?
michelle: Again, Iggy, thats not advertised.. its advertised as FREE TRIAL.. Not put down a deposit and we will hold it till you like it or not .. Debit Card holders only..
michelle: Please send me confirmation were it is being shipped too
He was able to give me the information over change, but states he cannot send me a confirmation or any other information unless I register their product.
I was charged for my FEE trial. Did not receive a confirmation letter, and can only change my email if I register the items when I get them. Though I only ordered 1 and was charged for 2.. Could not find an email or phone or address for support, Just the chat.
I will be returning without opening the package.. The advertisement, support & billing was fraudulent, IMHO
Hi all, just an important note:
If you are going to plug in your Magic Jack in to a wall jack and you still have landline service, make absoutely sure to unplug your phone line from the network interface on the outside of the house, also tape it and mark DO NOT RECONNECT on the cord so the phone company won’t re-connect it. This is the same procedure that other VOIP providers ask you to do. The reason for this is that if you have a VOIP service (Magic Jack or whatever) and someone calls your landline number, the high voltage sent through the telephone company to make your phone ring can burn out your Magic Jack or VOIP adapter.
Also, if you have an older computer (one that doesn’t support booting from USB drives) and want to attempt this, you may need to get a powered USB hub, but do NOT plug the Magic Jack directly into the powered hub or the connection could melt since the Magic Jack does get warm. Use a USB extension cable to connect it to the powered hub.
Do not use a powered hub on newer computers since you could short the computer. This happemed to my IBM ThinkCenter.
(Of course, after your done testing, don’t forget to re-connect your landline plug on the phone company’s network interface or people may wonder why you never answer your phone. 🙂 )
As far as the numbers are concerned, they are simply having the same problem Google is having (they ran out of numbers is why the removed the invites for a while), I couldn’t even get a regular landline from a second chance phone company because there wasn’t any numbers available from the real phone company.
So if other CLEC’s lease the phone company’s lines, there is nothing that Magic Jack can do until they are able to lease some more.
Just for fun, go to 411.com and do a reverse number search, enter your Magic Jack number and see what pops up, in my case it is Verizon, which is a real phone company. It would be interesting to see how many numbers are attached to a phone company and how many are attached to an internet network (i.e. Level 3 Communications)
Jeff
Jeffrey´s last blog post..WARNING: Are you using the encrypted files feature of XP?
Ed: thanks for the Mac report. Interesting about your bluetooth. Hope that works out. Sounds like you are pushing MJ technology and it’s performing. Maybe MJ has hit the critical mass and is making significant upgrades.
Again: I am not paid by MJ – the ads placed on my site come from Google Ad Sense. Mouseover and you will see the source URL.
I am just a happy user.
@VZ follow up: It just registered that I also still have land line so that may be the glitch with the “double talk.” I won’t give up land line because I MJ doesn’t have a local access number.
@VZ: excellent point about antivirus.
I tried you suggestion about the whole house deal and it works: quality is crappy however. I had a noticeable hum and delay of about a second. I called a recording. I could hear it at lower volume then about a second later it would play louder while it continued at the lower volume.
Don’t think it was a phone problem. I did not use a splitter. I plugged the MJ into wall. I plugged corded phone into jack in another part of the house.
Great thinking! Hope somebody else tries it with better results.
I had an automatic update to my Imac version of magic jack which has added the contacts list which was missing and lists all the calls I have made including how long they are.
Also i am now able to use the microphone and built in speakers to take calls and switch to a phone if I want. However, I am still frustrated trying to connect a blue tooth head set for use on the system… but I think it is my computer not being able to recognize the headset which I suspect is a bit faulty. Anyone else with an imac having any success with bluetooth connectibility on magic jack?
I have been calling my friends in France, Holland and Jersey for several months and the 2 cent per minute is incredible! I purchased $10 worth of time which amounts to 500 minutes or over 8 hours worth of calls and I notice I still have $5.40 in credit.
My Sprint bill has gone down to the $10+ for the service and I hope to quit that soon…before my bill was in the range of $40 – 50 a month… so my MagicJack is saving me lots of money!
My panasonic cordless phone works fine after the upgrade. At first the upgrade seemed to be not taking but when I went into my magic jack and came back… the newer version came up …I was worried that I would have to go get the upgrade at a Windows machine like before but now it seems to be able to work fine on an Intel Mac…. not sure what happened with your
If it does not work, you may have to disconnect the wire coming in from the telephone pole.
Here’s an idea. I still have my land line so I can’t try this yet. I’ll turn that off once everyone has my new number. But what if you plug a phone line into magic jack and instead of plugging it into a phone, plug it into the house wall jack. I’m pretty sure you will then have phone service at all the other phone jacks in your entire house. And just install a splitter right out of magic jack and you’ll have a phone at that wall jack as well.
Can someone try it and see if it works?
I have around a 700MHZ HP laptop with XP Pro. Also hooked to my router via wireless card on my password protected network. I have a phone jack splitter out of Magic Jack. On one line I have a corded phone. On the other I have a wireless phone. No problems. I have no virus protection yet. Not sure if I’m going to install any.
Frank: Do you have any virus protection software? If not, maybe you have a virus. If you do, try to disable it and see if that fixes problems.
@VZ: GREAT! Interesting that it works on old laptop. What is the OS?
@Frank Miller: mine still working great! I have a corded phone plugged in so don’t know about cordless.
Anybody else?
I have had a MJ, working for over 4 months now, with NO Progblems. All of a sudden, it stopped working and , it says,
don’t dial, upgrading. After the upgrade, I can only dial out with an old, old, ma bell phone, or the computer key board, My phones unidens, that were working before now won’t dial out. Hmmmmmmmm.
Wonder what that is all about?
Anyone else having problems with dialing out with house phones.
I just got Magic Jack. Installed it with no problem on my oler laptop. It sounds great and works great. I will use this laptop for nothing but Magic Jack. Now I can cancel my AT&T phone service which was $40 per month. This will save me over $400 per year. Amazing! And what’s more amazing is the people complaining about minor problems. This is a start up company that will challenge the big boys in the telecom industry. So they had billing problems and took a little long with a refund. And installation problems could be attributed to your lack of computer knowledge. If you need your hand held and can’t figure this out, you deserve to keep paying for the old phone service.
@stacy b: That’s great! I think you may be the first to report in with a wireless.
I have Windows XP and use it with WI-FI, and Magic Jack works great! there may be a very slight delay in your conversation but, for the money you can’t beat it!
Live tech is dead tech. Magicjack tells me my email address is not valid. Bought it on a credit card and when I don’t pay they will email for sure. and they will use the invalid address to reach me. They don’t even have a return address. Worst mistake I ever made.
@Cindy Cary:
“MajicJack Spyware slows down your computer even when you are not using MagicJack”
This I KNOW to be untrue. I run antispyware weekly and have never – in over a year of using Magic Jack – had any spyware issues.
As far as the window coming to the front when a call is active: this is a benefit. Skype.com does the same thing! So what’s the problem?
It’s not for everyone (that’s been said a dozen times before.) If you aren’t comfortable with the TOS, don’t buy it.
I only use MJ for outbound long distance. It has performed flawlessly.
As far as the “popup.” It can be disabled… but I have a number of apps that launch a screen that tells what is loading. Including Windows, Excel, Word, Photoshop, etc. etc.
Just stay away from Magic Jack if it makes you feel hinky.
We’ll do just fine without you.
I am not affiliated with Magic Jack and get nothing from them.
This is not my own observations, but a posting borrowed from someone named Freedomfire on their blog called Broadband Nation. Their observations of the Terms of Service agreement for the Majic Jack are frightening. Read below
In the TOS you agree that everything in your computer is fair game for them to know about, all web sites, email, and numbers called are there info.
You agree to have all of your information resold to third parties.
There is no Un install for this program. Even if you stop using it, it gathers your information.
You are put under high pressure to sign up and pay for 5 years.
There is no published phone number, email address, or mailing address.
All customer support is done via type in the box chat.
There is no written warranty on the box. It breaks, you buy another to maintain your service.
Computer must be left on to make or receive calls.
Pop up window comes to front of screen anytime there is a call in or out call.
MajicJack Spyware slows down your computer even when you are not using MagicJack
Advertising is in the pop up box.
And yes, you do save around $150 a year not using a real Voip company.
At what little price people put on the information and security.
So ask yourself, is it really worth it?
Wait …. there’s more.
Majic Jack is owned and run by YMAX. They are not a stand alone VoIP provider.
Also …..
“The software for the MagicJack does not run directly from the device. It fully installs on the Windows system, which also makes the MagicJack less attractive for situations where one might want to use it on someone else’s computer (say when visiting family). Making this even worse, there was no easy way to uninstall the software from the system, with the program not even showing up in the Windows Remove Program window. UPDATE: MagicJack confirmed that there is currently no easy way to uninstall the software. The process required to uninstall the software requires multiple Windows Registry edits and the removal of several folders on the Windows system. Based on this, I wouldn’t recommend using the MagicJack on the systems of friends, family or business associates.” — (see magicjack fails to cast a voip spell)
Nobody should accept having to leave unwanted software on a personal computer, or any tell-tale trace of the MJ program on a public computer, a business workstation, or a borrowed device.
The key concepts here are action and intent. IF MJ is not actively monitoring computer activity and collecting data about its customers, that’s great. They would be taking no action that anyone could be concerned about.
But consider their intent. Their TOS spell out their intent — the intent to feed context sensitive advertising, which requires manipulation of information from your brain through their software into their processors. There seems to be little restriction of what info their software can see. (Kind of like your home builder installing bugging devices and cameras into your bedroom, just not yet watching the feed.) Then there is the ability of MJ to modify their software (upgrape, anyone?) at any time, without the common user’s ability to stop it, and that revision could include the spyware coding. While you, the uncommon user, have the ability to see what they are doing, the common user has no idea when the change is made. Now let’s consider MJ’s intent of not building in an UNINSTALL capability. I am suggesting that this exposes MJ’s intent to have their software on your PC whether you’re an active phone customer or not. What would be the intent of having that software on the PC of a former customer? (Consider, also, their “convenience” feature of taking the device with you so you can use it on a friend’s PC — thus installing the software on that machine, too!) What information could that software obtain that would be of value to MJ? And what could the common user do to stop it?
MJ could shut down their phone service tomorrow, and they have a window into 1 million PCs — to feed advertising, log key strokes, and obtain surfing patterns.
By laughing at the TOS provisions, you are overlooking that they are warning you of their intent — and protecting themselves from future legal action. “We told them what we were going to do. It was in our terms of service and the customers agreed.” Case dismissed.
Several years ago there was another nice utility that was offered — Weather Bug. Everyone liked Weather Bug. You downloaded a program and it was nice enough to give you accurate weather forecasts — while it spied on you. That little program helped popularize the anti-spyware industry, which now extracts $50 a year out of millions of users.
Steve,
I would have hung up on you way before that.Have you ever heard the honey vs vinegar argument.
Did you not confirm that your area code was available BEFORE you sent your money?
@Dale,
Thanks for your diary. It is very clear and concise. I have been using a thin client to power my MJ for the last 10 weeks. No fan,quiet and very little power consumption. I love the whole set-up.
@everyone
You need to see this for what it is, a simple device with some problem areas. If you are looking for rock solid performance, expect to pay more than $20/yr for it. That said, I wish the MJ business model were a bit more consumer friendly. I’m not sure that telephone contacts for problem solving would be cost effective but perhaps a live number to effect returns and other billing problems might be a good idea. This billing problem is a major issue. Although I purchased my MJ from the website, I would not now encourage people to do that. I would buy from a reseller like QVC who has a liberal return policy and sells other products besides MJ.
Don’t make the same mistake I did! Don’t go with Majic Jack! Worst customer service in the world. If they don’t have your area code, don’t ever plan on it. Been trying to get issues resolved for 6 months, but never get anything but run around! When I did try to use service, it has terrible echo. Here is a copy of my last round of chat with Majic Jack customer service, six months after getting their service! HOPE YOU READ THIS!
_____________________________________________Actual Chat to follow__
General Info
Chat start time Sep 23, 2008 3:29:44 PM EST
Chat end time Sep 23, 2008 4:17:42 PM EST
Duration (actual chatting time) 00:47:58
Operator Sandy
Chat Transcript
info: Please wait for a site operator to respond.
info: You are now chatting with ‘Antonio’
Antonio: Hello, how may I help you?
Steve: I have had my magic Jack for over 6 months. I have not been able to use it, because people living where I live would have to pay long distance to call me. I need area code 616. Give me a releastic date when available. Getting tired of the run around…
Antonio: Hi Steve, thanks for that information.
Antonio: Thank you for your patience. I will transfer you to a higher level of support. Please hold while I transfer you.
info: Please wait while I transfer the chat to the best suited site operator.
info: You are now chatting with ‘Sandy’
Steve: I paid for a year in advance, and I feel like I have been ripped off! To bad this little magic jack dongle doesnt do something else!
Steve: I have had my magic Jack for over 6 months. I have not been able to use it, because people living where I live would have to pay long distance to call me. I need area code 616. Give me a releastic date when available. Getting tired of the run around…
Sandy: Can i have the magicjack number that you are using right now?
Steve: *********
Sandy: Thank you.
Sandy: How long have you been using that number?
Steve: Since I got the device over 6 months ago. I never use it, because as I said, people in my area code, my friends and family would all have to pay long distance to call me.
Sandy: I see.
Sandy: Sorry but 616 area code is unavailable.
Steve: why
Steve: I have had my magic Jack for over 6 months. I have not been able to use it, because people living where I live would have to pay long distance to call me. I need area code 616. Give me a releastic date when available. Getting tired of the run around…
Sandy: For me to raise your concern to our engineering department, can I have your full name, email address and your physical address please.
Steve: This is exactly what has been happening. No one has answers! I was told initially that it would only be a month or so! 2 months later I was told it would be real soon, maybe month or so…. Now 6 months later, still no help!
Steve: *********
Sandy: That is why if you want me to help you, please give me the information that I needed so that we can fix it.
Steve: Wha else do you need?
Sandy: The area code is 616, right?
Steve: yes
Sandy: Good, please hold fpr a moment.
Sandy: thank you for holding.
Steve: ok
Sandy: Your issue has been forwarded to our engineering department so that they can work in to it.
Sandy: Need not to worry because i will keep on updating your concern so that they can expedite it.
Steve: What about the past 6 months that I have paid for that I have been unable to use???
Sandy: That was already including on the 1 year of service that you had with magicjack.
Steve: That’s nice, but my contract is up on april 6th and I will not have a full year. I guess we will see……maybe you should advertise that we promise to give you service sometime in a year….. See how many customers that gets you. NOT HAPPY AND I THINK YOU HAVE HAD PLENTY OF TIME TO GET STARTED!!
Sandy: I understand you with that but lots of them are being happy with the service.
Sandy: Unfortunately, your area code is unavailable that it is why you haven’t used it.
Steve: Good for them….wish I was……was told beforehand it would be within month….wouldn’t be having this conversation if you would have lived up to your end of the bargain. Why don’t you change my anniversary date to the date I get 616 established and I’ll give you how much time you need….how long that may ever be…
Sandy: How i wish I could do that but ones you register the number it is already on the system and we cannot able to do any changes.
Steve: I would like this coversation sent to whoever ownes this company. Not satisfied. If I don’t get a response back from the owner or board, or if my account is not changed immediately, I will start a negative ad campaign on the internet. Surprised about how easy it is now days for people to do checks! Don’t like to resort to this, but I am tired of all the run arounds I have gotten and that I am still getting. Just live up to your promises!
Steve: I am saving a copy of the conversation to justify my remarks.
Sandy: I understand.
info: Your chat transcript will be sent to stephenll@charter.net at the end of your chat.
Steve: Really wish you did…
Chat ended by “Majic JACK”. Guess I was hung up on!
BEWARE!
This is only good for emergency phone or a teen. Terrible when talking to important business prospects. I would stick with Packet 8 or Skype.
Joseph
they are full of crap! they will not give you a refund and do what they can to delay and avoid a reimbursement. And if they say if the RA number, refund or anything else is in the mail, do NOT believe them!
try to get a mailing address from them. HA! Do not wasted your time or efforts with them.
my magic jack is working perfectly!!! i too had to use the chat to fix a few problems with installation, but after moving it to a different usb port we were good!!! i am very impressed for the most part. The connection can be choppy at times, but most of the time it is good. I was worried about using an aircard with it instead of a real DSL/ethernet connection. But it works. I am most impressed with the ability to use it with my fax machine! I haven’t had a real land line phone for a few year, went strictly cellular. so i haven’t been able to have a fax and it was driving me crazy!
THANKS so much for this blog!
tina
For those of you looking to block the soft phone pop-up there is a solution. I found this little gem a couple of days ago and it works like a charm!!! (along with my MJ that I have had for over three months with ONLY one hiccup) Here’s the link…
http://www.download.com/MagicBlock/3000-2349_4-10838528.html?tag=lst-6&cdlPid=10862694
The item is described as follows…
MagicBlock 1.2
Blocks the magicJack Softphone window from popping up every time your phone is used.
It Does Not Interfere with your MJ or Phone calls at all.
Hope it helps
Monster
Why do you need someone to call this number? please explain Anonymous!
can you please call in this number 4054459574
Thank you all for your feedback. After looking into Majic Jack I will stay with Vonage. $28 per month, no long distance fess to US, Canada & Western Europe and GREAT SERVICE. Products with poor service is not worth the trouble. I would look into skype.
@all first of all i would like to thank goinglikesixy for an awsome blog has alot of traffic and people helping others out/
2ndly i also have a magic jack blog the link is at without the www jaysonberger.com/magic-jack-feed-back you can post there or read comments by clicking on comments or you may submit a support ticket to me as well for anyone having issues with device. also if anyone is building a website or blog ot has a website and would like to get there rank up in search englines you can help me help you by going to my blog and under link exchange network click on Reciprocal Link you can post your link in my data base in return you post mine
MJ Report, 9/13/2008 3:59pm PST
Ok I ran into a incoming phone problem. All incoming calls went to voice no rings, just right to voice.
I reset my system a few times and no change. So I tried the online chat. Talked with Charles and he had me move the MJ device to another port and then he gave me a call. It went thru and he hung up quickly. I guess they are not suppose to talk long on the phone when testing the incoming service.
Then I noticed that ,y 5 year plan that I paid for was not active. So I asked him to correct that. He said he would email me the code. Well the email never came. I also tried to use the chat to email me the chat log, that email never came also.
So I went online again with Felix and he just typed in the code into the chat window. I entered it and it said it was updated but my account still showed only one year of service. Ok, so I asked Felix to just activated it for me. He did and now my account shows 2013 for my license period.
So to sum it up the online chat worked for me for my problems but the fact that I could not get my device to accept incoming calls is a problem. I had to move my MJ device to another port which has me worried that this device can possible damage USB ports. Note: I did not try to put the device back on the original USB port.
Dale – (714)Placentia, CA
Purchase Date 5/29/2008 12:11 PM
MJ on Compaq Presario 6370us
Timer Warner Cable, up-374Kb, dn-2Mb
ZyXEL Cable Modem
Compaq wired direct to the ZyXEL via Ethernet
————————————————————
UNIDEN Model DCT7488-2, 2.4GHz, answering machine
UNIDEN subsystem model DCT728-4, 2.4GHz
Emerson EM-2191 analog phone
Simple one to 4 way splitter
All phones plugged into the splitter
hi does anyone know if the magic jack will work in the philippines? if so would it be clear? i just singed up for vonage an hour ago and started to look into magic jack. hehe
could someone tell me if the magic jack will work with a verizon wireless aircard? ( I do not have a cable connected to my computer for my internet service.) I just orderd the MJ yesterday, and seeing this today really has me worried. I too upgraded for another year of service. I certainly hope they get all of the bugs out soon… it was hard enough to get my husband to agree to try it…now if there are ANY problems i will NEVER hear the end of it!
Hey, I just got a Magic Jack and when I make a call they cannnot hear me but I can hear them. Everything else seems to be ok. Any suggestions?
Thanks, olcuss
I bought majic jack. I found the product to be poorly made, and the customer service to be horrible. My product was damaged, and I asked for a refund, they refused. When I asked for a new product, they charged me, although they told me they would relace it free. Wehn I reminded them of it, they told me that I misunderstood. I saved the chat sessions (because they refuse to give you a phone number where you can talk to someone), when I sent the chat sessions through, they said they would look into it. I have reported them to the BBB, and I am contacting the attorney general. I am also sending a letter of complaint to the company (they gave me a PO Box). I told them I will also be sending complaints on the web to as many people as I can reach, to warn people about this product, this company, and their lousy customer service.
LOCAL CANADIAN NUMBERS from http://www.awayishi.com working on your Magicjack!
CANADIAN LOCAL NUMBERS working on the Magicjack.
I would like to say I got my magicjack very quickly and it worked just as advertised. It did change my sound/speaker settings, but that was easily corrected. I will say though, a day after using the magicjack , I ran a virus scan of my computer and discovered a virus. I eradicated the virus and al was well, until I used the magicjack again , and after another scan I discovered the same virus. I am fairly certain the magicjack software contains spyware of some sort which I find very disheartening since I have already raved about it to all my family and friends. Since i have only had the Magicjack for 2 weeks , I can not comment on the longevity of the device, but am hoping is lasts longer than the 30 day guarantee , especially since I signed up for the promotional 4 or 5 year contract deal.
I’ve had my Magic Jack since 05/30/2008 and I have had great success with it. I receive phones calls from Nevada and CA and international calls from Taipei Taiwan with virtually no problems. If I do experience any voice problems I simply recall or have the person calling me recall my phone.
For $49.95 for the Five Year Platinum Preferred Plan
and
$39.95 for the device I now have inexpensive local and long distance phone service for the next five years.
Now I can’t begin to understand all these problems that folks are reporting but I can tell you anytime you have a device that uses a computer and the internet to provide VOIP services you are surely going to have problems if you do not have a clean computer and a robust internet connection. I purposely set aside a dedicated older computer for this device and I have a robust internet connection via Time Warners Cable Service. If you DO HAVE a clean computer and a robust internet connection then I would say expect this device to give you good to average results. IF you DO NOT HAVE a clean computer and a robust internet connection then your results will vary from average to poor.
BTW, I have down-graded my local phone service to local service only and have been saving $39.00 a month. So in another month this device will have paid for itself and I will be saving $468.00 a year for the next 5 years or approximately $2223.00 over a 5 year period. Worst scenario would be if they go out of business in a year from my purchase date of 05/30/2008. Even if that happens I will still have saved $351.00 for the year of service.
One happy MJ customer,
Dale – (714)Placentia, CA
MJ on Compaq Presario 6370us
Timer Warner Cable, up-374Kb, dn-2Mb
ZyXEL Cable Modem
Compaq wired direct to the ZyXEL via Ethernet
————————————————————
UNIDEN Model DCT7488-2, 2.4GHz, answering machine
UNIDEN subsystem model DCT728-4, 2.4GHz
Emerson EM-2191 analog phone
Simple one to 4 way splitter
All phones plugged into the splitter
Magic Jack sucks! I cannot even complete a phone call. I finally received one successfully (if you can call it that), but I could not hear half of what was said. I cancelled before thirty days, and the sneaky f**ks charged my bank account the next day (before thirty days). I, basically, spent forty bucks for a plastic piece of trash.
Misdirected PHONE RAGE:
It seems the company is in its early stage and has a lot of quirks to work out. We are still angry at all the phone companies (land and cell) for their outrageous bills, games and cancellation fees.
So here comes a solution that we deep down, want to work so well that we cannot tolerate any mess ups. So we have ‘phone rage’ and many cannot understand that $40 is less than $400.
Sometimes a product line will have lemons, but it seems many problems are from the computer and security programs installed. So if you can fix the problems, I think we the little people, have a winner and a money saver.
Thou I wish they had a great customer service, I truly believe the product would not be as cheap. For those truly experiencing problems, my sincere condolences.
I ordered a MJ from TV. Got it in shockingly fast time. Tried it and it works great. Yes, to my surpize, they billed me too soon, but here is some type of company excuse/explanation:
Complaints bring Magic Jack an ‘F’ from Better Business Bureau
By Mc Nelly Torres | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
August 27, 2008
When consumers ordered Magic Jack, a computer gadget that lets people make phone calls over the Internet, they thought the product would help eliminate their monthly telephone bills.
But since the Magic Jack company launched in January in West Palm Beach, it has been the subject of 531 complaints with the Better Business Bureau. Consumers have complained that the Magic Jack device didn’t work as promised, and others say the company charged them before a free 30-day trial period advertised by the firm had ended.
The bureau gave Magic Jack an “F” rating based on the company’s complaint history, which includes failure to respond to complaints and other factors.
The nonregulatory organization is warning consumers to be wary of companies that offer a free trial of their products.
Dan Borislow, Magic Jack’s inventor and owner, said the company responded to customers’ concerns quickly and the online system is set up to guide customers when they want to return the product. Many customers, Borislow said, used debit cards and were wrongly charged before the free trial ended, but that glitch has been corrected.
@all
To everyone who is having issues with there magic jack and can not figure somthing out talking with others via a blog is one of the best ways to fix common problems i to have a blog if anyone is interested in going and posting comments and read what others have to say as well and if your problem isnt listed on the right hand side of my blog you will see an image the says os ticket click on that and you can submit to me a trouble ticket personally and i will answer each and every question to the best of my ability here is my website address http://jaysonberger.com/magic-jack-feed-back/
I ordered Magic Jack in January or Feb of this year. I got the device, It installed and works great!
The only thing I am wondering is if anybody besides me started getting lots of spam e-mail sometime after subscribing to Magic Jack?
I used to never get spam at all, and lately I have loads of it. And if I trace it back to when it started, it was not long after I subscribed to MJ.
If it is from MJ, the spam wouldn’t bother me so much, BUT, most of these spams are the check scams. Give us a little money and your supposed to get a lot from us. that type of thing.
I like MJ so far, but I don’t want to get a service at the expense of others…
The spam could be from somewhere else, and i can’t prove it is from MJ. Just wondered if anybody else noticed the same thing.
I ordered the mj on 7/6/08, and received a confirmation number that my cc would not be charged the $46.90 until 8/6/08. I have been reading this blog and was not anticipating what may lie ahead. However, I never did receive the little devil, and as of today, my cc has not been charged. I guess someone up there likes me.
JRATT
Yes, I knew I was responsible for the shipping cost to send it back…I was telling Andre that he was responsible for them as well. Thanks though!
I have been on the phone all day with my credit card company to keep Magic Jack from charging my credit card. Finally, out of frustration I just called my credit card company and reported my card stolen, and verified my account was not charged yet for this rip off product-but $213.73 was pending to go on my cc. by midnight, thank God I did not give up with my cc. comapany and just told them my c.c was stolen or magic jack would of ripped me off like so many others. It all began yesterday when I ordered their product, it sounded like you recieved 2 magic jacks for the price of one and it would only cost you $59.95 plus $6.95 shipping and handling for 5 years of service! Well, who could pass that up? Then I received an email that if I needed to modify my order to reply back to the email right away because my 2 magic jacks were being sent and my total is only $213.70! Well I about had a heart attack I emailed them back 5 times with no reply. Then today I got an email that it had been sent out so I did the customer service Live Chat with two different representatives and got no where, they both said sorry for your incovenience but there is nothing we can do to help you, you can send it back (with my own money) and they will refund my money. Well that only made me determined to stop this rip off! Further more their email had said that I would be charged $119.90 on 8-22-08 (today) and again on 9-20-08 for $93.80. Well according to my c.c company they were going to charge my card the whold amount today! Beware, if it sounds too good to be true it is! I have always been careful in ordering products but this one almost had me because a friend/neighbor was raving how wonderful it is, but she has DSL and I only have dial up and I did not know until reading complaints on the internet today it does not work on dial up (which they don’t advertise).
Franie, Your return shipping charges will not be paid by MJ. IF you go to their website http://www.magicjack.com at the bottom of the screen click on FAQ’s/knowkedgebase. Next page-click on How do I return my MJ? Next page-click on If I return my MJ within the 30 day free trial am I responsible for any charges? The answer is Yes, You are responsible for the return shipping. The guy on the TV is wrong. Be glad you received a refund of the initial shipping charge most, companies make you pay for shipping charges.
Andre
“I can find no information whatsoever on magicJack’s web site how my return shipping costs will be absorbed by the company, as repeatedly represented during the informercial.” You are responsible for the shipping cost. When I returned mine, I put a tracking number on there so I knew when they received it.
And btw…I did receive a full refund. Our refund was just over $90.00 which included the inital shipping.
Hi,
I connected the MJ device to the computer’s USB port and it is not downloading the software becuase the computer is locked down (this is my office laptop). if I connect the same in my personal laptop – it is working like a charm. So network is not the problem. I need this to be working in my office laptop since I am travelling overseas on a official trip and the company is not willing to provide me a cell phone (what a shame!)
Thanks
Venkat
My experience…and a few impressions:
First, my experience: I watched the entire 30 minute nationally televised infomercial on July 26, 2008….and listened to the magicJack spokesperson state on 3 occasions that the “30 day free trial no obligation” policy would even include return shipping charges if you wanted to return the device. As soon as the infomercial concluded I called the toll free number displayed throughout the infomercial and placed my order through an automated computer system.
I received the device 3 days later. Connected the device to my Dell XPS laptop running Windows XP. Setup was relatively easy and straightforward…within 10 minutes I was able to make and receive phone calls. Local prefix for my locale (Louisville, Kentucky) was available, which I chose. As others here have noted, voice mail is not the best, but functional.
Over the next few days I was able to make long distance phone calls with mixed results. On some occasions, the calls proved equal in quality to landline calls. On other occasions, there was an echo that proved to be quite annoying. On one occasion, the person I called (50 miles away) stated they could barely hear me, and I was forced to shout into the handset.
A few days later, a more serious problem arose…the presence of a strong, loud, low frequency “humm”, as if the circuit was experiencing an electrical short of sorts. This hum was present on both ends of the phone conversation. Troubleshooting over several days included repeatedly rebooting the computer and magicJack USB connection, performing the “fix” offered via the company’s desktop display, and switching out phones and handsets connected to the device itself…all to no avail. In the end, I concluded that my device was defective in some manner and I decided to return it.
After googling “magicJack returns,” I found several blogs and web sites, like this one, in which various problems were detailed concerning with the operation of the device during ownership and the return procedure. Specifically, many who posted on those blogs complained about the protracted process they experienced in obtaining an RMA number from the company. I do not understand these complaints, as I was able to obtain a completed RMA form, with the information specific to my order already printed, by spending less than 5 minutes on magicJack’s web site and by listing my order number, tracking number and email address. It was not necessary for me to list my credit card number in order to obtain the RMA form, nor was it necessary for me to engage “live chat.” However, I can find no information whatsoever on magicJack’s web site how my return shipping costs will be absorbed by the company, as repeatedly represented during the informercial.
A few minutes ago I checked my credit card account and I have determined that my account has not yet been charged the $46.90 ($39.95 for the device/first year of service and $6.95 for standard S/H).
Now, a few impression:
One — the “promise” of this technology is exciting !! The prospect of spending only $20 per year to enjoy unlimited long distance phone calls is especially inviting; indeed, it is the reason why all of us are reading this blog — because we find the value too enticing to reject. In my opinion, however, which is not so much based on my own experience as it is the reported experiences of others, the inconsistent operation of the device, and its seemingly random moments to cease functioning as designed, renders it “not ready for prime time.”
“Sometimes the device works. Sometimes it does not. And the operator has no advance notice when the device will work and when it will not.” Those 3 factual sentences, which I believe fairly and accurately summarize the experiences of the vast majority of those who have purchased the device, are sufficient for me to look to alternative technologies upon which to rely for my telecommunications needs. In this day and age first impressions with friends, family, colleagues and business prospects are critically important, and a reliable platform to convey those impressions is essential. I need to be able to depend on the platform I have chosen to make those impressions….even if I have to pay substantially more than $20 per year to do so. It is simply unacceptable for this platform to work one day but not another, and to repeat the pattern with no known permanent fix in sight.
Two — I find troubling Bob Barber’s attempts to gloss over the poor experiences of some who have posted here regarding the company’s apparent practice of charging some purchasers’ checking / credit accounts prior to the expiration of the 30 day trial period. To respond to these complaints by (paraphrasing here) admonishing them for their failure to appreciate that the company is experiencing “growing pains” is nothing less than a misguided effort to redirect the focus from the fact that…when a company markets its product by representing the purchaser will not be charged for at least 30 days, and the purchaser is charged prior to the 30 days period, the company has engaged in false, deceptive and misleading advertising, which I assume is actionable as tortious misconduct in Florida as it is in Kentucky. In my opinion, that is not a small matter. Indeed, if this practice is widespread by the company, and Mr. Barber’s repeated claims of the great numbers of devices sold provide some understanding of the potential scale of the issue, it may even support the certification of class action status.
Three — Customer service for any company should never be conditioned upon those who are willing to submit a complaint with the consumer protection division of their state’s Office of Attorney General. This is more than shameful — it is wholly unacceptable.
Four — My previous comments notwithstanding, I wish this company (and its developers) well, and I sincerely hope they succeed in creating the product that we can embrace as a reliable, dependable, cost-effective alternative to the telecommunication companies which we have been limited to for decades. I, for one, will be watching with enthusiastic anticipation.
Jean, according to the MJ web-site MagicJack.com you will be able to some time in the future but, not right now. If, you go to the MJ site at the bottom of the page and click on the FAQ/Knowledgebase you can find out the answers to many of your questions. The phone number issue has not been updated since Jan 2008. I really don’t understand why a phone company that says they are operating in all fifty states can’t let you keep your current phone number or have the capability of having all area codes in the United States.
Can I use my current phone number?
I checked the t-mobile website and found out that you have to have t-mobile cell phone service to get the $10.00 per month home phone service. I don’t like cell phones had one for two years and got rid of it because I’m at home 80 percent of the time.
I sent my MJ back on 8-8-08 because they do not have the 406 area code yet. I was on the 30 day free trial. I got an e-mail today from MJ saying that they had received the MJ and I would not be charged. I did send it with a return receipt post card so, I would have a signature and date when it was received. I was surprised to get the e-mail from MJ. They said my credit card would be charged on 8-26-08 when I ordered the MJ. I’ll let you know if they charge my credit card after 8-26-08. I will order from them again when the 406 area code becomes available. I think they should have a telephone number that you can call if there is a problem. I noticed that t-mobile is advertising $10.00 per month home phone service if you have broadband. I’m going to check with one of their reps to see if you need to have their cell phone service or, if this is just for a limited time offer and the price will go up later. This will save me $26.00 per month, I’m paying my cable company $36.00 per month for phone service. I’ll let you know what I find out about t-mobile. I think you are going to see a lot of phone companies lowering their rates for internet phone service in the coming months.
I ordered MJ from QVC because it was cheaper than on the mj website, although i wasn’t offered the 30 day free trial, i decided to go this route because qvc has a better return policy and didn’t want to have to go through the hassle other folks have. I got it and plugged it in and worked like a charm. Ran it through the all the test only found that the voice mail isn’t all that great but other than that I am happy with it. I followed the advise of another member on here and installed it on my computer on it own windows account to avoid all the popup softphone screen, works very well. Hope this company lasts and doesn’t go belly up.
Taken
Yes…I did get delivery confirmation. I read that advice somewhere on this page.
I haven’t even tried to call them. I did however make copies of every piece of paper…email, credit card transaction details, all info from magicJack, Delivery Confirmation from when we received it…you name it, I copied (stamped COPY) and put it in with the equipment and put a note on there that we didn’t need it.
I’m really hoping I don’t get the run around that I read about here for some people! You’d hope that magicJack would learn, huh?!
@taken: so glad that it worked out. You are spot-on when you say it’s not enough to have a better mousetrap. Hopefully MJ will learn this before they get killed by their own success.
REFUNDED ALL MONEY:
I want to post today that I have received full credit today from magicjack for the original amount and for the second charge that was debited from my account. So there is credibility.
I want to also mention that when you return the item it goes to a post office box.
Franie, when you return the magicjack please make certain you go to the post office and get certified mail or something that confirms delivery.
My idea is when a company offers something that company follows through with the offer. I do not care how good a product or service is if the “whole total package” is not as advertised. The magicjack company probably does have a wonderful product as some have had much success with it. When magicjack rids itself of the baggage and red flags that come up with not following through on their 30 day free trial, no support except for live chat, no phone number, no working email, and no physical address there will be no reason to be skeptical about the purchase and the only issues would be how to get it to operate for all the individual operating systems.
The whole package also includes the resellers as they also are spokepersons for the company. Some of the resellers post defensive and negative replies to people with legitimate concerns, not only here but on other sites as well.
It is possible that I will revisit magicjack in the future.
To Bob Spear:
USMC, 1964-1973, Vietnam Veteran, DaNang (1966-1967)
Bob Barber
Oops…lol
Thank you!
Nothing really about our experience. But after reading this…I hope we can still get a refund…WOW!
I was just asking about the 30-day trial because my husband ordered this, before asking if we REALLY needed it, which we don’t. We just don’t make enough long distance calls!
Anyway..he ordered it on 07-13-08 and we received it on 07-17-08. I’ve got it all together and would like to return it today. I just want to make sure I’m within the 30-day trial period. I’ve got the RMA and the envelope addressed and it’s ready to go for the most part.
Thanks you!
@Franie: Good question! Some are getting charged right away (which isn’t what they say in ads) and some are getting charged 30 days after activating the device. I don’t know what happens if you order it and don’t activate it for a month!
Let me know your experience.
When does the 30-day trial begin? When you order or when you receive it in the mail?
As for Magic Jack, in my opinion they are a reputable company- my bank account was credited the amount of the device and the phone service. I had returned it the day after I received it in the mail- partly because of all the bad press about it , on this blog and partly because I was foolish to order it in the first place as it would not work for my particular need. I never opened the package nor tried the device so I have nothing to add about it. For those who say, “what did you expect when you ordered it and the account was charged” I have only one defense, and that was the word of the seller had stated, the amount would be charged only AFTER the 3o day trial and if the customer was satisfied. I must be old fashioned, but I still expect people to stick by their word- something that sometimes seems to be foregotten in our modern society. I was in the 68′ TET offensive in Saigon, and carried my dead buddy to a dust-off chopper, we had promised each other if one of us got hit, the other would give his word to get him out. This of course isn’t anything like that- but I still trust in another’s word .
Thanks to all- my apology to Magic Jack if I anything was taken wrongly here. As far as I know it is an excellent product and they credited the amount in a timely fashion.
Bob Spear, US Navy 1965-1972
@Bill: thanks for sharing your international experience. I think you are the first to install it in another country.
You’re also the first with the Tigerjet – thanks. Hopefully we can get some response to your questions.
I bought a Magic Jack less two weeks ago. I am an airline pilot and travel all over the world. I have Skpe, Net2phone, and now Magic Jack. I am now in Zurich and have used it to call home. Works fine. I was in Germany and New York a few days ago and it works there also. I even plug in the hotel phone and no problems. My wife calls me on her cell and if I am connected on the internet, the phone rings. You can’t beat the price. I did have something come up when I updated my computer using Windows update. I get an update for hardware something called “TigerJet USB internet phone by Tigerjet” it is a software udate for a usb device. If you google Tigerjet you get a website describing a device that looks just like the Magicjack device. If I update the device will this affect the Magic Jack? Has anyone else seen this when they update windows? (I have windows XP SP3 installed)
Bill
I don’t know if you guys and gals have been reading the press lately, but magicJack is on a roll. Surpassing the 750,000 unit sold mark is an indication that magicJack is not going belly up anytime soon.
And, if you consider that less than 7% of magicJacks are returned, you can be assured that other companies are looking at magicJack now as a company to be respected and admired.
Sure, there may be some growth pains, especially in customer service, and in billing, but you must admit that magicJack product is more than a toy. It is the real deal. And with more products on the way, YMax/magicJack will eventually become the #1 phone company in the world.
If you consider the fact that my company (I am a magicJack Reseller) will have employees across the country within the next 30 days, then you’ll know that the magicJack will definately be King of the Industry. And when my employees get their hands on the upcoming magicJack wireless products, say hello to the hundreds of thousands of new magicJack customers. That means that other companies will have to give up some.
I actually feel sorry for other VoIP companies that do not have modern switches to carry their own signals. They should have been doing what YMax/magicJack did. Who knows, they may be sucked up as being part of the umbrella of magicJack companies.
I truly believe that the majority of you can actually see the handwriting on the wall. You hear about how many new subscribers other companies are gaining each quarter, but you don’t hear about how many subscribers they are losing at the same time. But, I don’t want to get those companies in an uproar.
With femtocell & WiMAX being talked about everyday now in the industry, magicJack is now in a very commanding position. Other companies will have to re-think their marketing plans just to keep up with magicJack.
I am very proud to be a magicJack Reseller, and look forward to serving my new customers & enjoy the profits at the same time.
Good Luck to all of you!
@Tom C: I agree. The way they handle credit cards goes right to the heart of their reputation. It leaves this nagging feeling that if MJ goes belly up, what happens to those numbers?
Thanks for transcribing the commercial.
To goinglikesixty:
Thank you sir or mame, I appreciate the plug.
Kentucky is a beautiful State. I have been through Kentucky many times as a rear Pilot Car Escort, escorting some of the widest OVERSIZE LOADs you have ever seen. I remember one trip from Canada via New York via Kentucky to Everett, Washington. The load was 23 1/2′ wide, and 118′ long. We had a trail of vehicles 10 miles long behind us, doing 25 mph. That particular segment of the trip lasted more than 3 hours. Lights were flashing everywhere. We had two escort vehicles, one service truck and two State police escorting that load.
That load was the top half of a Cargo Lift for the Boeing 787. After delivering the top half, I had to travel back to the Wyoming/South Dakota border to escort the bottom half load to Boeing also.
On another trip, I lodged in Kentucky and visited Metropolis, IL and saw the 12′ statue of Superman.
Here’s the Internet commercial.
After your free 30 day trial your card will be charged $39.95 for your magicJack which includes a one year license. The $39.95 price above will be authorized on your credit card, but not charged to your credit card until the end of your free trial period. Click here to buy now! If for any reason the magicJack does not perform just as we say, you can return it to us during the first 30-days, and your card will not be charged. To request a Return Authorization Number, follow these four steps:
1. Click here and then …
2. In the comments, ask for an “RMA number”.
3. Press “Submit”.
Dear COME ON DOWN!
The issues associated with the billing aspects are important to people that rely on a company to be upfront. If the company isn’t, then they are not reputable. Simple as that. I guess integrity and doing what you say aren’t important to you and that is what is wrong with society today. Make a buck! The hell with everyone else!
To goinglikesixty. I called my phone service carrier to retain my internet service (through them) and did reduce my phone service by $25/mo. by going to all calls $.10/min(even local). In other words I can’t make any calls on my land line without a charge. That’s fine, I will use my MJ now exclusively. I now have found a way to save $25/mo. by getting MJ.
The billing still bothers me!!!
Why in the world are you complaining? Money and the magicJack are two different things. If you want the magicJack, then use it. If you are having problems with the money side, then take care of it. But don’t say to everyone that may want a magicJack to return the magicJack if you have problems with billing.
That’s why I said earlier not to confuse people. Do you understand what I am saying.
Did you use the magicJack?
If you did not use the magicJack, then why are you trying to associate money with the operation of the magicJack product? I don’t seem to understand your logic. What are you really trying to say?
I love the magicJack. No problem. Yet, I did have one problem with billing that has been taken care of. I didn’t come into this blog and blabber away what magicJack did to me. magicJack did take care of the problem.
Please clarify.
TAKEN–Contact your state’s Attorney General and file a complaint. They will get results for you. I went thru the same balogna, and the S.A.G. worked wonders for me! Good luck.
CRE
@taken: you are absolutely correct. The website says your card will not be charged until you accept it. I have not seen the infomercial, but will take your word for it.
This is a place were you can leave your feedback about Magic Jack. Bob is a seller of Magic Jack… so he’s kind of pushy.
You had a bad experience and wanted to alert others. That’s why we’re here.
I am not giving my name in here or anywhere on the internet. I had plenty of money in my bank account. My beef is that I was immediately charged for the magicjack with no free trial. I did not use it because I was promised a free trial and did not receive it. My bank closed out my cards with my permission and suggested I return the magic jack. I did this after a infomercial and had no choice as to whether to use credit or debit.
I don’t know what you mean “are you a plant?” I don’t know what you mean about causing confusion in this room. I am merely telling my story as to why my bank, my attorney and my family think I have been frauded.
I have returned the item 2 weeks ago and have received no credit but have had additional charges to my bank account which has since been closed. And I have been spammed with phone calls knowing all the information about us that only that transaction can be the source.
I work for no one. I am a 68 year old trying to live within my means and finding valuable sources for all the new technical stuff in the world today. I meant no harm to anyone.
My beef is I can receive no communication with this company and I have had money taken from my account.
When I googled magicjack fraud, this site came up so this is where I put my story.
Does that clear up your concern Bob Barker? I hope so as I meant no harm. I thought I could air it out here.
To Taken:
Please Identify yourself. What is your name?
I don’t understand what your beef is. It doesn’t make sense to order something, and then not use it. If you knew you did not hae enough money in the bank, why did you use your Debit Card?
In just about all cases I have used my Debit Card for any purchase or Cash withdrawal, money has been deducted from my bank account.
Whenever I use my Credit Card, no money is deducted immediately from the balance.
What gives here? Are you a plant, and just causing confusion in this room?
What company do you work for? Is it a Voip company?
I don’t get it. When I ordered my MJ, direct off their web-site, I had no shipping issues, (got it in 2 days, w/o using rush shipping or processing). I also had no issues with them waiting to charge my card until the 30 days were up.
I did have some technical problems, twice. In each case, it was a faulty MJ. But the owners of the company responded very promptly and I got replacements quite quickly, (with the first one being personnally delivered).
So far, my 3rd MJ has been working fine. Also, the one I got for my daughter has been fine.
Maybe some of the shipping/billing issues are resellers and not MJ directly.
I got taken. I responded to an infomercial. I was charged immediately. I contacted live chat who informed me that it was not a charge. It’s been 4 weeks and the charge is still there, so the bank has confirmed it was charged, immediately without a waiting period. After three long conversations with live chat I finally got a RMA that printed out. The first two would not print out on firefox.So I used internet explorer. The live chat told me to “just put the number on the paper with the pencil”–obviously not fluent in English.
I returned it over ten days ago and within the 30 days and there has been no credit. In fact there is another charge of 39.95 on my account. I have called every number I have been given- 5615942140 from a superior at live chat and from the contact number on the debit at the bank. This is nothing but a voice mail that tells you to use live chat. It does tell you to call 2814041551 for billing questions. It is nothing but a voice mail that tells you to wait for the next available agent but after an hour, I hung up as I do not believe there is a person to help.
The bank and I have canceled any cards associated with the bank account as well as closing the account. We also started receiving spam phone calls from a caller who knew the card number. Since this is the only thing we have used this card for, we are well aware that our card number and information is being “farmed” out. While visiting other boards on magic jack, it is my understanding that when magic jack is purchased online, there is a disclaimer that says they will sell you information. I received no disclaimer when purchasing from the information. In fact that entire purchase was done by electronically voice with me filling in the blanks. For example electronic voice says “what is your name” with a pause and you fill in the blanks.
So I am out almost 200 bucks. I have no clue whether it works or not. I returned as soon as I was charged for a free trial. Scam it is.
Ed,
I have to disagree with you. According to the infomercial, you are not charged until the 30 day free trial is over…is this a reputable company that doesn’t do what it says it will do? ISO guidelines with any good business are say what you do, do what you say and mean it.
I was also charged immediately but decided not to pursue it.
Yes, you should have enough money in your account to cover anything you’ve transacted and that is the way I do business but some people are day to day.
Received the package by UPS today from MajicJack, so fears about that had been alleviated- however- reading all the comments here both pro and con on this product I’ve elected to send it back unopen, its in the mail today back to Florida. I’ve enclosed a letter with explanation and request for my charges be reinsated in my bank account- There was just something about that, which rubbed me the wrong way, after it had said “won’t be charged until the 30 day trial is up” unquote. The product may very well be 100% a great item to have, no deference to quality, delivery or otherwise intended. I just am skeptical of a company saying “one thing” then doing another. I’ll update for everyone if problems with reimburesment. Thanks all and god bless our brave troops overseas!
Don’t ever order anything if you don’t have the funds on hand. Have you noticed that banks don’t even honor post dated checks? As soon as anyone presents them they are payable and it often results in bounced checks even if the date is later. Most companies will bill you something right away… you certainly could not have expected to receive the device without some sort of charge. That just does not happen in life.
Having a business you should be more aware of how things happen.
@Ed: now that’s a helluva report. Sure helps when you provide all the details. I gotta think your comment will help others. Thanks.
I am back to report on my situation. I run my Magic Jack on my intel iMac and at first I did not download the fix (you have to do that on a window’s machine and I don’t have one… finally I went and did it at a copy center where you can rent a pc for about 15 minutes. I got the inperson tech from Magic Jack on to talk me through it and it went fine…cost me about $6 for the 15 minutes …it downloaded quickly.
I had had three crashes on my iMac called Core Panics where I had to reboot but it would not work….Apple has great tech service and I learned to reload the system and then update without losing any files…
I was nervous about using it but went ahead….at least I knew how to fix the system problem if it happened again. So far in over a week things are going smoothly. I disconnect Magic Jack using the menu at the top to quit Magic Jack and then drag the two icons to the waste basket after I shut it off. then disconnect from the usb on my keyboard.
So far so good!
Also I was upset because up till Sunday I was not able to get through on any calls to Europe. I had already bought $10 in minutes (500 minutes for $10 is just 2 cents a minute to most ground phones in Europe! a bargain…) I tried on Sunday and as usual it rang and rang and then cut off when the person on the other side answered. This is what had happened. So I got the tech online from Magic Jack…he got a more qualified person to help me … we confirmed my number that I was dialing correctly and then she told me to go to the Menu – Advanced Users – and just Restart it…. I did that …then she had me try to call my friend in Amsterdam which I did and halleluja! my friend picked up and it worked! So i tried calling France and my friends on Jersey UK and I got through to them too.
So that is good news! International does work. I will use it a month before deciding to end my Sprint which ends up costing me about $50 a month for longdistance with all those added charges etc.
I hope that this information helps others. I was a bit frustrated but decided to be patient and try to work things out and I am glad it is working.
For some strange reason they seem to bill you for the 59.95 Platinum Preferred Plan which for me is 5 years the same month you order…but the 39.95 is deferred to be taken from your credit card on the following month… along with shipping and handling. Strange but i guess it is their accounting issues. It should arrive in about 4 days …at least that is about how long it took for mine…. good luck to Bob Spear and others
Ed in Los Angeles
I sent for the majic-jack as advertised- haven’t got it yet- hoping this isn’t a scam- they said I would NOT BE CHARGED until the 30 day Free trial had ended if I did not want it- BUT guess what? my bank statement reports I’ve ALREADY been charged the price + the “special” $59.95 price for 3 years of phone service. Not sure I’ve done the right thing here and been screwed out of some money! Expect hopefully this is NOT the case and hopefully will get the thing in the mail soon.
BS
@Tom C: I think you’re asking an awful lot of little ole MJ to function as your internet modem! Can you get internet via your satellite?
Fax would work, but of course, you lose your phone capabilities when fax is hooked up.
Seems that MJ puts more importance on prefix rather than area code to determine long distance. Makes no sense to me, but that’s the way it falls.
I plan on removing my land line since MJ is working fine. I have two problems, though. I have my modem for my Internet service through my land line. I also have my fax machine set-up through my land line. I have satellite service for my TV. How do I get Internet service without a land line or cable? Can you set-up an Internet service and fax machine through MJ?
Also, I don’t think anyone has answered the question about incoming calls and which ones are long distance. Some say the same area code is not, I say it is. If you call from the same area code and it is a different prefix (402-xxx-1234) you have to dial a 1 first. Seems strange to me.
Thanks for any help.
Okay all of you wireless gurus….
Read this: http://www.twice.com/article/CA6574408.html
Can’t unsubscribe from this site! The “unsubscribe” link only takes you tothe index page of a related site.
https://closetodead.com/?wp-subscription-manager=1&email=sfldaddy%40yahoo.com&key=677d28aec816b8b8b893e427c74c9cca
Someone please unsubscribe me manually? Thanks!
I ordered my MJ on 25 July and received it on 28 July. Ordered from MJ.com website. Paid an extra $3.95 for USPS tracking. When I tried to activate service I found out they only have Area Codes in 36 States and Washington DC. I live in Montana and the Area Code for the whole state is 406. I wanted to cancel my local phone bill, and use the MJ only. But I cannot expect friends and family to have to pay long distance charges to contact me at a MJ number with a out of state area code. I think it is wrong for them to say you can use MJ in all fifty states and not have the Area Codes available. I used the on-line costumer service and they could not tell me when the 406 Area Code will become available. I guess for now I’ll just send the MJ back and reorder when and if the 406 Area Code is available. If you go to http://www.Majicjack.com and click on FAQ/Knowledgebase you can find out what Area Codes are available. I wish I would have done this before I ordered. The CS REP told me I could get 2 chances to change my Area Code and number for free. Just what I need 2 more times I have to let everyone know that my phone number has changed.
HAD MJ SINCE THE BEGINING OF JUNE,EVERYTHING WORKS FINE, BUT CAN’T RECIEVE CALLS, GOES TO VOICEMAIL. TRIED MJ SUPPORT AND IT SUCKS!!, THEY SAY THEY WILL GIVE YOU THE WORLD AND GIVE YOU NOTHING BUT CRAP AND EXCUSES
DUNDEE
I have been using Magic Jack for about 4 months now with only small problems. I used it mainly for a fax line and last week I started using it as a second line. Since my USB ports are in the back of my machine and since I don’t use auto start I bought a powered USB hub so that I could see the Magic Jack and remove and re-install any time I rebooted my machine.
That’s when the trouble started. My machine ( Vista powered ) did not see the new powered hub and when I plugged the MJ back into the USB port on the back the light did not stay lit and the computer did not recognize it.
I was on the “live chat” for about four hours doing the same thing over and over before I got too upset to deal with the “techs” anymore.( I pictured an Indian with a turban while I was chatting )
Now, my machine does not see the MJ, it does not stay lit and I am back to having just Vonage for my phone and fax. Thank God for Vonage.
I suspect my problem is with the latest Vista upgrades since I can no longer play some of my online games and a few other little problems that have popped up recently.
Any suggestions?
Well I got my MJ today and set it up. It works just fine. It took me probably 10 minuts. The additional year I paid for was missing so I had to talk with tech and she sent me an email with a code and that took care of that.
I wanted to follow up my email from yesterday. After receiving it today I went to my bank account online to have the correct overcharges so when I spoke with them I would be ready. The overcharges dissapeard from my checking and the correct amount was applied.
So now all I have to do is try it out and see if it would be worth getting rid of my home phone
I tried 2 MJs for 4 months, and even though I have super-high-speed cable for my ISP and have made many tweaks and adjustments, I have given up. I only wish I could sell my 2 MJs.
The quality was “okay,” but hardly like a normal phone call for me. For example, I heard myself talking quite loudly, regardless of the volume I set via my computers (one is Vista, one is XP).
So both are on the block for now. I did try. Nothing is good for everyone.
THANK YOU STEPHAANIE. I JUST FINISHED UP AT BBB. I HOPE I GET THE SAME RESULTS. IT IS A SHAME I COULD NOT FIND A # JUST TO TALK TO THEM AND GET THIS TAKEN CARE OF SO I STILL COULD OF STILL GOT THE MAGIC JACK TO TRY IT.
THIS IS WHAT I DID:
complaints@cbbb.bbb.org to me
show details Jul 16 (8 days ago)
Reply
I CONTACTED BBB
——-
Your complaint has been received and routed to the following BBB:
BBB Serving Southeast Florida and the Caribbean (West Palm Beach, FL)
4411 Beacon Circle, Ste. 4
West Palm Beach, FL 33407
Phone: (561)842-1918
Fax: (561)845-7234
Email: info@seflorida.bbb.org
Web: http://www.bbbsoutheastflorida.org
——————
AFTER A WEEK PEOPLE FROM MAGIC JACK RESPOND TO MY COMPLAINT:
—
Magic Jack LP
PO Box 6846 West Palm Beach, FL 33405
Contact: Peter Russo
Phone: (561) 594-2140
Diego Remache
5515 98th ST 3rd Floor
Corona, NY 11368
(347) 531-9027
dm.remache@gmail.com
Below is the company’s response to your complaint.
What a company does to resolve complaints is part of the information we report to the public on individual companies. To be certain that our report on this company is accurate, we need your confirmation that this complaint has been settled. Would you take a minute to tell us about your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the response? The yellow shaded area indicates the complaint’s current processing status and will allow you to enter your response in the text box.
If we do not hear from you within the next seven days, we will assume you have accepted the company’s offer or explanation and are satisfied with it. However, please feel free to contact us again if the company has made an offer to settle your complaint and fails to perform accordingly.
Thank you for using the Better Business Bureau.
Complaint
Complaint Classification: Selling Practices
Complaint Description – Posted 7/17/2008
I went to this website because i thought i was doing a good deal. They advertised a 30 days free trial. Stating that my credit card would be charged until the end of hte month. So i started filling all the info. I placed my credit card number, but then my wife told me not to trust so instead of click on confirm order o clicked on cancel so i thought that was it. Big mistake!!! Next day i get an email from them telling me that i was gonna get the magic jack and my card was gonna be charged 46. Few minutes early i see my bank account i was charged the total of 46. How could that happen if i didnt confirm the order? Besides that was a free trial they werent suppose to charge me. My bank told me to wait few days. Now the money is not pending but it has been taken out of my account. I search for a custmer number in their website and there’s none!!!! Please help me. I only had in my account a balance of 345 and days before i had signed a check for 340 and since magic jack took 46 out my account my check bounced!!!!! Now i had to pay the bank 30 for the bounce check. So i’m asking this company to pay me back 76
Complaint Summary
Resolution Sought
Want to get 76 since my bank charged me for a bounced check.
Additional Information
Date Problem First Occurred:
7/16/2008
Product or Service:
Model Name or Number:
Date Purchased: 7/15/2008
Order Number:
Amount Paid: $0.00
Company’s Response
Company’s Initial Response – Posted 07/18/2008
Customer was refunded on 7/16/2008 for $46.90. Please allow 72 business hours for this to be reflected on statement. Customer is also being sent a check for an additional $30.00 to cover overdraft bank fees.
Customer was refunded on 7/16/2008 for $46.90.
—-
NOW I JUST CHECKED MY BANK ACCOUNT AND MY MONEY HAS BEEN REFUND!!!!!!
Just orderd one Sat. after seeing it on some infomercial. It was $35.95 for the MJ and the first year free. I also purchased an extra year for 19.95. Total was 59.90. I went to do my bills and I have two charges from them totaling $113.75 and I have no way of contacting them. So far I would have to say it is not worth it.
@Blackhawk: Thanks for sharing the removal of the link… doesn’t bode well for the future of the company when they play such dirty tricks on a customer with a problem.
At $40 for the first year and $20 thereafter it is a good deal – but beware, it is not “the VOIP solution”. It is a great additional resource to those that will continue their traditional phone service and are looking to reduce the long distance charges. Expect to receive adequate voice quality – adequate, but not great. Expect that MJ will successfully call most phone numbers – but not all. Calls to several businesses could not be completed. Also, many cell phone numbers also cause MJ to fail. Online technical support is staffed with dedicated people. However, some of the glitches of the Magic Jack simply cannot be solved. For some customers, it is possible that they may never have a glitch depending upon their calling requirements. For most of us, Magic Jack is not yet the answer. Another note, I tested the endurance of the tech support staff. The glitches that I experienced simply were not solvable and I wanted to take the support to the logical end that it could not be fixed. After 8 to 9 hours on one day with no solution, I was prepared to continue the next day. I made one call. The techie, after reviewing my call history, told me that because of my Operating system (XP with SP3) MagicJack was not compatible. I have 3 computers in the house – one with XP SP2 – and it did not work on that one either. The interesting point here is: WHEN THEY NO LONGER WANT TO CHAT WITH YOU – THEY REMOVE THE ONLY LINK TO TECHNICAL SUPPORT FROM YOUR “MY.MAGICJACK.COM” PAGE – EFFECTIVELY SHUTTING YOU UP.
@Shel
@Jen
I don’t have any easy answers, but there have been a lot of folks that have had success with various workarounds.
My suggestion would be just to scroll thru the comments and do the trial and error method.
I have a LOT of stuff running on my computer – a cheap Dell with 6 down and 1.5 up. I have Skype running, Picasa, and probably 20 other things running.
The only thing that causes me a glitch is listening to internet radio. (pandora.com)
I think it’s an issue of data transmission… which is related to your internet provider.
But that’s just my guess from reading all the comments as they come in.
Same situation here – on both XP and Vista computers. Even with antivirus turned OFF! Cable spees are 6 mb down and 1.5 mbs up – we have echoing, bad connections, etc. Maybe it’s a Comcast issue? They have their own VOIP they sell at $30 a month (or more), so it would be to their advantage to make MJ connections bad.
I’ll be happy to give anyone my MJ phone number who has some ideas – we can help one another. I have been working with computers more than 20 years, and I am flustered by this.
My JM has never worked well. I have tried to call my friends to test it. They could not hear from me clearly. I have tried to call my friend at her cell phone, It did not go through at all. I am not sure what I should do. Any help will be very appreciated. Thanks
Who has made successful calls on the international plan….my calls all drop off when the person picks up and I get charged 2 cents (my calls were to UK and France)
anyone else having this problem
let me know
Don’t understand why people are having problems with this product. I purchased and installed Magic Jack in March 08. I had a problem with echo on the line. I went on the company site, ran the “fix” and have never had a problem since. I make a lot of long distance calls and have encouraged friends and family to purchase MJ. To date, with long distance and international calls, I have long recouped my initial $29.95 investment and am well ahead of the game.
I have no ties or interest in the company. A friend interduced me to magic jack and I am forever in he debt!!!
hey all,
I’ve had mj for 2 weeks now, but have NOT hooked it up. I first wanted to do an internet search [ordered mine from tv for 10$ a year and everyone here says 20$???]
I like many, want to know mj will not interfere with other programs running on my pc. I have my own license for soholaunch for my website and need to know if mj and soho are compatible. I hope someone can and will answer this. since I cannot use FFv3 or even vista [no surprise] with soho, I am wondering about the diff active x downloads will interfere.
and i do not have expensive pc. just about the cheapest out there, I am Baby Boomer in Ky too, but live on poorfarm hill!
running -dell inspiron, w/windows sp2 [can’t use sp3], trend micro pc-cillin and 1 gig memory
and wb satellite
also do not like they charged my paypal acct 39.95 the day I ordered. which byw, 39.95 was NOT in my paypal account. so pp fell back to my bank account on file and took 39.95 out of it, except my bank acct was also broke at the time. this started a whole string of 25$ nsf charges on my business bank acct. so my mj has already cost me over 200$
hope someone can help
i think the mj is great. i only use it to make long distance calls. the only time quality drops is if you are running oter applications.has anyone out there tried calling the us from outside the us?
CRYSTAL: Do you work for vonage? I’ve had my MJ all most 2 month’s now and the only trouble I had is the Norton antivirus witch I took out and now I make call’s all over the u.s. and it works Great. For only 19.95 per year can’t beat that. Happy MJing… Cliff
Was considering buying the MJ after reading the issues I am definately not going down that road. I use Vonage currently from my home based office and it has its moments but works well for the most part. Anyone looking to get Vonage let me know. They have a great referral program.
crystalthestuff@yahoo.com
i dont wanna give out my cvv2 code is it nessesary
I JUST GOT A QUICK REFUND FROM MAGIC JACK.
CONTACT ME IF YOU NEED HELP!!! THANKNSSSS
STEPHANIENY@HOTMAIL.COM
@Anna: I can state with conviction that Magic Jack does NOT install spyware. I run SuperAntiSpyware weekly and all I find are harmless ad tracking cookies – from sites I have visited.
I do not work for MJ, nor get anything from them. Just a satisfied customer.
Well my uncle and cousin have both ordered the MJ. And the consensus is, it sucks. The sound quality is very very very bad. He had to keep his landline and long distance because I can’t stand to talk to him on the MJ. It sounds like a record that has finished playing and the needle is just going round and round. A lot of static and clicking and I can barely hear him on the loudest setting. The numbers to choose from is pretty small. He had to take a DC number which is like almost 1000 miles from where he lives. And now some hooker keeps calling him on the MJ number. Coming from DC, that doesn’t surprise lol.
His computer has slowed down quite a bit which is pretty bad considering he has 6 meg speed. That MJ must put a lot of spyware on there.
All in all I think there will be no MJ revolution. I do no keep my pc on when I’m not using it so it is a completely useless product for me. The only way to prevent getting hacked when you’re not using your pc is to disconnect the modem completely from the computer, which is what I do.
People will always choose monthly bills over the MJ because you can’t beat having a cell phone. I use my cell for all my long distance calls. I also think people might object to the spyware and lack of privacy. It’s bad enough the government taps our phones.
No matter what MJ’s #1 advocate up there says about the naysayers, you can’t ignore the fact that crappy customer service will turn people away. There is something very wrong with a company that doesn’t have live support.
My fault, I wasn’t clear enough. What I mean is….when will MJ start allowing you to convert your existing number to MJ. On the homepage it says coming in the next few months. I would like to keep my existing number even if I have to pay a fee to MJ or anyone.
Thanks
Davis I don’t think you will need your “old” phone number
and I guess you could get rid of it now if you wanted so long as you kept your computer on. Not sure you can use the call forwarding if the computer is turned off.
that is just a guess ….anyone else know?
When will we be able to use our “old” phone numbers so I can drop my landline altogether?? Thanks for the info.
Davis
When will we be able to use our “old” phone numbers so I can drop my landline altogether?? Thnks for the info.
Davis
Yea, I know what Ed Andeson is saying,. It took MJ 3 full months to get my local area code going. I was ready to call the ACLU, ACLJ. ask for a hearing in front of Congress, and of course, boycott Magic Jack and for good measure, AT&T, who provides MJ’s overseas calls. Ya, they screwed me for a whole $40! LOL
Anyone providing something so inexpensive is bound to attract people who have no concept of value or understanding. In reality, the MJ rep (via online chat) told me ahead of time that my AC (904) would take a while, but that it would be working in a few months, and he/she was 100% correct!
So now I don’t have to sue for pain and suffering.
Oh, Comcast makes sure both my MJs don’t that work well on its high-speed cable Internet system. Sound is often scratchy and stuttery. For that, I blame the one person ultimately in charge of everything; the person who brought us Katrina, 911, hot summer weather, etc: GEORGE BUSH!!
I see that the whiners are still at it. LOL
A few more months and most retracters will see the errors of their ways.
magicJack is on a roll, and it is not stopping. In fact, magicJack is gaining steam!
Too bad whiners, you still love monthly phone bills. What a shame.
I recommend that everyone join the Telecom Revolution Part II, and pay no more monthly phone bills. Viva magicJack!
I just got my MAGICJACK and I was given some area codes to get my number through. Thing is, the closest area code was 90 miles away! If I used that, anyone calling me, even locally, would be charged long distance fees. When I asked why they don’t have 757, I was told “Our engineers are working on that and you should have it in a few months.” I told her “WRONG ANSWER.” I’m sending this piece of trash back to them.
I was going to say something else, but I understand why magicJack does NOT have telephone support.
I receive many calls requesting help with their magicJack installation. I help them and we hang up. No problem.
BUT, that happens every other call!!! The other calls made to me are from people who either plan to waste my time, or do waste my time for whatever reason.
Maybe I should setup a 900 number, and people can call me all hours of the day and night.
I wonder if the crank calls will end then.
Hi Bob: Happy 13th of July and happy MJing to you Cliff
To John:
Will you kindly please explain in detail your remark “I think they are terribly disorganized”?
Good choice John But it’s true all thay need is customer support. after all it is a good product. I have 2 MJs after 5 weeks I’m happy. CUSTOMER CARE IS IMPORTANT. Cliff
@John: Excellent advice in your last paragraph – I hope people will read it and take it to heart.
I ordered MagicJack about 3 months ago. At the time I used Verizon wireless broadband and MagicJack did not work well with that connection. I could connect, but the call was choppy with a lot of loss. I upgraded to Cable broadband and the quality is awesome. No one ever knows the difference including me. As far as the service, I am extremely satisfied.
I just today discovered an issue and found this blog after trying for quite a while to locate contact information on their web site. Live support, by the way, is non-existent. If you click it you are taken to a knowledge base that humorously states, “every answer you could ever receive from a live person is right here” with a search box and links. Now isn’t that funny? I discovered when I logged into my.magicjack.com that my license expires feb 2009 which is one year from my date of purchase. I distictly remember accepting their “special offer” while checking out that extended my service and warranty an additional 5 years for only $49 more dollars. WHAT A DEAL, YES! I did it but it turns out I did not get credit now I can’t find any contact information.
I really don’t think these people are scam artists. I think they are terribly disorganized. It’s a great invention and I don’t think they were set up to handle the customer service demand and probably made some bad choices for outsourcing that. My advice would be to not buy too much up front and to document your transaction carefully in case you need to prove anything in the future.
has anyone tried useing it overseas?
This is a great forum. Keep it up people!!! All the help I can get will be appreciated!! But, I do believe all calls outside my City limits which includes most prefixes are long distance even though they may be the same area code.
I don’t know if the phone companies still do it, but in Florida at the beginning of the phone book (The pages the explain how to work all the features and how to contact the phone company) there is usually a page the shows the local calling area, it’s basically a picture with prefixes and arrows pointing to and from certain prefixes or groups of prefixes. So you would locate your prefix, and follow the arrows from your prefix to other prefixes which should be local. Also, in some cases, a different area code can be local, an example of this is Lakeland, Florida (area code 863) and Plant City (Area code 813) Plant City exchanges only.
Also, watch out for Extended calling areas (known in the biz as Local Toll calls) but that should be explained on that page also.
Hope this helps someone.
@ All: To clarify: I have no affiliation with Magic Jack or anybody connected with the company. I have nothing to gain/lose thru the success/failure of Magic Jack. (Other than I love the free calls.)
@All: Tom C and I had a conversation Magic Jack to Magic Jack and it was top quality.
I placed the call to Tom and after a few ordinary sounding ring tones, he answered. There was no lag, no echo, no static, we talked for 10:12 (thanks MJ) and there wasn’t ever a hiccup.
Tom says getting a call from the same area code IS long distance – in order to get free incoming calls it has to be the same PREFIX.
ie: if my number is 123-456-7890, then only calls from 123-456-XXXX would be free to the caller.
So let’s test this: My Magic Jack area code is 561. If you have a 561 area code on your Magic Jack, drop me a note at GoingLikeSixty (a) G m a i l dot com and lets see if we can test it.
🙂
I guess this is great for out going calls, but don’t have anyone call you. What a waste. I will still have to have a land line for local calls.
I seem to be getting the same answers from this forum as I was getting from Magic Jack. The run around.
Clifford/Goinglikesixty, Then the question is, Why can’t I get a local number? Lincoln, where I live has a Pop. of about 250K. Thanks.
@Tom C. Yes, it would be a long distance call for people who are calling the Magic Jack number because they are using traditional teleco. The teleco charges the rate, not MJ.
It’s just like the person would be calling Omaha on a regular phone. Incoming calls are not covered on MJ.
Wonder if one MJ will call another. Anybody care to send me an email to test?
GoinglikeSixty (at) the big email that starts with a G and has mail.com.
Send me your MJ number and I’ll call ya!
Tom just becouse you dial 1 does not mean you’llbe charged long distance I have to do that with some 800 numbers. Happy MJing to you Cliff
I have asked several times on their chat line if all incoming calls are long distance, even if they are the same area code. I have gotten a yes answer and a no answer from the same rep. I tried to specify that it is calls from the same area code I am concerned about. I realize calls from outside my code would be long distance.I am located in Lincoln, NE and had to specify an Omaha, NE number which is long distance. All I want to know is if my neighbor calls me will it be long distance. My wife called me from her work which is down the street and had to dial a 1 preceeding my number. To me this is long distance. I won’t find out until the bill is sent. HELP!!!
@s.n. hoover: If you could stand to lose $40, then you should give it a go. If losing $40 would cause you to lose sleep, then you should not.
Just sayin’
From reading all the entries here, I am hopeful that someone could answer some questions for me concerning mj. First, and foremost, I am NOT a computer person. I am a fulltime RVer who uses various free wifi all around the US at campgrounds and rv parks. Trying to “live on the cheap”, I am considering the mj to allow me to stay in touch by phone with a couple of people. I don’t call internationally, and sometimes am in the same place several months. Can mj work with the free wifi I get at the campgrounds? They are nearly always strong signals with decent quality, but I do not subscribe to a service. I just bought a new computer, not fancy, but pretty fast, an eMachines T3646. I use the internet a lot, but don’t use the computer for anything else. I don’t conduct any type of business, etc. on it, just personal stuff. Understand that I can’t even get my wireless keyboard and mouse to operate properly on this computer, and can’t get my printer to print…just spools forever. Sooo, knowing how limited my knowledge and troubleshooting skills are, is this product right for me? With all the complaints on this site, I am concerned I may not have the basic knowledge necessary to get this device up and running and staying that way. Should I just avoid this altogether and go to something like Vonage? The major thing here, of course, is cost. $19.95 a year, as opposed to the same MONTHLY for others. Comments, please. Any advice appreciated.
J Butler: If your MJ is not working good check your computer. Now I have 2 MJs and thay work great. I removed my Norton Antivirus works good here. It’s been over 1 month. bye for and good MJ ing Cliff
@Jack Butler: not quite that simple. MJ is an electronic gizmo. Sometimes electronic gizmos aren’t as plug and play as advertised. There are a whole bunch of us with MJ’s that have used it without a hitch.
Hey folks get a clue. If a company only adverstising at 4:00 in the morning on some obscure channel what are they odds that what they’re selling works? Put it right up there with Carlton Sheets and every other infomercial product. Can we say RIPOFF? Caveat Emptor – Let the buyer beware!
@Ed: excellent information. If there were more like you who will take the time to try different things – BEFORE they post here, it sure would help everyone.
I understand people need to vent and that’s OK too, but it’s posts like yours that really help.
Thanks
I managed to get through to chat finally… on Mac the Safari browser is not compatible with their chat …i downloaded Firefox and was able to chat regarding my problem.
They tried a few things and I still had my phone drop the test call to UK. They said they would email me after they work on this issue for me..
Also all Mac users should be aware that Bluetooth is not yet available for Macs…there are lots more functions available on the Windows version than the MAC which is upsetting.
Hope they can add them soon..
I hope it succeeds…they just have to make it easier to contact them and they need to post information about Safari not working to access chat etc… the more they work to get issues resolved with users the better it is for them. People need a hand to hold and if they don’t get it they tend to back away or cancel. It is in our interest that it succeeds since it lowers bills.
By the way Bob, your info re update doesn’t work on a mac… you have to go to a windows machine to download the fixes and then plug it in to the mac. I don’t have access to a windows machine easily and some people will hesitate to let you use their computer for something that they fear might download a virus.
wish they could get their fixes working directly to Mac.
Bob When I clicked on your name it took me into an other world I just got back. Ha Ha I received my other MJ last week. I have 1 pluged in my computer now but I can’t plug this one in. Russo said I could plug it in also. ? Cliff
No pun intended Ed…I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to say that.
I received my second magicJack on February 6, 2008. I never received the first one. I’m not complaining though.
I became a reseller on February 28, 2008.
I got rid of Verizon land line, Time Warner Digital Phone, and Vonage Business line. Vonage had the nerve to charge me $120.55 to discontinue their service. My monthly bill was up-to-date too!
I sell the magicJacks as soon as I receive them.
Now with AT&T handling magicJack’s completion of International calls, more magicJacks will be sold, for sure.
I wonder why AT&T is doing it instead of Verizon? hmmmmmmmm.
magicJack is definately the Real Deal!
By the end of 2009, YMax (magicJack) will be the #1 Phone company in the World!
Just click on my name.
Ed…how much you willing to pay for telephone help?
Ed…start a help line.
Ed…you can call it the Vexatious Help Line…LOL
Well I am hoping they succeed because you cannot beat the price. But I do think they should set up some kind of group or place so people can help them to better get their act together. Seems like it works for some and not for others…this site helps people to figure things out like taking norton off… probably a fire wall issue… and they should have a chat window for mac users… if you are going to sell to mac users you have to be able to talk to them about problems even if the tech support is not quite there yet.
I will probably call the owner and email the guy in canada..at least knowing you can contact someone gives some comfort
I give this product a 3/10. It either works poorly or not at all. Why is it that the sellers/support technicians of this product call you back from a landline??? Hmmmmmm…I wonder. Maybe because they don’t believe in it either. And what up with Canadian numbers? I chatted with the US parent company and they say Canadian numbers may never be available. Just a matter of time before this product will magically disappear if you ask me.
I paid $10 for International just after they announced ATT provides their connection. Tried to call my friend in France… it rang and rang with a different sound than French rings make… then it cut off and I found I was charged the 2cents for the first minute. Replugged my land line and got through to my friend. He asked if I had called earlier …yes… well when he picked up the phone I was cut off…what gives with this? Also I have a MAC and it seems the beta does not have any tech support. It works for the USA calls I have made very well … some echo but turning down the volume under menu to 1/3 helped that. But where is the switch to headset on the MAC version that my friend with windows has? I ordered a bluetooth already and want to use that but I cannot see how to switch to the headset on my Mac version. Anyone help? thanks
emccready@yahoo.com
I puyrchased a magic jack. It would not work. I spent one week on chat trying to get the jack to work. I paid a computer guy $90.00 to tr to make it work. I sent it back and ordered another one. This one works. But you cannot call to the Philippines using the magic jack. Why are they charging us and extra $5.00 for making international calls.I just spent one hour with chat and they copuld not give me any assistance for this problem. So as usual they tell you they will e-mail you within a couple of days.
Going like sixty Website is all messed up…..
Why can’t I run 2 MJs on 1 computer. The 1 I have is still workin great and it’s still working after 3 1/2 weeks Cliff
I received my Magic Jack in March and have been very happy
with it. Even took it to CA in April and hooked it up to my
laptop and the hotel phone w/o and problems. Today my desktop
moniter burned out so I hooked another laptop up to everything
including Magic Jack. the audio has been horrible!! I get
nothing but studdering!! I spent 3 hours on line with live
chat and 4 different agents (I kept getting disconnected).
They all said the same thing: Restart MJ, Magicfix,open up new
ports on your firewall, download some sort or audio from DivX
and nothing worked. The final answer was that my cordless
phone was at fault. No matter how many times I asked them
no one could tell me why the cordless phone worked perfectly
on my desktop but not on my laptop. After I signed off (after
thanking them for their patience-yup, suck up), I decided to
do an experiment: switch my mode from Telephone to Headset/
Speakers (this is under Menu/Advanced Users)because I knew my
laptop had builtin speakers and microphone. Not only did I
I still get the stuttering when I dialed into voicemail,
but the damn thing froze up my computer!! I seriously can’t
access live chat again-I don’t have any more time!! If anyone
has run into this problem and knows how to fix it-please let
me know! I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 until I buy a new laptop
tomorrow.
Pam
I got 2 magic jacks to run on xp computers. The only problems I have is I can’t call my Aunt in Canada, even tho I can call across the street and NO SUPPORT. I can’t even get through to live support online. I found a phone number, but got voice mail and no return call. They Now have a “F” rating with the Better Buisness Burea for ignoring complaints about not honoring 30 day trials, and charging credit cards before the 30 days. http://tinyurl.com/5h929a
************ Another MJ report ************
We cancelled our long distance service and kept the local service on our landline. I realized I needed the landline for dialup access services as the MJ would not allow me to use my dialup service.
So I cut my monthly landline bill from $60 to $17 a month. Again I would have canceled the landline completely but I need my dialup access for website testing purposes.
Oh yes, the MJ is working nicely with the setup outline below. Small hiccups in service but nothing that would be considered a show stopper.
I hope that this service continues to work for a long time to come.
Later,
Dale – (714)Placentia, CA
MJ on Compaq Presario 6370us
Timer Warner Cable, up-374Kb, dn-2Mb
ZyXEL Cable Modem
Compaq wired direct to the ZyXEL via Ethernet
——————————————————————-
UNIDEN Model DCT7488-2, 2.4GHz, answering machine
UNIDEN subsystem model DCT728-4, 2.4GHz
Emerson EM-2191 analog phone
Simple one to 4 way splitter
All phones plugged into the splitter
Hello there: My MJ is still working great every since I removed my Norton Antivirus works good here. It’s been over week and 1/2 bye for and good MJ ing Cliff
If anyone has returned MJ you’ll want to uninstall the application manually as it does not have an uninstall program. I found one here and it works for Vista as well as XP:
http://www.ooine.com/index.cfm/2008/3/15/How-to-uninstall-Magic-Jack
Thanks for your suggestions Shel. I’m very familar with computer systems and have 5 Gigs of memory. I’m not about to disable Windows Firewall in an attempt to have one program work. My anti-virus is Kaspersky 7.0 which I’ve run for over a year.
MJ is already on it’s way back to West Palm Beach.
Obviously, you have probs with your computer. We run Vista on 2 of our computers and both use MJ. Firewall is unnecessary – turn it off and leave it off. If you have Symantec products, get rid of them. Other than that, it seems to me that your comp may have very little memory. Computer companies keep the price low by selling their wares with barely enough memory to make the computers functon. Vista is a huge memory hog.
If you email me and we can connect by regular phone, likely I can get your issue resolved. I have tons of troubleshooting experience with MJ.
I live in NE Florida.
Obviously, you have probs with your computer. We run Vista on 2 of our computers and both use MJ. Firewall is unnecessary – turn it off and leave it off. If you have Symantec products, get rid of them. Other than that, it seems to me that your comp may have very little memory. Computer companies keep the price low by selling their wares with barely enough memory to make he computers functon. Vista is a huge memory hog.
If you email me and we can connect by regular phone, likely I can get your issue resolved. I have tons of troubleshooting experience with MJ.
I live in NE Florida.
I first learned about Magic Jack in a news article and then went to their website. Researching further I came across forums such as this one.
In the end I decided to order one to try. I run Windows Vista.
It arrived in about 5 days. I unpacked it and followed the directions, plugging it into one of my USB ports – nothing. I then tried another port. This time the blue light came on but no functionality. Tried a third USB port and it started.
Finished the installation (ran the Vista upgrade) and tried a few calls. It worked OK, one call had static, another could not hear me clearly.
The next day when I ‘woke’ my system Magic Jack did not run. Unplugged it and plugged it back in. It then started OK. I went to the Magic Jack website and ran the ‘Fix-It’ program which is basically just a compatibility check. It told me all was OK. Later in the day I had the same problem with Magic Jack not working. This time I had to re-start my system. It still would not work. Only by unplugging it and then plugging it back in could I get it to work.
The following day both Internet Explorer and my email programs started to become unresponsive. I unplugged Magic Jack and restarted my system. I then plugged Magic Jack back in and it started OK. The phone calls I made did work fine with only a bit of static on some lines.
The third day I again started to have my programs become unresponsive. I again repeated yesterday’s steps to get it working. This time I decided to contact Support through their ‘Live chat’ feature. After explaining the issues I was having, the agent instructed me to unplug Magic Jack, disable my firewall and anti-virus, and then plug it back in. It started and I resumed both my antivirus and firewall protection.
The fourth day I again started to have my programs become unresponsive. I unplugged Magic Jack, restarted my system and went to their website to return the product – I had had enough. I selected the link for ‘Returns’ and it took me to the ‘Fix-It’ program. This time, about 3/4 through the check, my browser stopped working completely. I had to re-launch it and go back through the steps. I did this three times and each time I got to the same part of the ‘Fix-It’ program, it would cause Internet Explorer to stop working completely. The next time, I decided to reach the Live Chat support. I managed to by-pass the ‘Fix-It’ program and connect with a support agent.
I told him what was happening and asked for instructions on how to return Magic Jack. He provided a link for Returns – the minute I selected it I was put back into the ‘Fix-It’ program which again caused my browser to stop and of course, end the session.
I again connected with a support agent, explaining what just happened, and again asked for the return procedure. This time he gave me a different link which took me to an RMA form, already pre-printed with my information with instructions to Print and return in two weeks in order for my card to not be charged.
In conclusion, Magic Jack may work well for a lot of people but they clearly have software compatibility issues with Windows Vista.
@Phil: c’mon. Thousands of dollars appear on your credit card and you think MJ caused it? Why would they just ding you? and not the thousands of other customers???
I can say (I have nothing to gain, have no affiliation with MJ) that it is no security threat.
@Anonymous: I had Norton Installed when I plugged the MJ in, it recognized it, Norton asked if it was OK, I said yes and I have been calling with no problems.
The only time I have a problem is when I am listening to internet radio while trying to make a call, which makes sense because of bandwidth.
Phil the Norton antivirus was messing up everything for the MJ but now it’s OKAY. Cliff
Phil You can reach the owner at 561-586-3380 (peter Russo) if hes there he will answer the phone his cell # is 561-722-0433 And MJ works good for me.. Cliff
After ordering Magic Jack on a 30 day free trial offer where they promised not to bill for 30 days, they immediately billed my credit
card. In addition within days thousands of dollars of other bogus charges began to appear on my credit card. They are the only ones that received my info over the internet or by phone for some time.
I”ve never installed it and won’t use it. Is there any way this could be a security threat to your system. It seems from other comments the so called evaluators didn’t do a very good job.
Amy,
I got your voice message
Well the device does work but I personally would not recommend this to anyone unless they can debug problems when hiccups occur. It is a USB device that allows you to plug in your phones to your computer and then use their VOIP service to make long distance calls in the USA and CANADA. But it is a internet based system that uses a computer the internet and this device to work.
If any of those components stops working for what ever reason then your phone service may stop working to. And then you need to figure out what has gone wrong. You CAN NOT rely on the MagicJack company to get this up and working as they only have tech support via a chat interface. And I hear they suck. No help at all. Now I have not tried their tech support but I heard this from others.
Ok from my experience the device works but the connections can get distorted. Some times it works spot on others times I’ve noticed calls getting distorted about 3 to 5 minutes into the conversation. What causes that, I DO NOT KNOW. I simple hang up and redial and get a new clear connection.
The voice mail system is problematic but useable. Recently the MagicJack stopped receiving phone calls and the voice messaging was picking up all incoming calls. Our phone was not ringing here at the house. I then played with my system and finally disconnected everything and put it back together and rebooted my computer. The system then started working again. I have no idea what went wrong.
Now for all these hiccups I will still use the system because for only $20 per year I have long distance service and it works well enough for my purposes. Do not buy this device and expect it to work perfectly like your landline does. And do not expect any support. If they did supply real support then they would have to raise the cost of their service.
One other note, you need a reliable internet connection for this to work properly. Dialup will not work and some DSL services may not work well. And the other thing is your computer can not have a bunch of programs running on it like Norton Antivirus, firewall programs etc…
My setup is a old 486 computer running windows XP home. MagicJack is the ONLY thing running on this computer. No one uses it. Below are the components of my home phone system.
Dale
Dale – (714)Placentia, CA
MJ on Compaq Presario 6370us
Timer Warner Cable, up-374Kb, dn-2Mb
ZyXEL Cable Modem
Compaq wired direct to the ZyXEL via Ethernet
——————————————————————-
UNIDEN Model DCT7488-2, 2.4GHz, answering machine
UNIDEN subsystem model DCT728-4, 2.4GHz
Emerson EM-2191 analog phone
Simple one to 4 way splitter
All phones plugged into the splitter
@Blackdog: same situation with me. I use the phone only for long distance.
I’m not brave enough to try and do a whole house! especially cordless. But if I find a good enough deal on corded phones, I may give it a go.
Figure if I had a phone in every room, that would do well. I don’t need to roam when I talk!
I installed yesterday on a HP computer. The install took two go arounds (pulling out MJ and putting it back in). Then it worked just fine. The voice quallity seems identical to a normal phone.
I bought it for cheap outgoing long distance calls. Now, almost immediately, I am seeing the opportunity to drop my expensive local phone service.
The draw backs are that my MagicJack phone number is long distance from here. And that I would have to leave my computer on all the time. And my computer is downstairs while we have several phone jacks around the house for incoming calls.
So it appears I will use it for the outgoing long distance calls, and still keep the local service for in and outgoing local calls.
Overall, I am happy so far.
I Deleted all the files from Norton antivirus on my system but for some reason I could not remove it in ad & remove. but I did remove the program finally and my computer runs much faster and the MJ is still working great.the Norton antivirus was messing up everything. Cliff
I Deleted all the files from Norton on my system but for some reason I could not remove it in ad & remove. But everything is working so good. Cliff
I presently use VOIP.COM for my phone service. I have taken their device and plugged in a phone wire from it to the wall and now all of my phones in the house work. Will this still be possible with the Magic Jack?
Thank you
P.S. If you want to do this in your home
MAKE SURE THAT YOU UNPLUG THE PHONE COMPANIES DIRECT LINE THAT COMES TO YOUR HOUSE ON THE OUTSIDE. MOST HOMES AROUND THE COUNTRY USE A BOX WITH PHONE JACK TYPE CONNECTOR THAT YOU WILL JUST UN-PLUG AND TAPE UP AND PUT A TAPE NOTE THAT SAYS DO NOT RE-CONNECT. IF IT IS LEFT CONNECTED YOU COULD FRY THE PHONE WIRING AND EVERYTHING CONNECTED.
@Clifford K: great information, and new too, I think. Thanks! Ole Norton can really raise cain with some things!
Do you know a way to tell Norton to let MJ do it’s thing? That might be very helpful to others.
I also have Norton running, but MJ just hums right along. I just ran a spyware, malware, adware detector… SuperAntiSpyware.com and had no nasty things on my drive – except ad tracking cookies and those are pretty usual.
Bob how long have you been a reseller for MJ.?
Hi, Dr. Nelson!
Just click on my name, and you’ll my info.
I just removed norton antivirus from my computer and everything works fine incoming and out going.how about that.
————————–update—————————–
Now I can’t receive calls. if I was calling my number it’s busy but i’m not on the phone. When I make a call I can’t hear the phone ring so if thay picks up the phone I can’t hear them.
Bob: When I make a call I can’t hear the phone ring so if thay picks up the phone I can’t hear them.? now what. I’ve rebooted and changed phones and repluged MJ back in the computer. nothing works ? can you help .how can I fix this.
@dr Dennis…Bob baber is a magic jack reseller and yes he does know what he is talking about he knows just as much as magic jack does about the device
Bob Barber: Thanks for the info that I did not know. Yes I did, but want to purchase one or two for myself. Is it illegal to give one to some one else or is that illegal (e.g. non-transferable) too? Are you a dealer? You seem to know quite a bit about MJ. If so, would you be able to provide me with your email address so we discuss this further before I decide what to do? Thanks!
To Dr. Dennis:
A magicJack is Non-Transferable. I hope you returned it to him.
See the magicJack Softphone >Menu >Terms of Service:
8. License
magicJack grants you a personal, non-transferable and non-exclusive right and license to use the magicJack device and Software on your computer; provided that you do not (and do not allow anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, reverse assemble or otherwise attempt to discover any source code, sell, assign, sublicense, grant a security interest in, or otherwise transfer any right of the magicJack device. The initial term of this license is for one year and may be renewed (for an additional fee) for additional terms of one year each. You agree not to modify the Software in any manner or form, or to use modified versions of the Software, including for the purpose of obtaining unauthorized access to the magicJack device. You agree not to access the magicJack services by any means other than through the Software and the magicJack device
Jason do you work for MJ?
@everyone to let you know i have my blog up and running so if you have questions that need answers you can talk with others to see if you can get your problem solved and also on the right side of my blog you can click on the picture that says support and submit a ticket and i will answer each and everyones questions personally my web address is blog.jaysonberger.com without the www in front of it
Does anyone have trouble with out going calls?
how do u for sure know it has a keylogger theres no way of knowing
Every since I talk to peter Russo 1 of the owners of the MJ company and told him everything was OK with Mj I’ve been having trouble with out going calls…
__________________________Here I am__________________________________
Well now when I call someone I can’t hear the phone ring on the other and so I would not knoe if thay picked up the phone or not. I rebooted 2 times now but the some happens ? I can receive calls OKAY now what. Cliff
My computer tech loaned me his MJ to try out (at my request). He said he was not pleased with it as it did not work well in sending or receiving calls. He had it hooked to his “house wiring.” He even offered to sell it to me for cost. I hooked it to my three yr old homebuilt PC using XP PRO and SP2, bare bones system. My land-line phone is an old Princess ATT phone about 20 years old. It worked perfectly in all respects! Then I took it to my office and hooked it to a three year old laptop and then to the office PC (all w/XP PRO). Again, worked flawlessly. Then took it to Panera Bread and hooked it to my same laptop and used Princess phone. No problems. Then took it to my sons house and hooked it to his Vista PC system. Same thing. Then tried hooling it to his fax machine as a stand alone. No go. Tried lowering the speed settings and turned off Error Correction. Still no luck. Took it back to my home PC and hooked it to my HP OfficeJet L7680 All-in-One Fax machine. The settings were at the lowest speed and again, turned off Error correction. Guess what, it worked flawlwssly in both send and receive! Bottom line: If you have problems, it’s not the MJ unit, its the settings on your fax or your PC. For the cost, I think it is well worth the $46 bux! I offered to buy it from my Computer Tech after telling him I had overall really good reception and no muiissed calls. Now he has changed his mind and wants to get it back from me. (I should have told him that it was not very good and offered to pay him the $46, but I am not a very good liar)!
Tina, I’m having the same problem. I cannot put pc on standby overnight as I once did. Hope someone out there can help us with this issue. On the upside, I did get a thrill out of calling Embarq today and canceling my Long Distance service.
Hello Tina : I put my computer to sleep at night and it’s OKAY my MJ works great after I rebooted it twice. and now I’m ordered 1 more MJ so good luck to you. Cliff
I am about 5 days into my Magic Jack use. I see no problems so far. I am concerned about my computer powering down. I had the energy saver-hibernate on, but it will not go into the sleep mode now that Magic Jack is attached.
I’ve tinkered with the Power Management settings, but it still runs constantly.
Any suggestions on saving power?
Thanks!
I purchased a Magic Jack a few weeks ago figuring “hey….it’s $40, what have I got to lose?”. I have relatives in several distant states and my phone bill is typically $80 or higher, so it’d pay for itself in a month.
I installed it on my wife’s computer — 5 years old, a 1 Ghz machine with 256 Meg of ram and USB 1.1 on Comcast broadband service. The unit is working flawlessly and the calls are the same quality as I have come to expect via my MCI land-line. The only possible draw-back is that the phone number I was assigned is actually a number near Portland Oregon (about 50 miles away)..and it’d be a long-distance call for someone local to me. But…I didn’t buy it to use as a in-coming line, so the issue is moot.
Some people WILL have problems…that’s just the nature of the technology. I’ve spoken with several other people who love their Magic Jack and that is what encouraged me to try it. I’m glad I did.
_____________________________________________________________________
I got rid of 1 land line and the MJ is still working great plus 2 people close to me have received 1 MJ and their working fine. Cliff
****************** report update ******************
We are planning on turning off our landline soon. The only reason we still have a landline is because our gated community has not changed our gate phone number over to our MJ number. Associations are so slow do help their member but fast to send you out a warning because your trashcans were left out overnight.
So our MJ is wokring with great results and only a few minor hiccups.
Dale – (714)Placentia, CA
MJ on Compaq Presario 6370us
Timer Warner Cable, up-374Kb, dn-2Mb
ZyXEL Cable Modem
Compaq wired direct to the ZyXEL via Ethernet
——————————————————————-
UNIDEN Model DCT7488-2, 2.4GHz, answering machine
UNIDEN subsystem model DCT728-4, 2.4GHz
Emerson EM-2191 analog phone
Simple one to 4 way splitter
All phones plugged into the splitter
I have been using MJ for the last week or so and make many long distance call with NO problem what so ever. I believe most of the problem is with the user computer not MJ. I got my brother one install it and use it within minute with NO problem again. And NO I don’t work for MJ.
Bob Do you work for MJ ? Cliff
Come on. Get real. Telcom Revolution II is underway. Jump on the bandwagon and help us get rid of Monthly Phone Bills FOREVER! Don’t you think telephone companies have taken advantage of us long enough?
magicJack works. I have very few customers calling me for help.
_____________________________________________________________________Hello: I have had no trouble at all since I rebooted my computer it’s been 3-4 days now and everything is working great. I’m going to order 1 more MJ next week. every call goes through Okay and I talk along time. Cliff
Hi
I received my magicJack at the beginning of June, worked great for 4 days, would connect to call within 10 seconds. Then all of a sudden it took on average 35 seconds to place a call and 1 out of 10 calls would actually go thru.
I worte to Dan Borislow about the problem, his assistant wrote back to me suggesting I check the following ports…
“If you are behind a network/external firewall or router, please open the following ports: magicJack uses ports UDP 5061, TCP 80 and TCP 443”
But didn’t know how to do this
Any of you tech savvy people out there help me check my ports
thank you
Michael
The problem with MJ is that it is tied to the Internet. There still remains a certain bunch of people who believe successful companies are evil, and that everything on the Internet should be free. Obviously, to them, money is evil as well. Yet hey won;t return their Social Security checks, and they don’t tell their bosses they’ll work for free.
Which is why people compalin about that (horrendous) $40 fee! After all, that takes a real bite out of their beer and cigarette money.
One reason MJ is so inexpensive, is because the company employs some Internet-based chat center in another country which, as even all America-based centers, is imperfect.
I would like phone support as well, on occasion, but I read the help files, gladly download the easy MJ Fix file, and whatever else is recommended to solve my problem. In other words, I DID THE RESEARCH, AS I DO FOR EVERYTHING ELSE.
I have used the chat servcice with some excellent results and some not-so-excellent.
Bottom line: Pay $20 PER MONNTH for MJ and the company could hire a live call center to handle the whines and complaints of people who choose not to lift a finger to at least attempt to solve their own problems.
I own two MJs now and the first one gave me grief but you know what? It works now, and I have survived without having to call for a Federal investigation, and without having to call for a trauma counselor, etc.
That kind of crap is reserved not for baby boomers, but for today’s young crop of over-privileged kids, who are taught that they deserve everything.
Having said that, anyone who emails me directly – if I am asked – will gladly receive my phonbe number so I can help him or her get MJ going. And I am based in the USA. And yes, I’ll do it for FREE so nobody can accuse me of (OMG!) earning an evil dollar!
Have a great day, folks. After all, it’s not as if MJ is life-support equipment.
The problem with MJ is that it is tied to the Internet. There still remains a certain bunch of people who believe successful companies are evil, and that everything on the Internet should be free. Obviously, to them, money is evil as well. Yet hey won;t return their Social Security checks, and they don’t tell their bosses they’ll work for free.
Which is why people compalin about that (horrendous) $40 fee! After all, that takes a real bite out of their beer and cigarette money.
One reason MJ is so inexpensive, is because the company employs some Internet-based chat center in another country which, as even all America-based centers, is imperfect.
I would like phone support as well, on occasion, but I read the help files, gladly download the easy MJ Fix file, and whatever else is recommended to solve my problem. In other words, I DID THE RESEARCH, AS I DO FOR EVERYTHING ELSE.
I have used the chat servcice with some excellent results and some not-so-excellent.
Bottom line: Pay $20 PER MONNTH for MJ and the company could hire a live call center to handle the whines and complaints of people who choose not to lift a finger to at least attempt to solve their own problems.
I own two MJs now and the first one gave me grief but you know what? It works now, and I have survived without having to call for a Federal investigation, and without having to call for a trauma counselor, etc.
That kind of crap is reserved not for baby boomers, but for today’s young crop of over-privileged kids, who are taught that they deserve everything.
Having said that, anyone who emails me directly – if I am asked – will gladly receive my phonbe number so I can help him or her get MJ going. And I am based in the USA. And yes, I’ll do it for FREE so nobody can accuse me of (OMG!) earning an evil dollar!
Have a great dya, folks. After all, it’s not as if MJ is life-support equipment.
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))Hello there: I have call 3 times and when to do I get the owner every time ( Peter Russo ) is one of them. Thay need someone in customer service to talk to people. next time I call I’ll being this up.the Investment of 40.00 x 1,500,000 people there should be some one to answer questions during the daytime hours. Bye for now Cliff
Just wanted to say, I ordered the magic jack, but changed my mind due to the fact that even though they don’t actually charge your debit card for 30 days, the funds are still reserved for the charge and so they are not accessible for the entire time during the trial period. To me that is the same as going ahead and taking the money now, so in my opinion the 30 free trial period is not free at all, not risk free nor financially free. However, all the comments about the poor customer service must have been heard at some point because I used the live chat to cancel and received excellent customer service. I probably will reorder in a couple of weeks when I am sure I will have enough funds in my account to more than absorb the cost of the device now instead of in 30 days. I, like some of the others, believe that $40 is a fairly small investment if it works, small enough so that the ROI time is a few months at most, and even if it doesn’t work or doesn’t work long enough to get a ROI, I too have definitely wasted larger sums of money on much less. Good luck and God Bless!
*********************************************************************
Yes my freiends are on the 10th floor. the number is on the the state of Fl website corp papers. thay are out west palm beach, Fl i’m only 11 miles from there. Cliff
Hi Clifford,
How come you have his phone number, and I don’t. 🙁
Clifford has some high up friends I see.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Hello Clyde: I talked with Mr Russo @ magic jack 561-586-3380 ihe is one of the owners there. I would order via the website http://www.magicjack.com Good luck. Cliff
I received a MagicJack in April and have no complaints… There is one issue though. I tried ordering another one last month for my son’s birthday, but I haven’t received it yet. I’ve since checked my bank card records and I find that they’re still trying to charge me for the second MagicJack that I haven’t received yet… Any suggestions?
@Clifford K: Thanks for the tip about rebooting. Good reminder.
@Shel: thanks for checking in. Pretty amazing that you can get this accomplished while others just seem totally stumped.
We now have TWO Magic Jacks because they work perfectly well and since we have 2 computers, we now have 2 separate numbers, for a total of $40 a year!
Some people expect all kinds of live-by-phone tech support all for $39.95 (the initial cost of the jack plus 1 year of calls). Sorry. You wouldn’t work for free, so why should they?
Anyway, no matter how good something is, it not for everyone.
PS: I took my laptop with Magic jack and a small phone and made calls while enjoying a meal at a local restaurant that had free WiFi.
_____________________________________________________________________
Well here I am again. every thing is with my MJ I’ve been call all over CA, Va, NY.CT, & mo I talked for 3 1/2 hrs total and it’s great for 19.95 per year you can’t beat it. and for the new users don’t forget to reboot your computer after you plug your MJ in… Cliff
******************* Next Report *******************
So far so good. The system is working ok. Some small hiccups but otherwise the MY is operating as a nice replacement to the landline. I still have until the end of June to send it back if I find the it to be not acceptable.
I just talked to a friend in Irvine of over an hour and no problems to report. Again for $20.00 per year for unlimited local and long distance calls. It is meeting my needs.
Oh yes I ran the fix program and it just reported back that my system was working and it did not find a problems. I was worried that running the fix program would cause problems, but it did not. But I was curious about what the program did so I ran it.
Dale – (714)Placentia, CA
MJ on Compaq Presario 6370us
Timer Warner Cable, up-374Kb, dn-2Mb
ZyXEL Cable Modem
Compaq wired direct to the ZyXEL via Ethernet
——————————————————————-
UNIDEN Model DCT7488-2, 2.4GHz, answering machine
UNIDEN subsystem model DCT728-4, 2.4GHz
Emerson EM-2191 analog phone
Simple one to 4 way splitter
All phones plugged into the splitter
Well here i an again. well the good news is all I had to do is reboot my my computer keep it off for 3 to 4 minutes and everythink is working great.. I can make calls & receive calls. everything is okay. just reboot your computer that all. Cliff
I can receive calls and I have a great number and now it’s mine. good luck everyone. I only have one glitch. Cliff
I can call someone but I can not heir the phone ring and if someone picks up I can’t heir them. I tryed calling my other phone and the same thing happened that is the only thing wrong with it so far.after 3 days now. Cliff
Dale
Ok voice quality call report:
(775)Nevada Landline to MJ-(714)Placentia, CA
Saturday 6/7/08, call time xxxx
———————————————
Called and left a voice message
(775)Nevada AT&T mobile to MJ-(714)Placentia, CA
Sunday 6/8/08, call time 7:00am
———————————————
Voice service failed, dead air on 4th ring then disconnected
MJ-(714)Placentia, CA to (775)Nevada Landline
Saturday 6/7/08, call time 10:30pm PT
———————————————
Call connected, talked for about 1 hour no problems with soud quality
(775)Nevada AT&T mobile to MJ-(714)Placentia, CA
Sunday 6/8/08, call time 7:00am
———————————————
Voice service failed, dead air on 4th ring then disconnected
(775)Nevada AT&T mobile to MJ-(714)Placentia, CA
Talking on my wireless UNIDEN phone
Sunday 6/8/08, call time 1:25pm
———————————————
Call from (775) to voice service did not work, , dead air on 4th ring then disconnected
Calls were clear 3 to 5 minutes then choppy
Had them redial and again calls were clear for about 3 to 5 minutes.
Dale – (714)Placentia, CA
MJ on Compaq Presario 6370us
Emerson EM-2191 analog phone
UNIDEN Model DCT7488-2, 2.4GHz wireless phone answering machine
UNIDEN subsystem model DCT728-4, 2.4GHz
Simple one to 4 way splitter
All phones plugged into the splitter
Timer Warner Cable, up-374Kb, dn-2Mb
ZyXEL Cable Modem
Ok Here is another report.
I’ve had my MJ since June 2nd 6/2/2008. Installed it on a old Compaq with a freshly loaded version of Windows Home Edition and AVG free antivirus and the windows firewall setup that came with the install.
I’ve been making and receiving calls from
(775)Nevada to (714)Placentia, CA
Calls were clear
(714)Placentia, CA to (775)Nevada
Calls were clear
(626)West Covina, CA to (714)Placentia, CA
Calls were clear
(714)Placentia, CA to (626)West Covina, CA
Calls were clear
(714)AT&T Mobile Cell to (714)Placentia, CA
Some bad connections, redialed and call was ok
(714)Placentia, CA to (714)AT&T Mobile Cell
Some good and bad connections, on bad calls simply redialed, call was ok
(949) Mobile Cell to (714)Placentia, CA
Sound was ok
(714)Placentia, CA to (949) Mobile Cell
Sound was ok
Taiwan to (714) to Placentia, CA
Call started out clear then became choppy
(714)Placentia, CA to Taiwan
None so far, no international minute
(626)Monrovia, CA to (714)Placentia, CA
Calls were clear
(714)Placentia, CA to (626)Monrovia, CA
Monrovia side says I sound far away but could hear me ok
(562)La Palma, CA to (714)Placentia, CA
I was talking to 949 mobile and they went to voice mail.
They left message and I received an alert via email
(714)Placentia, CA to (562)La Palma, CA
Call them back and sound was clear
Now for the strange,
When I call my MJ from my (714) mobile phone and I let the call go to voice many times the voice mail will not pick up the first time. I recall and it picks up fine. I have a pre message and then the default MJ voice message. Sometimes the pre message is hard to hear but the default message is loud and clear when the MJ voice picks up.
When I call the MJ from my MJ phone to hear voice messages, many times I have to redial once or twice to get in. I found that if I call my MJ from my (714) Mobile and then hang up after one of two rings and then call my MJ from my MJ phone that the MJ voice service seems to work every time I pre-call it with my module. It appears that MJ voice has some software bugs. Voice email alerts work great sometimes other times the alerts get held up and then I receive a batch of emails later on. So again the voice is showing some signs of bugs. These anomalies are little annoying but not a show stopper for me or my wife. I guess for the price; $20 a year for long distance and local calls anywhere in the USA and CANADA we can deal with the hiccups we have seen so far.
That’s it for now,
Dale – (714)Placentia, CA
MJ on Compaq Presario 6370us
Emerson EM-2191 analog phone
UNIDEN Model DCT7488-2, 2.4GHz wireless phone answering machine
UNIDEN subsystem model DCT728-4, 2.4GHz
Simple one to 4 way splitter
All phones plugged into the splitter
Timer Warner Cable, up-374Kb, dn-2Mb
Time Warner Cable Modem
YES, THERE IS A SOLUTION–SEND THE STUPID TING BACK, AND PRAY THEY WILL GIVE YOU A REFUND. BE SURE YOU GET AUTHORIZATION TO RETURN IT, AND SEND IT BY SOME TYPE OF SHIPPING WHERE YOU CAN GET A TRACKING NUMBER. THEN AFTER YOU DON’T HEQAR FROM THEM, CONTACT YOUR STATE ATTORYNEY’S CONSUMER PROTECTION DIVISION!
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT! GOOD LUCK TO YOU!
CAROLE
Well forks got my replacement Magicjack last Monday from Victor at themagicjack.ca only took a week turnaround, good for him!!
Was up and running in 2 or 3 mins, worked great, sound quality was great, received calls. Worked great for 4 days then bang all of a sudden I couldn’t make a call.
I could call my voicemail, I could receive a call but couldn’t call out
I do have a dial tone, the softphone loads alright, it does say trying to dial but goes nowhere.
Did try 2 hours of tips and tricks with live tech chat but even they got tired of me and said disconnect your modem and router and please be sure to drop around again if you still can’t make a call.
Why is this product sooo temperamental.
This little device has cost me big time now.
1 hard drive, upgraded internet service maybe 15 hours of emails and research just to try to fix my problems.
I don’t know that 2.5 weeks of free telephones calls is worth all that. If anyone has run across my symptoms and gotten a cure please let me know. I follow this blogg religiously now,
Thanks
Michael
@Lee: thanks for clarifying who Dan is!
@Goinglikesixty: Dan is the inventor of MJ, (Google for Magic Jack Inventor) and you’ll find a comment posted by Dan somewhere, he usually posts his email address on every reply he makes.
I actually have two cell phone numbers, a fax number, and three e-mail addresses but I was asked (very politely) not to publish them. (They can be found with minimal effort, though.)
@all: It doesn’t make sense to me (or does it?) but sometimes I think they get a little impressed when someone figures out their other info (kind of the way my computer instructor got both impressed and upset when I wrote a bypass script to overwrite his campus-wide myspace blackout, and also how to connect to the internet from a private network that wasn’t allowed internet access. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he came back from break and we were all on the private network AND hooked to the internet with myspace loaded. 🙂 )
@Roger: good advice. I’ve found the same – if I am listening to internet radio, the quality degrades.
Hi Gary
You may have a low upload speed, limited band width, if the people your calling says your voice is breaking up. I had the same problem when I would do a major upload. Try reducing the level of multi tasking that your computer may be performing while talking on the phone and you will get much better sound quality both ways. Hope this helps you.
roger
Well I emailed Dan B. about this, (MJ not ringing the phone … above comment of Jun 4th, 2008 at 3:26 pm, which totally was ignored here on “goinglikesixty”), and got a reply from Rikard Bone. Seems another replacement MJ is on it’s way to me, already pre-programmed with my current MJ number. All I have to do is return this MJ when I get the new one.
Once again, very annoying and frustrating that the device has had a problem. However, unlike dealing with regular tech support chat and how frustrating most here have found that, dealing directly with Dan and Rikard is getting me a very quick response, great customer service on their part.
Skype vs. MagicJack.
Skype- better sound quality, faster voice response time, (less voice delay). Costs more if you want the same features as Magicjack.
MagicJack- tried my best to get it to an acceptable sound quality including downloading any fixes, but people I spoke with using it kept telling me they had a hard time making out what I was saying and I tried using headphones as well as digital phone. So disappointed since the price was right.
OMG, I meant reading not ready! Sorry folks!
Geez, After ready that post I realize I can’t spell for S@$t
goinglikesixty,
Hmmm, that’s hard for me to say. I need to take my tech hat off and look at it from a newbie computer persons point of view.
If your computer system is clean (not older then a view years with no spyware, virus etc…), you have a solid internet connection like a cable modem and you are the only user logging into the computer you intend to use MJ on then I’d say I would give it a 2 for plug and play. If not then I think to many other things coulf can wrong.
Also, the MJ USB device and software loaded very quickly and the registration process was not to complex. But again I’m not your basic computer user.
I teach some computer classes to newbies and I would say that right now as the MJ system stands, I would not recommend it to a newbie computer user. It requires them to know way to much about the internet if things go wrong.
And in all honestly, most new computer users get pretty frustrated when things do not go right the first time they try things. I’ve seen it many times my classes. I call it computer rage and it’s similar to road rage. Add that to a tech support group that seems not to informed and you have some a lot of unhappy customers.
Dale
Dale
Hey Lee,
That’s some good advice.
Deal with MJ justlike you would deal with say Verizon, AT&T, Best Buys or any other service company.
And yes I understand that the MJ’s online support is not very helpful. But there are other resources out there.
http://unofficialmagicjack.forum2u.org
And lastly, this MJ phone service is a NEW product. Realizing this I jumped in as a user with my eyes wide
open.
If it works for me I save some $$$$ on my phone service. If it doesn’t work for me then I may be out some $. I just looked at it as a risk/reward gamble. I may save over $600.00 per year over a five year period
or I may loose $100.00 for one year (MJ device plus 5 years of service) if the service does not work or goes under. I’m hoping it lives a very long time.
So I now have for phone communication:
Time Warner Cable Internet, monthly service
AT&T Mobile Service, monthly service
MJ VOIP phone servce, yearly service
Skype Service, free service
Looking at that list I realize if my internet goes out I’m left with just my cell.
@Dale – Fantastic report. How would you rate set-up on 1 – 5: 1 being “plugin and phone”, and 5 being “you have to know how to open a USB port.” ???
My experience wasn’t plug and play (as I wrote in my original post) but I’m not a manual reader, I just start clicking buttons and pluging and unplugging, starting and restarting.
@Lee: who’s Dan?
@Bob: Since your a reseller I’d like to personally talk to you about some things. (No complaining 🙂 ), please send me your email address to my temp address at sofas87124 AT mypacks.net and I’ll reply with my real email address.
@All: If you have problems getting anywhere with them, you can send an e-mail to Dan (His email address is not that difficult to find, since he posts it on every blog post [hint, hint]).
When you do find his e-mail, have documentation, describe everything you’ve done and if you used live support, say so. Above all, don’t gripe and complain no matter how upset you may be, be nice, act like or be a professional, this means being nice, courteous, using correct grammar and no spelling errors. Also remember, the Magic Words (pun intended) go a long way. (Please, Thank you, Have a Nice Day.)
@Error 3 problem users:
This is usually a router (NAT) and/or Firewall problem:
Try this: Disable the firewall and see if MJ Loads, if not, get the private ip address of the computer running MJ and temporarily put it in the DMZ zone, reboot the computer, make sure the firewall is still disabled, now load MJ and it should go to registration or Ready To Call, if it’s a new install, leave everything as is for 2 to 3 hours, reactivate the firewall (you may need to allow port 5061 in and out), and reload MJ, it should now go to Ready To Call, if it does, take the computer out of the DMZ and reload MJ, it should still go to Ready to Call. Error 3 is basically saying “I’m unable to authenticate with the server right now.”
Hope this helps somebody out there.
Lee
on other note: the voice message time is set to Florida time. EASTERN TIME. I’m in CA so I need to see if that is something that I can change.
Later,
Dale
Ok here is my latest report.
Quick overview of things before reporting my latest test:
My hardware:
Campaq Presario 6370us Standard System with a flatscreen monitor, built-in-speakers, Microsoft keyboard plugged into a PS2 port and a standard PS2 Microsoft mouse plugging into a PS2 port. Hard Drive is a Samsung 120GB drive.
Loaded a fresh copy of Microsoft Home Edition on the computer and updated to SP2. I DID NOT load SP3.
Created 4 accounts for the family members and logged into my account and plugged the MJ into the front USB port. Registered and ran some basic tests and things worked well.
I used an analog Emerson EM-2191 analog phone to make all my calls during this first test.
———-NOW FOR THE TEST 2———-
Today I loaded free AVG 8.0 from Grisoft.com and applied the latest updates. Started a scan and then started calling people on the MJ phones system. Things worked well. I then plugged in a splitter and plugged in multiple phones to the MJ. A Emerson EM 2191 analog phone, a UNIDEN Model DCT7488-2 2.4GHz phone with answering machine and a UNIDEN sub system model DCT728-4 2.4GHz unit. I started calling back and forth between my cell number and my MJ number using all the attached MJ phones. Every thing work fine. Called Reno from my CA phone number and all went through with good sound.
I then tried to get the UNIDEN answering machine to pickup before the MJ answering machine to see how the system would handle that. My cell connected to the UNIDEN machine but I could not really hear the UNIDEN greeting. I was able to leave a message but it was echoing a lot. So I decided to set the UNIDEN answering machine ring pickup to six rings so the MJ voice system would kick in before the UNIDEN system did. That worked fine and I was leaving messages on the MJ voice mail system.
One note: I setup my MJ voicemail to send me email alerts when I received messages. It worked very well as long as I gave the MJ system time to process the messages. If I retrieved them to quickly after leaving the message the MJ system did not send the email alert. But when I waited I received an email alert with the message embedded as a wav file. I found this feature to be very sweet indeed. So I decided to no longer us the UNIDEN answering machine.
One other note: I had some trouble at first getting into my MJ voice mail. But then it started working and I changed my password from 1234 to something different.
I then started leaving messages from my cell to my MJ number. Messages were saved with now problems detected. The next test was to add a short message to the front of the standard MJ voice message greeting. That worked ok but the add-on greeting was a little low. I just left it like it was and started testing the MJ voice mail some more. Again all messages were saved and I had no problem getting into the voice system.
I did notice a few times though that when I called my voice system to retrieve my messages that I sometimes had to redial from my cell phone as the MJ system did not pickup and I heard nothing, just dead air. That is a small hassle but not a show stopper for my since most people well call again if they really want to leave you a message.
I then started calling peoples cell phones and land lines. 1st was a call to my cell phone and I let the answering service pick up. I could not hear the cell phone greeting but just tried to leave a message anyway. Sure enough I received the message on my cell phone. I tried my wife’s cell and answering service and I could hear hers fine. We have AT&T Mobile service. I tried my cell again and the answering greeting could be heard. So there was a slight problem when calling cells phones with the AT&T answering service. Again not a show stopper for me since I usually use my cell phone to call her.
I performed another computer test as follows:
I have four user accounts on the Windows Home Edition computer. I used my user account to install the MJ software/hardware. I then logged out of my account and tried to use the MJ. It did not work since the software was unloaded when my user account was logged out. So I logged back in and waited for the MJ software to load. Again I made some calls to my MJ and it work great. So the MJ software is not loaded as a service on Windows Home Edition. I then performed a switch to another user account and once I was logged in I tried calling the MJ number. It worked great because the MJ software was still loaded under my account. I had both my account and another account active. I believe that MJ needs to correct their software to run as a service so people who have more then one user on a their MJ computer do not accidentally shut down the MJ software when logging onto different user accounts. Also, I’m sure there is a way to load the MJ software as a service on your computer but I have not looked into this.
One note: The dialer will not pop up when you perform a user switch from the MJ user account and log into the non MJ user account. So those of you who dislike the dialer popup message thing can setup a MJ account on your computer and install the MJ software there log into it and load the MJ software then logout and log into your working account. No more pop ups. I only tested this on Windows Home Edition but I believe this should work on Vista too.
I need to reassemble my computer and move it to my main office and connect everything and start using this like a real landline. I will report periodically about the performance of my MJ system. I hope this works for my because I want to completely drop my landline service and just use my Cell and MJ service for phone communication.
That’s all for now.
Dale
@Tia: excellent point. I’m doing the same, putting up with a little inconvenience to save a TON of money…
I for the most part love the magic jack. People are complaining about the customer service that they have. If you would rather throw your money away on the customer service from bellsouth or whom ever you use then go ahead and throw your money for having customer sevice that is not that good anyway. Here is the way I look at it. I was paying $100 a month to bellsouth for my phone bill and internet. Now I am I have a 12 for a basic phone and 35 for the internet. With magicjack I get the same phone serice meaning unlimited calling to the US but I save about $600 a year. So for me I like to save money. I know that magic jack is a little inconvient like I have a 2 story house with phones in every room and I was use to just picking up the phone in what ever room I was in to make a call now I have to go find that particular cordless. But I am ok with that I wish I could get it hooked up on all phone jacks at my house but still I am fine with that little problem of not having that ablity. Plus My computer goes into hybernation and I have to wait for it to come back on to use the phone but I am ok with that as well. I am saving $50 a month that I could buy gas with now!!!!!
Daniel… would you please restate your comment please?
start quote
Daniel
Jun 5th, 2008 at 1:47 am
well has BOB Barber PART OF YOUR CLASS ACTION LAWSUITE. YOU HOW TO DO ,IT THANK YOU1111111111 TO the MANY FRIENDS THAT GOT THIS GOING .!!!!!!!!!
end quote
Daniel, who do you work for? Are you self-employed? If you are self-employed, we need more people like you, who will carry our Nation out of the bad tasting economy we have right now.
Think of this – if we have a bad economy with phone bills, then we should have a great economy without phone bills.
Stand Up and be counted! Join the Revolution!!!
Viva magicJack! viva magicJack! Viva magicJack!
danial why do u did you tell bob barber thank you for getting the law suite going…. i just read about it robert aka bob and dawn barber had a lawsuite againast a company for a debt collector contacting them over the phone 2 times and then sending them a letter in effort to collect 16.95 and they beleave that company had 17 violations and to pay bob and dawn 1,000 per violation thats 7,000 bucks crazy just pay the 16 and move on
well has BOB Barber PART OF YOUR CLASS ACTION LAWSUITE. YOU HOW TO DO ,IT THANK YOU1111111111 TO the MANY FRIENDS THAT GOT THIS GOING .!!!!!!!!!
After these latest entries I decided to test my MJ and for some reason, when I recieve a call, it comes up on screen, but the phone itself does not ring nor does anything come up on the caller ID on the handset. This used to work. Any ideas?
I just found this MJ tech forum for those who are completely lost. It has a lot of interesting information on hooking up more then one phone to your MJ. Also some tips on getting MJ software install and work with Windows 2000.
If the link does not appear then just search google for unofficialmagicjack. It should pop up near the to of the search.
http://unofficialmagicjack.forum2u.org
@Dale: Friggn’ outstanding!!! Sounds like you are running it thru the mill. Hopefully this will give others a clue – and maybe a job for you writing MJ’s FAQ section!!!
Ok I finished installing Windows Home Edition on an old Compaq persio 486-based computer. I updated the system to SP2 but not SP3. I think I saw something where it said XP SP2 was required, but I will attempt to load SP3 after I make some phone calls.
I did not load any antivirus software and I assume that the system is using the standard windows firewall from the fresh home edition install.
I plugged my MJ directly into the USB port at the front of the computer. I did not use the USB adapter cable that came with the MJ. The MJ software loaded and I went thru the registration process. I apparently had already used my email to create an account and the registration software pointed that out but allowed my to continue to add a number to the existing account. After the registration process was completed it informed me that an activation email would be sent in 2 hours (I think). It’s been about 30 minutes and no email has arrived. Lets see if the email arrives. They also pointed out that if I do not supply/respond to the activation email within 24 hours (I think) that the phone service would be deactivate but that the e 911 features would still work.
So I finished the registration process and started calling my home number, cell phone, some family and they all connected and the sound quality was fine. Some said I sounded like I was very close. I guess they meant it was very clear.
One note: The MJ dialer program was also loaded during the registration process and I left it running during my testing.
I called my MJ number with my cell phone and it rang and connected with good sound quality.
I logged off the Home Edition account I used for installing the MJ software and then logged in a different Home Edition user account. The dialer program was not running under this account. I tested the MJ again with a view phone calls and the dialer did not pop up. All phone calls connected with good sound quality.
I logged of the second Home Edition user account and logged back into the initial Home Edition Test account and the dialer was still running. This test was just to see if the MJ still worked under different Home Edition user accounts. It did but the dialer only appeared under the initial install account. So the MJ dialer seems to be installed on under the first XP Home Edition user account.
Next test is to begin loading some other programs lie avg free Antivirus and Zonealarm free firewall to see how these programs affect the performance of the MJ system.
That’s it for now.
Dale
I still can’t call into my voice mail. I get an operator recording that the number is not in service. Geesh! It’s weird, I can call out but I can’t receive any calls or access voice mail.
@Mike Havens: Plugging the entire phone, and not just the handset is one of those things that just seems so obvious, but really should be spelled out, right? I’m glad you brought that up, I wonder how many other people are doing what you did.
Thanks for sharing this!
I have had my jack a mointh and it has stopped working. I can make and receive calls but they can’t hear me even though I can hear them. Anyone know how to resolve this problem?
As for their ‘live’ tech support sometimes I can get the and sometimes not. Anyone know how to get in touch with themwithout going to the MJ website?
YIPEE…. I figured it out. You ncannot only use the handset of a phone… rather you need to have the whole thing plugged in.
I received my MJ and it seemed to run great until I tried to set up voice mail. It would not go through. It was as if the phone number that MJ assigned me was not recognized. I can call out just fine. I cannot receive any calls. I was finally able to contact the live chat for help and she told me she reset my voice mail but that I had to wait about 3 to 4 hours before trying it. Hmmmm… is Sri Lanka about 4 hours away via DSL?
Anyway, I sure hope it works. We have to try to save money any way we can these days.
Thanks to all of you for all the great suggestions.
And Dawn, it lights up Blue just like the magicJack does!
To Dawn:
T think you can buy the USB 2.0 Power Hub at Radio Shack for about $39.95 to $79.95
Blogs are very important, especially when you count the number of complaints about a new product. The manufacturer has the opportunity to consider the comments, then fix the glitches.
When you consider the number of magicJacks that have been sold, versus the number of complaints in the blogs, I believe that there is no company that can match the sell:complaint ratio that magicJack enjoys.
just got my magic jack
love it so far
need a better phone i think
i saw somewhere that there is a $15 usb something that helps the service…..what is it and what do i go in there asking for?
thanks
no one can hear me yet on the phone…still working on it…
To Daniel…..LOL
Who do you work for?……LOL
Of course I sell them. Who wouldn’t?
I’ve been in Sales since 1973. I have sold the best over the years. Including: Holiday Magic Cosmetics, Kirby Vacuum Cleaners, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Rain Soft Water Softeners, Commercial Radio Ads, Yellow Pages Ads, Commercial Trash Containers, Electronic Evesdrop Detection Equipment, Flash Card Software, etc., etc., etc., and now the magicJack.
Yes, I am proud of the magicJack and the YMax Phone Company. I use it to make all of my calls. David is meeting Goliath, and David slew Goliath, I believe.
i cant get throught with inernational call to jamaica all u hear is busy singal and then it cuts off i put 10 on the card it should work
I don’t sell MJ and my second and third ones have been fine. I had some probs with the original one, but they gave me 2 to replace that one and those have been fine.
Don’t listen to anything that BOB BARBER has to say about magic jack he sells them. of course he will praise it, the magic jack is junk and good luck getting your money back!!!!!!!!! after numerous times chatting with their so called tech support, that knows nothing !!!!!! , I got nothing and am now turning them into the better business bureau and the attorney general in the state of MN. GOOD LUCK TO THE REST BUT DONT HOLD YOUR BREATH.
Daniel , Mpls ,MN.
I order mine on 5/30/2008 and it arrived on 6/2/2008. So three days to get here. Or if you count working days it took one working day to get here. So no problem for me on the shipping. I did pay for the expressing shipping and tracking and the USPS label does say RUSH on the top.
It came shipped in a nice form package. Contents, were the Magicjack and a USB cable. Strange thing though the Magicjack has some red text on it that says:
DO NOT PLUG INTO HUB- Plug directly into any USB port on your computer.
I will play with this after I get my test computer running. The only compatable computer I had was my kids XP Home work station and the system is not booting for some reason. I pulled the hard disk and I will check it on another computer.
Until Later!
forgot to say that I am connecting directly (no router)
I got MJ and it worked great. Then I had to reinstall my system and now the person I am calling can’t hear me. They sound great… only a half second lag. MJ told me I needed to open some ports but I do not know how to do that and google isn’t any help. Anyone know what I can do?
Magic Jack is not the best product to have for phone service. For some people, It works wonders.. but I would be surprised to see that(lol). We have had so many problems with it. Sometimes, the clarity of voice isn’t good (but for the price, i guess it is what you get), businesses CANNOT contact me because of the phone service but housephones and cellphones can call me. It makes no sense whatsoever. I was charged over 50.00 dollars (suppose to be charged after 30 days) 3 days after I ordered the product when i was suppose to have a 30-day free trial. The 30 DAY FREE Trial was a lie. The website gives run-arounds but the chat with the live person is even worse. They do not give clear anwsers. The person says stuff like they are sorry, I know how you feel, ect. Well, I think they need to handle the situation better by actually doing something about it. Instead of sitting in your office or room..get something done about it.. contact your manager, get someone who will actually find out the source of the problem. I called the bank and they told me that since I confirmed Magic Jack to pull it out on the following month that it made it an unauthorized transaction since it was only pulled out in 3 days instead of 30. I would not recommend this product to anyone but those short of money. If you cannot afford better phone service, and like the hassle of being charged randomly. Go ahead.
@Dale: Outstanding!!! For you to do this and give knowledgeable feedback will be very useful.
I hope you will try a single corded phone and also test with a base and cordless units.
Just to reiterate, I’m not affiliated with MJ, but am a fan. I installed it (with some trial and error) and it has been stable for months.
However, If I am listening to internet radio (pandora.com), it does effect performance.
I run a spyware/adware removal program regularly, and have yet to see anything that I think is related to Magic Jack. Hope you can put this issue to rest pretty quickly too.
Thanks for doing this!
I can’t wait to read what you come up with.
Ladies & Gentlemen:
I have an announcement to make. As a Reseller of the magicJack, I am proud to say that magicJack past a BIG hurdle today. The magicJack website has now surpassed 433,906 hits in one 24 hour period today! It meet 433,906 at 12 Midnight on Saturday, May 31, 2008.
This is incredible. By the end of June 2008, magicJack sales will more than likely reach the 1,000,000 mark.
ATTENTION ALL Wireless Companies: Watch magicJack break all records! It is on a roll, and all indications point to 20,000,000 sales by the end of 2008! (This is solely my guess, and not a magicJack estimate.)
I personally have been tracking the magicJack website. So I know what I am talking about!
WOW! I am excited! I am Proud to be a magicJack Reseller!
Bob Barber
hey dale maybe you can help me out since you really know what your talking about it doesnt have anything to do with magic jack but if u can email me at JLBerger78@yahoo.com
Oh geez, I ordered this product on 5/30/2008 after watching a video on msnbc online but now after reading all the info on the product I’m wondering what I got myself into. And yes I did not look into the product first as I thought hey it’s received all these tech reviews.
It appears that this product/company is experiencing some growing pains. I hope my product arrives in a timely manner. Also, it appears that it is not so Plug and Play so the general computer user is having some pains getting/keeping this product working. As to the online chat support I have no comment until I use it.
What got me to buy is the fact that they say it allows one to make local and long distance calls, US and Canada, for just $20.00 per year. My wife and I were thinking, damn lets give it a try.
So I will keep you updated with what my experience is with this product.
Here is a little history on me and my computer network.
–I am a software programmer
–I use Time Warner Cable for my internet service
–I have six computers connected to the cable modem
–I run windows advance server 2000 on two of my computers and I host some clients websites on those two servers which means they are on 24/7
–Both those servers are on dedicated static IP addresses
–I run a stripped down version of Windows Advanced server on another computer and it is connected to a dynamic IP address and this runs almost 24/7
–I run Windows XP SP2 Workstation on a old Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop that uses a dedicated IP address and is not run 24/7
–I have a clients Linux server hosted in my office that uses a dedicated IP address. This client uses this computer to host host their own website and mail server. This is on 24/7!
–I run another Windows 2000 workstation on a dymamic IP and it is not run 24/7
–I run Windows XP SPx that is used by my kids on a dymamic IP and it is not run 24/7
As you can see I am not the average computer user.
I plan on creating a dedicated computer for this MagicJack device after reading that the software appears to install Spyware/Adware on the host computer. I will take the kids computer and reinstall a fresh new copy of Windows XP on it. There will be no 3rd party antiVirus or Firewall software installed on this computer and I will disable the Windows firewall also.
Wish me luck!
Dale
this site must be havin problems tonight
Jason102178,
Go to Yahoo search, and do a search for “magicJack Reseller”. You will find me there. You’ll see my magicJack phone number.
Bob Barber
Please be advised i did a google search for bob barber and i did not find him listed as a reseller anywere on the internet… but i did find that bob barber goes to dozens of different forums that are dedicated for helping people out using magic jack and bob barber floods each of these forums with his input.
Also i just found out some wonderful news i did find magic jack and they are not a member of bbb but they are listed on there under magic jack lp and what bbb has to say about them isnt too good they have several ratings they have A+ A .A-, B+ B B- C+ C C- D and last but not least F mahic jack scored a D the 2nd to the last and heres what nnn says a D rating is.
D We have enough concerns about this company (for example, their offer, customer complaints, advertising, etc.) that we recommend caution in doing business with it.
there company id number is 92003333
there main person of contact is Peter Russo,CFO
and i finally found and address for them and not a po box number
heres there address 5700 Georgie Ave West Palm Beach, FL 33405
Primary Phone: (561) 722-0433
it took over 46 people contacting BBB to acually get there refund wow thats alot sprint does alot better then that they hardly have any complaints and all these complaints are within 1 yr
i hope i have helped a bunch of people out with the information they needed
Ladies & Gentlemen:
I have an announcement to make. As a Reseller of the magicJack, I am proud to say that magicJack past a BIG hurdle today. The magicJack website has now surpassed 100,000 hits in one 24 hour period today! The magicJack hit counter begins at 0000000 each 12 Midnight. It surpassed 100,000 at 4:59 PM EST on Friday, May 30, 2008.
This is incredible. By the end of June 2008, magicJack sales will more than likely reach the 1,000,000 mark.
ATTENTION ALL Wireless Companies: Watch magicJack break all records! It is on a roll, and all indications point to 20,000,000 sales by the end of 2008! (This is solely my guess, and not a magicJack estimate.)
I personally have been tracking the magicJack website. So I know what I am talking about!
WOW! I am excited! I am Proud to be a magicJack Reseller!
Bob Barber
I just got my Magic Jack – plugged it into USB port and it works like a charm. A truly unbelievable product. I do not understand all the negativity regarding the Magic Jack however those are personal blogs – the technical magazines love it as do I. I will never use any other product for phone service – nothing else comes close. My personal view is that the competition is bad mouthing the Magic jack because no can compete with the Magic Jack. It was very easy to install and I get crystal clear telephone calls. People say they can not find the company – I did in five minutes just go to the Florida Secretary of State Website. They are a company in good standing with the BBB. Buy it and enjoy the savings – I am.
I returned my MJ for 2 reasons…..#1-I would get a nice clear dial tone, but when I dialed the sound deteriorated so that it would sound as tho I were in an echo chamber. Plus the fact that I had a Sarasota Florida number……..so any friend’s that called me would have to pay long distance.
I tried getting help from Chat, and discovered I knew more about MJ than they did. They just gave me the same bull hockey again and again in circles. There was no e-mail addy to contact, no phone contact–no nothing. After 2 days I was done with it. Plus they had immediately charged my checking account. There are just too many ways customers can, and HAVE BEEN screwed to suit me.
I called my phone company and got a bundled deal where I only pay $69/month for local and long distance service and internet. Plus, being in a high risk hurricane area, I like most others need a land line for those times when we have no electricity!
For those that have good luck with MJ..I am delighted for you. I personally just could not be bothered with all the crud, like not being able to call out, and nobody being able to call me without a long distance charge…which is really stupid since they only live across town!!
@Asamanthk who is busy
Wow..you’re busy. I received the MJ but cant get the softphone to come up. I tried other USB ports, bought a new phone and used the MJ fix(twice)…nothing happing. But I do have a dial tone. A senior, just trying to keep up. Thanks
@Bob Barber the reseller…….If your a reseller you should know alot about the product but you do not know everything there is about magic jack even Dan the owner of magic jack and his employees who should know everything are still discovering new things and do not know everything about the product…… as for saying its peoples computer thats the problem in not always true in most cases its the service and the magic jack its self because it doesnt take a brain scientist to figure out how it works you just plug in magic jack and it installs the software and if you have vista it will upgrade the software to be compatible with vista…… because most computers now and days are not under 1 ghz for processor and dont come with under 512 mb of ram and i have a new dell inspiron 1501 with 2 processors 2 gb of memory and over 100 gb for my hard drive and i have exsperienced problems such as my caller id not working and i have a new 5.8 ghz phone and then the person on the other end will hear a beep every so offten like im pressing a button on my phone and i am not and then sometimes i will have to hang up and call the person back cause they sound like a robot and we cant hear each other and i have cable modem 6 megs for my service……and for there customer service everyone is right its very poor and they do not seem to know much about the product they just read from a script and tell everyone the same thing over and over again….. and there not listed with the better buisness bureau so it makes you wonder about the company its self alot of people have had problems with them and if more then a couple people complain about 1 thing then it must be true you cant just put the blame on everyone and there computers for the problem they even false advertise they say all you need is a phone and magic jack to work fine but after you buy it they tell you oh you should go out and buy a powered ac usb hub i think its deffentaly worth contacting the FTC”Fedral Trade commission and the Attorney general as well as the better buisness bureau even if there not a bbb member you can still make a report about them
chejyenne
If a Verizon broadband signal through the air in your area, a Verizon UM 150 Broadband access USB stick will work. I use it.
@chejyenne why cant you get the service
why make something great!!…. for just some of the people, if you cant give it to the rest of us that might want it to……. if its
really to go to be true!! for though that have satelite i guess we just out of luck…. will you make it for us to use to, hoplessley waiting… in idaho
I talked to a representitive by Live Chat and was told that “error 3” is usually a problem with being behind a firewall.
If you are behind a network/external firewall or router, you need to open the following ports: UDP 5061, TCP 80 and TCP 443.
John,
Dan is proving that Customer Service is important at magicJack!
Look at what HE personally did for you!
Does Vonage do what Dan Did? Does AT&T? Verizon? Skype? I think not.
I’m glad to hear you are happy with magicJack.
Bob Barber
Bob, no I am not. I just bought it to offset cell phone minutes when making my business calls from home. Also wanted one for my daughter so when she goes away to college, she could have a phone, essentially as a land line, without the expense and with a local area code for where she will be.
Just had a lot of technical probs with the first one. But Dan B. got me a replacement, and even gave me a free second one, and they have been working fine.
Hi John!
Are you a Reseller of the magicJack?
Bob Barber
I’m pretty happy with my MagicJacks, as evidenced by my post from May 27th, 2008 at 6:31 am above.
But there is no denying that they do need to improve their customer service. I only got such good response because I was able to obtain Dan Borislow’s personal email address. BTW, I tried the tech chat when I first had the problems and they were pretty useless. But all in all, a pretty good value for ~$40 bucks.
Carole,
I am truly sorry that you feel that way. But, I understand. I hope you may someday change your mind about magicJack.
magicJack is a fine product, and is in the forefront of the TELCOM REVOLUTION II battle.
Telephone companies have traditionally charged their customers monthly phone bills. That is one way of raising money on a monthly basis, instead of concentrating on new customers each month. But, those same companines are not only charging monthly phone bills, they are also adding new customers every month. WOW! Talk about greed.
magicJack, on the other hand, has ended monthly phone bills for its customers, and is now relying on other means of raising monthly revenue. For example, the magicJack Softphone now contains advertising in the left panel. I saw the first Ad yesterday in the Newburgh, NY area (5/29/08).
As a magicJack Reseller, I have noticed that most of the situations with the magicJack are really not situations with the magicJack at all. (Well, very few magicJacks, I have heard, have been returned, and then replaced for malfunction). Those situations are mainly computer based, i.e., bandwidth, configuration, register, etc.
Would you please let me know why you returned the magicJack? All of my customers happen to be happy customers of mine, because I give prompt service. When my customers call me, I either help them right on the phone, or I have them bring their computers to us so that my installation man can solve the situation.
You can either contact the magicJack Tech Chat, or you can do a Yahoo search for me using the search words “magicJack Reseller”, and you’ll see my magicJack telephone number right there.
Call me Carole, and we’ll discuss your situation.
Bob Barber
ANY PRODUCT IS ONLY AS GOOD AS ITS CUSTOMER SERVICE, AND ACCESSIBILITY. MAGIC JACK SUCKS IN BOTH RESPECTS. FOR A COMPANY SELLING PHONE SERVICE TO NOT HAVE _ANY_ WAY TO REACH THEM BY PHONE IS A BIT IRONIC.
THE ONLY REASON I GOT MY MONEY BACK 3 WEEKS AFTER RETURNING MY DEVICE WAS BECAUSE I CONTACTED THE FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL’S CONSUMER PROTECTION OFFICE! FORTUNATELY I SENT MY DEVICE BACK BY CERTIFIED MAIL SO I COULD TRACI IT!! THEY MAY HAVE A GREAT IDEA, BUT THEIR MARKETING SUCKS.
Don’t buy the Magic Jack. It is a customer no service nightmare. The 30 day free trial is a joke. They charged my account within 3 days. When I called to complain they said they had no record of my order. Needless to say it didn’t work well. When I called to get a return address it took three tries and over three hours to get a return address out of them. My college aged daughter returned it without a return recipt. Now I’m guessing they will claim they never got it. It’s a great idea, maybe a legit company can sell them.
Well my cousin wants to order this thing and since I am a telemarketer, I know all about how companies spend a lot of money hiring people who know how to word the ads so that you don’t notice the fine print. I found this blog looking for customer reviews of this product.
What bothers me is the “spyware” this thing comes with and snooping on calls. The price is unbeatable but is it worth giving up your privacy? I don’t pay for long distance on my phone. I only have a landline in order to have DSL. If I want to make a long distance call, I use my cell after 7 pm. Problem solved.
After searching through the FAQ on their website I was a little turned off by the fact that they don’t give a straight answer on how many long distance calls you can make and how long can those calls be. It just says to read their TOS. Well their TOS says absolutely nothing about it. It may be unlimited now, but I have a feeling it won’t be so for long.
Any consumer expert will tell you that a company without a phone number or address is not to be trusted. That’s just basic common sense.
Good customer service is a thing of the past. Anyone who has dealt with Verizon knows this ;). If you are receiving bad customer service, it’s because you are talking with someone like me who takes calls for hundreds of things and knows nothing about the product outside of the scripting on the computer screen. A company might seem popular or well established, but getting praise in a magazine doesn’t mean diddly. I could tell you some nightmares about Kevin Trudeau and Girls Gone Wild.
you have got to be kidding me. vonage charged me $120.55 to disconnect my service. i wonder why? anyway, as far as I know, vonage has monthly phone billing.
Here is some information which I think would convince anyone not to do any business with them.
They have website and you can do a whois lookup. If you perform this lookup you can see that they have registered the domain through a proxy meaning that all of their actual business information (e.g. administrative contact, phone, address) is hidden.
They are not registered with the BBB. They go by the name
Ymax Communications Corporation And MagicJack
223 Sunset Avenue
Palm Beach, FL 33480
and
Magic Jack LP
PO Box 6846
West Palm Beach, FL 33405
Contact: Peter Russo
Phone: (561) 722-0433
(561) 586-3380
After seeing the link talking about how they feed you ads and snoop your phone call information I would not touch them. It’s not worth being spied on for cheap phone service. If you want VOIP go with Vonage.
LOL
I ain’t gonna start ly’in now. Shucks. I must admit u got me thar.
Remember the Alamo?
Well, remember this: Payin’ monthly phones bills is a thing of the past.
DISCLOSURE: Bob Barber sells Magic Jack.
dont type so long story short. it didnt work. done the fix. didnt work.done vista fix. didnt work unplug reinstall didnt work.customer service. didnt work. return with r.m.a. with in 30 days didnt work. called visa to dispute charges. visa said i had to call & try to get my refund. thats when i told her about the live chat no live phone, so she calls mj from the number on file & an answer machine directs her to live chat. she started my dispute. thank u visa
Does anyone remember when Windows 3.1 was released? Then Windows 95? Then Windows 98? Then Windows Millenium? Then Windows XP? Then Windows Vista?
Well, you don’t want to know about the thousands, and I mean tens of thousands of complaints about Windows. Man O Man, talk about configurations! I spent toooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many hours trying to configure Windows.
I really liked OS/2 better. Oh, Well.
I know that Microsoft tried to ease the pain of a new OS installation, by having each OEM configure the Windows OS to work specifically on their computer.
I believe that magicJack has done extremely well with installation on MANY DIFFERENT COMPUTERS & Configurations.
I take my hat off to magicJack for doing such a GREAT job by making the magicJack install seamlessly into the myriad array of different computers today.
Think about it. magicJack has sold close to 500,000 units, I think, since it began selling them, and has less than 5,000 complaints with installation !!! That’s less than 1% complaints !!!! I can’t think of another product in the same price range as the magicJack, that can boast of such things.
Even if magicJack had 2% complaints, that would be 10,000 installs with problems. If they had 3% complaints, that would be 15,000 installs with problems.
And I’ll even bet that complainers have been on TechChat more than once to raise the complaint figures!
Come on. Get real. Telcom Revolution II is underway. Jump on the bandwagon and help us get rid of Monthly Phone Bills FOREVER! Don’t you think telephone companies have taken advantage of us long enough?
Bob Barber
Well I can sympatize with Dan as the first MagicJack I had, I had quite a bit of trouble with. Very difficult to get it working, etc. Then it began running hot and burned out 2 ports in my USB Hub, (yes it was a powered hub and that was the only way I could get the MJ to work). Then the MJ completely burnt out. But I finally corresponded with Dan and they actually came to my house and exchanged the faulty MJ for 2 MJ’s, (I only ever had to pay for one).
The new ones have been working great. Had a little trouble installing on my computer, not too bad, (think my Comodo Firewall was part of the problem). But the second I installed on my daughter’s laptop, smooth, flawless install and registration.
Hey Dan MPLS Minnesota –
Play it cool dude. No need to complicate things.
Can you tell me from start to finish how your computer is configured?
My install man likes challenges. He doesn’t get many chances to solve computer misnomers.
magicJack works for me. magicJack works for customers I sell it to. And magicJack will work for you too!
Come on. Jump on the Telcom Revolution II bandwagon and let’s change the way all Americans have been taken advantage of over the years by phone companies.
All of us have been paying phone bills each and every month.
STOP PAYING MONTHLY PHONE BILLS NOW!
magicJack is the answer!
What needs to be changed is not the magicJack, but computer configuations, computer software configurations, computer hardware, computer cards, etc.
Bob Barber
magic jack is the biggest rip off i have ever come across the tach support sucks!!!!!!!!!!! and for a company that sells phone jacks you cant even talk to a person on the phone ???? sent mine back the sound quality sucks and caller I.D. wont work with out additional equipment . and i have a state of the art p.c and hand held hand set .DONT BUY JUNK!!!!!!!!!
Dan MPLS Minnesota
Hi, I just thought i’d update you on my situation and if anyone can help me get back my money. Well I guess i’m screwed. I’ve been scammed out of my $102 dollars that i dont think i will ever see again. I sent my jack withing the 30 day trail period, but have not recieved a refund nor have i gotten a reply.
“I live in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. I purchased th MJ on April the 8th recieved it within a week. It didnt work well for me so I chatted it up with tech support. We had many chats to resolve the issues but to no avail, so I ended up mailing it back today (Friday May 2nd 2008)with my order Number as specified to me by tech support. The nice lady at canada post told me it would reach its destination 6th May at the latest Back to Hamilton. I purchased the platinum plan which included 5 years of service, and paid approx $102. I am still within my 30 day trial. Lets see how this goes…. will keep you up to date. Hope it wont be too much of a hassle.”
I bought the mj and now its always popping up on my screen trying to call out for an update and is unsuccessful. is there a way to turn this auto update off? i looked for a contact number and it is non existent. Also got my first registry cleaner pop up ad today has to be generated from them. Does anyone know how to disable the auto updates i also cant get the “live support” to function on thier website.
Now, now, Joe – what do you really want to say?
Why in the World do you want to say something like that?
I really don’t want you to try and convince me that you are having problems with your computer.
I’m sure you will definately have problems trying to install the magicJack(TM) on a computer running CPM.
If you read the requirements on my Webpage, I didn’t say magicJack will load up on a CPM machine.
Are you using a computer capable of running Windows or Mac OS? What operating system are you using?
How many music programs are you running?
Do you have USB ports on your computer? CPM machines did not have USB connectors way back when (1982).
magicJack works. I have very few customers calling me for help.
Bob
Majic Jack is a SCAM! Customer support says the same thing everytime you contact them. They run you through a bunch of ridiculous things to test and then say they will get back to you or at the end they hang up when you insist on a refund. I suspect that there is no customer support just a computerized response system that makes it appear you are talking to a real person. Don’t fall for it!
Did any of you happen to read the latest interview done by telephonyonline.com http://telephonyonline.com/voip/news/magicjack-attacks-0502/ with Dan Borislow, the inventor of the magicJack? It’s VERY informative. He gives you a glimpse of the future.
“Magic Jack is focusing on starting small, not only in size and service, but also in functionality. Considering they are selling everything they make, Borislow doesn’t feel pressure to innovate right now. As sales volumes continue to increase, however, he plans to expand the device’s capabilities into number porting and 911 services in which the device will take the form of a cell phone. Further down the product roadmap, MagicJack will evolve into a base station for a handset and a station for a femtocell.
‘AT&T just announced that they are spending a half billion on [femtocells]. Little do they know what this little company has,’ Borislow said, adding that the timeline for the femtocell is the first quarter of next year, while the 911 services will be ready to go by the summer.
Borislow said that the production and marketing of MagicJack costs the company less than what they sell the product for, making this the first time a telephone company has made rather than lost money acquiring customers.”
Folks, you are in the midst of the growth of what will eventually become the Biggest & Most Profitable Telephone Company in the World!
As a Reseller, I am witnessing the use of magicJack all over the world. This is just the beginning! I can visualize me actually selling 1,900,000 magicJacks all over the world by 2010. And then I’ll start selling another 1,900,000 units by 2012! I already have people calling me to invest in my company to accomplish this mission.
I got rid of the land line phone company I was using, and two weeks ago I got rid of the VoIP company I was using. I’m already saving money.
Bob
@elaine: first, the cool thing is the community of readers have done the feedback. I don’t use the phone that way, however a friend of mine does and it worked just fine.
First, “goinglikesixty” Thanks for all the input you have provided.
I took the plunge and ordered MJ yesterday. I’m so tired of dealing with my phone co. and their rates. However, I have very limited phone outlets and presently use 1 base phone with 3 satellite units for the other rooms. Do you think I will be able to do the same with the MJ? If not, I guess I’ll have to return it as I couldn’t function with only one phone in this house.
I have a Magic Jack and have mixed feelings about it. Sometimes the international calls I make are flawless, but other times the echo is so bad I have to hang up and run the Magic Fix – that happens more times than not. The Magic Fix just doesnt seem to “stick”.
But my question is that I cannot hibernate my computer when MJ is open. And to close MJ I have to do the CTRL/ALT/DEL thing to close it down. (Just hitting CLOSE will not close the program). Only then is the computer able to hibernate.
Anyone got any ideas about that. I do not want to leave my computer on 24/7
Also I believe having a powered USB is better than just using the regular USB port on your computer.
I ordered a magic jack approx.10 days ago with special handling and have not received anythigng as of today May 6,2008
I just gave a magic jack to my sister. The problem was with her fax machine. It would not work. She has a home base job, and needs to receive and send faxes. Was trying to help her with the phone bill. I have a satellite connection and was very disappointed to hear that I wouldn’t be able to use it. However, if I am understanding from previous comments, there is a way, for both faxes and satellites? Would also like to know how you can network the whole house?
I live in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. I purchased th MJ on April the 8th recieved it within a week. It didnt work well for me so I chatted it up with tech support. We had many chats to resolve the issues but to no avail, so I ended up mailing it back today (Friday May 2nd 2008)with my order Number as specified to me by tech support. The nice lady at canada post told me it would reach its destination 6th May at the latest Back to Hamilton. I purchased the platinum plan which included 5 years of service, and paid approx $102. I am still within my 30 day trial. Lets see how this goes…. will keep you up to date. Hope it wont be too much of a hassle.
@Chris: pretty simple, you were a pain, so they traced your line and fixed it. Be careful what you say on the phone. 🙂
I have to agree with the live chat complaints. It was terrible the first day (reception wise) and I did all the ‘fixes’ they recommended until I finally got a real ‘flippant’ live chat rep. and gave up. I went rounds with the live chat agents (FIVE of them total). There is nobody you can call…no numbers listed to talk to someone.
The next day the MJ worked wonderfully. No problems since then, but I do dread the day I’ll have a problem and have to get back online with their awful version of tech support.
The savings are already starting to show for me, so I am sticking with it.
I have a problem,
I installed my MagicJack a month ago, worked fine. Then 2 weeks ago my hard drive crashed. So I got got another one installed WinXP all the service packs. I attach my magicjack blue light comes on, dial tone on the phone but can’t make a call. The on-screen phone doesn’t load.
Ran the MagicFix (upgrade) it comes back with Warning you must plug into USB. So I move it to the other USB port
The jacks one up normally wait one minute for a lifetime of savings. Then Internet explorer loads the magicjack website and the annoying magicjack video. but no calling out
I have had the magicJack(TM) since Feb 6, ‘08. I use it on a DELL Inspiron E1505 Laptop. I also use Time Warner Cable RoadRunner High Speed Broadband at home and in the Office. But when I give a magicJack(TM) demo away from the office, I use the Verizon UM 150 USB stick for my wireless Broadband internet connection. All three work harmoniously together.
You can almost hear the syncronous hum of a well oiled machine. Well, you know what I mean. You really can’t hear them all in action, but I know I have a computer that runs very well with both the magicJack and UM 150 or Cable.
Today, magicJack seems to be working the way it should be. I guess the current upgrades to their network or something, or my machine is more in sync with the magicJack, and/or with the UM 150 or cable. I am very impressed with this lightweight telecommunications device.
I highly recommend the magicJack for businesses who make thousands of calls every year. The magicJack is perfect for use in that scenario. Businesses seem to have computers that will be less likely to have installation problems with the magicJack.
Home users seem to have more installation problems with the magicJack. And I don’t wanna go there.
I have helped people install the magicJack on both PCs and Macs.
BTW, I don’t have a landline phone. AND I don’t have Vonage anymore. Yeah! That $65 per month Business line & Fax line cost me a staggering $120.55 to cancel. What a rip off.
It’s good to know that magicJack won’t charge me that to cancel their service. In fact, magicJack won’t charge me to cancel their service at all! Just don’t renew the second year. But at only $19.95 a year, AND no Monthly Phone Bills, how can you beat that?
I don’t care what phone company you use, they can’t match magicJack price wise & phone bill wise.
Oops, magicJack has no phone bills!
For only $39.95 plus $6.95 S&H ($46.90), and Free service the first year, you can’t pass this opportunity up!
I challenge anyone to show me a PHONE COMPANY that can beat magicJack in price. Send me an email to rmbarber@pevoosow.com if you find one. I want to know who that phone company is.
Oh, I forgot to mention that magicJack has it’s own phone company.
Bob
@penny havent herd from ya hope ya have gotten it to work if you havent you may email me and i can try to walk u through it or try and do it for yas
@penny email me at jlberger78@yahoo.com and u would need remote assistance enabled as well
@penny did you ever get it to work so u can make calls
Hi penny,
Try to set the security level to low (router) and check if your windows firewall is off.Anyway router has its built in firewall so stick with the router firewall instead of using windows firewall.
But you can try to turn off both firewall for testing purposes.You can also take jason’s advise on configuring the right TCP/UDP.
Or create a limited account on windows as per previous post just merely for magic jack.
@penny and make sure when your trying to call anyone that you include the area code when dialing and make sure you go http://www.magicjack.com/1/magicfix.asp to make sure theres no errors
@ Jason I did enable it through the router even though it doesnt say so, as well as turned off my firewall for an hour…
Remote Assistance
Remote assistance is currently disabled.
By clicking on the ‘Enable Remote Assistance’ button your SpeedTouch will be accessible from your broadband connection. After 20 minutes of inactivity, or on reboot, remote assistance will be automatically disabled.
Provide the following parameters to your ISP:
@ jason the following will work for 20 min
URL: https://137.118.148.200:51003
Username: tech
Password: j2782cry
@jason How do I change it so you can get in? I know I saw an option in the firewall for that
@penny well somthing is wrong because im not able to ping your computer which leads me to beleave for some reason either your computer isnt connecting right or your behind a fireall or have a firewall program or your computer is not accepting incoming requests.
@penny then here is how to port forward for your device http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Thomson-Alcatel/SpeedTouch530/eJamming_Station.htm
@jason I am still not able to get it to work though. I even went into my firewall and did it there… I wish I knew what is was missing. There is a part of me that wonders if I need to actually uninstall and reinstall? Penny
@jason This is my ip address 137.118.148.200
@Jason… I found the ip address, but I have a speedtouch router which is made by thomson. The ip address to my router site is 192.168.1.254
It looks a bit different than what you you showed me for the other linksys router.
I did find my ip address? did you need that too? I entered it in, and assigned it to my main computer… Is that what I am supposed to do?
@penny did you get it figured out or not
@penny what is your physical ip address if your not sure go to http://whatismyip.com/
@penny here is a diagram that will show you ever thing i told you about and that may help http://www.dnsexit.com/support/knowledge_base/router/Linksys-2.htm
@Penny your in the right location more then likely you have a linksys router under the first box is asks you for the name of application just enter MJ1 then the next box is is start you enter 5060 then the next box says end you enter 5070 then the next box is a drop down box click on it and make it say udp then start all over and this time under application make it say MJ2 then under start type in 80 then in the end box type 443 then the next make it say tcp then find what your ip adress for your specifict computer if you have more then one computer it will let you know what the ip address is of it its either 192.168.1.100 or 192.168.1.101 you can check your self by clicking on the status tab then click on local netowrk tab then at the bottom it says dhcp client table and then look for the name of your computer and it will tell you what the last 3 digits are, then go back to your router settings and go to appication and gaming and the last boxes you have to enter in the last 3 digits for mj1 and mj2 and then make sure the box is checked were it says enabled then click save and your done but most routers automatucally configure it self i have a router and my magic jack worked fine i got a dial tone and was able to call out and receave calls with no problem
@Penny: I have cable always on, I guess DSL is different. From what I’ve read here you are lucky you got support from MJ. Hopefully Jason can help you out.
Good luck.
@ going like sixty. I did that initially and it did load the software. I even got a phone number, but even though I got dial tone, I could not dial out or receive as it kept saying I needed to connect to the internet. I have a DSL that is always on. That is why Magic jack people said I needed to open certain ports on my router after signing in online. I did that, but am just confused about how do that. Above, I put a pic of what it is asking me in the gaming and application where you can assign ports to a specific application.
@Jason… I just got the website address from my isp as they installed the router. I did find the application and gaming to enter the correct ports… Here is a copy of what the page says there…
________________________________________________________________
Game or Application Definition
A game or application is made of one or more TCP/UDP port ranges. Each incoming port range can be translated into a different internal (local network) port range. Port ranges can be statically assigned to devices or dynamically assigned using an outgoing trigger.
Protocol Port Range Translate To … Trigger Protocol Trigger Port
_________________________________________________________________
There is a choice on the Protocol for TCP or UDP I am assuming that ie, I would choose TCP and type 80 into the Port area. and then press add. I would do the same for the other TCP port. The UDP ports have a range of 10 numbers. Do I add each individually or as a range. Also, do I not enter anything into the Translate to or the Trigger Protocol or Trigger Port? After this is added, do I need to shutdown and restart everything, including my router?
I really appreciate your help, I really want to get this going. I have several family members who also want to be able to use this device…
@Penny: Router? You should plug the MJ right into your computer USB port.
@Penny First of all your isp its not responsible for helping you log into your router unless there the ones who set your router up and the router belongs to them most ips wont support routers unless they offer a router with there service most people choose to go out and buy there own router and depending on the router will effect the way you log into it and ive never herd of a router asking you to translate only area you need to worry about is a place called aplication and gaming this is were you will enter the correct ports.
I just purchased a magic jack as well. I did the round robin thing when trying to resolve (error 4) with the chat feature. They truly didnt know what they were talking about. Apparantly, I need to sign into my router and add Ports UDP 5060 to 5070 and TCP 80 and TCP 443.
I went rounds with my isp just to get the address for me to get into my router. Here is the thing though…. how do I add the ports? I see several areas where it seems I should do this, but I want to be sure before I mess it up.
I get that the Protocol is UDP or TCP, I get that the port is the other numbers… However, then it asks me to enter into a “Translate to” field…. what goes here? I really want to get this up and running
@Joanne: I feel the same way. Doesn’t seem to be a common thread of problems! Love mine.
I have magic jack, had no problem installing it. I love it. We had digital phone before magicjack and have cancelled it and use only the magic jack now. I am as happy with magicjack as I was with the digital phone, maybe even more so. I read alot of the complaints and I cannot relate to any of them. I wish that it worked as well for everyone as it does for us!!
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ah0uVHQbLnOzdLomBctcl98jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20080315022914AAdLD49
I am doing some research on this “Magic Jack” and I found this info on Yahoo answers it may help some of you out…..
PROS:
1) $20 PER YEAR calling VoIP style
2) Take it anywhere (in the world) to use with a computer that has a USB port and can be connected to a BROADBAND connection hard wire
3) Plug and play – does not install anything on your computer but meerly places a shortcut to the softphone on your desktop
4) Clear sound with super quality
5) Buy a MagicJack for yourself and your family across on the other side of the US or overseas and make free calls to them
6) Call forwarding to a number of your choice is good – I use my cell phone.
7) A drawback to having your computer on at all times to use this device might be someone elses strong point because if you don’t want any calls, let’s say at night, you simply turn off your computer and your phone will not ring.
CONS:
1) WILL NOT install on an administrator profile, it MUST BE a “limited” user profile – I found that out myself
I had the MagicJack for 5 days and couldn’t get to work and i had 14 tech support conversations. After the 14th one, I went to the other computer (which was logged in under our son’s account) I plugged the MagicJack in and POOF it worked!!! So from there I figured out that in order to use the MagicJack you have to have a “LIMITED” user account on a computer. I was trying to install this item on “ADMINISTRATOR” user accounts. To prove that I wasn’t crazy I created a NEW account and called it “MagicJackUser” and made it a “LIMITED” account and before you know it, it WOKED!!!
2) Poor tech support (chat based only) I’m sure it’s chat based to keep costs low. They try to do their best though.
3) Very limited phone number selection – Not nationwide like other services – mine is coupled with my Grandcentral.com number for local calls
4) Computer must be on to make calls – basically you are eliminating the need for one of those “modems/routers” that a company like Vonage provides with their service.
5) Mac issues and also no computer no calls
Remember this product is still in BETA too…
VOIP is a new technology and as such has it’s share of bugs. Magicjack is still in beta as well, and also has it’s share of bugs. However for the price of $40 + shipping you aren’t taking a huge risk. I’m sure the unit will pay for itself with a few months of usage. This unit will probably be popular with regular long distance callers, as well as transient people such as ex-patriates and students. It also has a niche market in people who are looking for an in-expensive second line. I can’t see it replacing a traditional phone service yet, but that may change in the future. Overall it’s worth looking into.
Like all companies or gadgets you will have setbacks and drawbacks.
Thanks for creating this site it is very helpful to get actual feedback from actual people. No one says it enough but it is appreciated.
Thank you
Douglas A. Goldner
S.Carolina
Well, I’m back to Vonage. I gave MJ a long trial, but I can’t use it for a primary phone number because my friends are hanging up. There is a delay when first picking up a call. I can’t get rid of the echo either. Sometimes choppy sound and other imperfections. I’m keeping it, though for when I travel, especially international. However, for $25 per month, the Vonage is PERFECT. Lots of new features and having great service isn’t a bad thing either. This is probably my last post.
@All: My recording test for Blog Talk Radio was done via Magic Jack with no loss of quality. Listen
Again: I have no affiliation with MagicJack.
I am currently in the 30 day trial phase. I am currently using DSL. Here are my findings.
1) The quality of the phone call is as clear as a regular telephone call when calling telephone to telephone.
2) The magic jack has problems with “press number” prompts. In voice mail there is a lot of studdering at the beginning so when it say “you have X number of messages” it studders “y-y-you have x number of messages”
3) If trying to call a business with press number prompts. The quality gets very garbled when you have to press numbers. If you don’t have to press numbers, the quality of the call remains perfect.
If you use magic jack for phone to phone conversation its great but be prepared for a quality drop when you have to press numbers for certain departments or prompts. I had to hang up several times and call them back because the quality was so terrible and choppy.
HOW do you fix the error code 400? Does anyone know?
@All: if you are following comments only, please read update 3. Boing Boing alert.
Common guys,
It’s kinda rude to make a big comment without knowing about the product. I myself used customer service, and they did their best to fix the problem. I couldn’t install on my desktop, but worked perfect on my laptop p4. Call quality is excellent, and there was a delay setting up voice mail, but once it was setup it worked perfect. Can’t while a lot for cheap stuff. You get what you pay for. So, calm down, relax and enjoy the new generation of phone system. I’m loving mine.
@Michael: Glad everything seems to be working out.
I just wanted to make a short statement…. im not sure if your aware or not most flash drive companys do offer support even tho the product is under 50 bucks i have a pny flash drive and it has software loaded on it and if anyone has a problem what so ever they can call in because i had a problem with it working on windows vista…. and other things such as computer video cards offer tech support …..we are purchasing there product and it comes with there software and like most companys we are paying for support even tho we spend only 40 doller to get it all set up theres millions of people buying this product so there well making there money on it and i am a computer tech so i understand how computers work and i just pruchased me a dell 250 ram duo processors 2 gb or ram so its more then capable of doing what it needs to and there is no spyware or viruses on my computer and the thing about wallmart really didnt have anything to do with the comment i posted online ….. I even emailed the owenr or magic jack and asked a bunch of questions as well and he hasnt replied back to me even tho i seen his email address on a forum and he says he replies to any emails he may get.magic jack is the only company i have herd of not providing a tech support number and there reps have no training with the product they all give different answers and make u stay on hold for hours at a time theres still are alot of bugs that they need to work out in magic jack i have done alot of research and i do understand how the program works its all common since really but when things dont work like they should then theres a problem
I received 2 magic jacks and in about 20 minutes of relizing certain things. You have to first learn how to program the phone with the default setup on the card they give you and then it will worked. Make sure you computer works, and is not loaded with spywares and viruses. Call the number they give you on the screen, press * and type 1234 on your phone. then when the voice speaks, press 0. This is for the full directory. You can learn from there. Also something cool, if you disable explorer and use firefox and shut down all the java for explorer , no more adds or unknown advertisments can come though. Its a strait phone with no ad service.
I do realise this is not a major phone service just a temp one. It is great for teens and businesses to call out to save money, or just for a private line. So even if it stops working down the road, who cares, 20 bucks!
The price of a flash drive and as far as support, remember its the price of a flash drive. We did not pay for support. You can’t call a flash drive company and demand to learn how to drag files over. Its given it shouldn’t be their problem unless you pay for support.
Just so you know I tried this device on a pII 400 computer , 256 older ram and a 10 gb hard drive , with xp fully loaded. Its all about how you set the software up.
Turn your old computer in the closet into a phone machine, that you can run day and night. You can network your entire house on it.
Now will this company go under, I think not because I know that vonage will have to make one to compete against it.
Remember what happened to computer market , when wallmart made a crap computer for 400 dollars. Today all we have is junk china systems with 2 wk warranties and 1 year on hardwares. Shelf life is old and pathetic. Also there is no more support. Most techs are crooks thinking they should have doctors wages. What worst they are dumbed down and don’t know old school thinking.
This company wont go under, because if it proves itself, he could charge 100 a year. Every business would pay it since it costs 200- 300 a month for one line for a business on average.
Well true to his word, Victor Jr. finally sent me my MagicJack. Wroked perfectly from the start.
I had a slight delay I think from my lite cable internet service so I upgraded it to a full cable service. But still worked fine with lite (with a slight delay).
I sent a fax after my service was switched to full.
Michael Reid
Well all this is really funny because i have had non stop troubles as well and i submitted a trouble ticket via themajicjack.ca and no one responded… and ive been dealing with the tech support reps also and have gotten no where fast…. they do read from a manual because you ask them a simple question and it takes them 30 minutes just to repond to anything… and the voicemail stinks i dial my number from my magic jack phone it always takes up to 30 seconds for it to go to voicemail most the times it will give me a busy signal or disconnect me….. and i talked to a magic jack rep and asked a simple question i said is the caller id suppose to show up on my hand held phone or through magic jacks softphone and the first rep said i had to go out to buy an ac powered usb hub to give it more power for it to show up on my phone the other rep asked me if im using my phone via a satalite im like what the heck no im using magic jack…. then another rep said that will only work with certain handheld phones then she said its not yet availible ive herd so many storys which one is it… when they say they offer caller id they should explain if it comes on the phone its self or if you have to look at the computer each time to see who is calling.. then the other day i was talking with my father he said it soudned like i keep hitting the buttons on the phone to make it beep and all magic jack people can keep telling me is to try another usb port im like i have a brand new laptop nothing is wrong with my usb ports but i tried them all anyways then they tell me to reboot my pc and my moden as well as my router and then go to magicjack.com/magicfix and it will take care of it ….well magic jack is full of it nothing seems to make it work any better….. magic jack has a few things they need to work on they need to improove customer service skills and learn more about there product there selling and giving tech support for as well as improove the voicemail feature and the caller id feature you honestly get what you pay for and thats why they will never out rank vonage because there not shady and you can talk to them live not just though a chat box and is ee victor is running the magic jack in canada well im sure you have had to of gotten more complaints then just 4 for anything…… sprint and verizon and all these big companys did not build there network in 2 yrs like magic jack the problem with magic jack is they are trying to build there network fast before getting bugs worked out they needed to spend more time developing it and having engineers testing iti have high speed internet and it still sounds choppy at times with vonage it never sounds like i dunno maybe i just got a deffective magic jack or somthing i dont really know i just have had any good luck from the one i am using….i even went to the better buisness bureau website and they have never herd of magicjack and there not listed on there relaibility website so that there should show ya not to really trust them if they wont become a member of bbb. i asked them to send me a new magic jack and i would send this one back to them and they wouldnt do it ive only had my magic jack for 3 days.
This is in regards to the suspicious Canadain dealer for Magic Jack. I have a local computer business in Ma. I support a wide variety of customers whom share technology and information with one another. Most of my clients network information together. For example one of my clients came from oversees and had exposed me to the magic jack device. I found the biggest problem with this device could be software related with the computer. If your computer has software issues then magic jack could have problems. However magic jack works fine and is excellent. Make sure your protection and softwares are not slowing down your process. Also have at least a netzero dsl that moves at 1.4 mb a sec or more to use this product.
As far as the canadian dealer who works with magic jack. Be careful. In the past few months I have discovered that most viruses and scams are coming from texas, canada and arizona. The scammers feed off half truths and set up a lie to decieve. If you wish to find where this canadian dealer lives. INstall Firefox, remove internet explorer, disable all explorer related access . This might sound techy but works. Now after you install firefox, go to the site and put the add on shazou. its a tracer. It will give you detail information on his server, no matter where he lives. For example the server is currently at Cerritos, CA , IH Networks.
I could probably get more for you. but ill stop there. Take care, Ps be careful of the following satalite on pc sites, full tilt poker sites, and others like these. Most are all scams
ccds
I did receive 9 emails from Victor today, most of them were saying I slandered him and his organization.. I find it funny it took extensive emails, telephone calls, emails to Dan Borislow, sites where Victor has posted, to finally get him to talk with me after 2 weeks.
When I first talked to him this morning he told me he sent my unit out on March the 7th, 7 days before he received my order.
The man is good!!!
I also received this this afternoon
“Your Magic Jack has been packaged and sent.
It will take 3-10 BUSINESS DAYS TO ARRIVE!!!!!!!!!BUSINESS DAYS NOT
3-10 DAYS IT IS BUSINESS DAYS.
Thank you for your purchase of Magic Jack, enjoy them both.
Sincerely,
Victor Rosettani”
I find it strange that it would take 3-10 business days since I’m only 2 hours north of his reported business.
I did ping his website, seems it’s located or hosted Long Beach, California. that seems odd for a Canadian site.
I would appreciate hearing from anyone dealing with themagicjack.ca
I get the sense that Victor was sincere about sending out a unit this afternoon though, too bad it took all that to get to this point, but we shall see
Thanks for allowing me to air my grievances
Michael Reid
@Victor: saga as in story… not drama. Not trying to be snarky, just interested to see how things develop. Trying to stay objective!
NO SAGA !!!!!!!!!
We are just trying to service our customers to the best of our ability.
Have a great weekend,
Victor Rosettani
themagicjack.ca
@All: hmmmmm, I guess stay tuned for the Victor and Michael saga!
We just moved here and Vinmod moved out that would make us a new listing. You can keep both of your magic jacks, enjoy.
Regards,
Victor Rosettani
themagicjack.ca
I’ll gladly retract my story if I receive something in the next week but if I don’t, well then I’ll call Hamilton fraud squad.
Funny your address
1030 Upper James #204
Hamilton, Ontario
L9C6X6
comes up as Vinmod contruction
which one are you today???
funny this guy says he calls numerous times but when i ask if i can call him back he says he doesn’t have a phone HMMMMMM!!! and he paid a month ago. he sent a check, it took a week to get here, it took 3 days to clear, I packaged his magic jack personally and sent it out, I have sold literally thousands of magic jacks and only had 4 people tell me that they haven’t received them and they all received another one FREE of course.
Victor Rosettani
Thats definitely not true and Canada post says that you have received the magic jack
Funny tho I just sent you another one, so tell ME WHAT YOU WILL DO WITH 2 MAGIC JACKS.
HAVE A NICE DAY AND IF ANY ONE HAS AN ISSUE CALL ME DIRECT.
VICTOR ROSETTANI
themagicjack.ca
@Michael: thanks for posting this information… the URL does look a little shady… THEmagicjack.ca
I purchased a MagicJack thru themagicjack.ca a month ago. They cashed my check 3 weeks ago and I have yet to receive it. I’ve gone to their website and taken a support ticket but they won’t respond. I’ve called their Hamilton office more times than I can remember and get nothing but excuses. I can only think they are a fraud.
I checked with an online agent from magicjack.com and they said they don’t have a Canadian dealer. I can only warn you not to purchase it thru themagicjack.ca
@Sheldon: thanks for adding your feedback
@Banie: good deal. hope this is useful to other people.
goinglike60
Thanks for the reply.
Already found which port needs to configure.Its on magic jacks faq’s section (magicJack uses ports UDP 5061, TCP 80 and TCP 443)So basically you can configure your router just in case theres something wrong w/ incoming and outgoing (if the magic fix doesn’t solve the issue..maybe this is the next step).Not all router are configured for this port..Well aside from tcp 80 w/ is the internet..
I had Vonage. It was fine. I was lured back to ATT by a very good promotion including DSL. They couldn’t provide the DSL in my area, so they didn’t give me the combined price. After the lies and stupidity I was ready to go back to Vonage. I saw the MJ ad and decided to try it and see. It worked for me so I’m ahead of the game. If it didn’t I’d go Vonage again. Good experience. But you can’t beat $20/yr, service or not.
They have the worst customer service ever!they don’t have a phone number, the only way to contact them is through a chat.which has nothing but idiots who dont know nothing but installation information that they read from a manual. i ordered my product 3 months ago and still have not receive my product as of yet and even with my order number they cant give me a straight answer. its almost like they only have two people name samantha and sam working the chat. but thinking about it that could be the same person.if you are going to try voip use vanage or a more established company it will worth more in the long run and less stress.
@Sheldon: Good luck. Sounds like a great plan!
I checked out fon.com. not easy to understand. I’m interested to learn more about 802.11n for community based WiFi networks. A lot of info about it but difficult to find out how to build it. This would dovetail very nicely with the MJ, virtually eliminating the phone company and the high speed company.
My Magic Jack works flawlessly – I highly recommend this product!!!
@Banie: my experience – and the instructions say that you do not have to configure a port. However one of the tips, if it doesn’t start, is to try a different port.
Hopefully Roger monitors this blog.
to roger de brabant,
Hi there,
Is there a particular port on the router that we need to configure? Or the sware itself will take care of everything.Please advise.
Thanks
Banie
@Sheldon: have you looked into http://fon.com?
I’m so glad that my MJ works (that sounds dirty). There are 3 main industries that are leaches on my life: phone company, oil industry, and cable TV/internet. It’s good to get at least one off my back. Also, does anyone know how to set up a community based coop WiFi? Then I could get rid of the $45+/mo. broadband too.
Ahybody tried to reach the Canadian dealer in the comments above?
Roger De Brabrant?
He seems interested.
I bought because of the references but, then I decided to talk to customer service or any one any where and found the true mystery.. a phone company device that has no phone number or site for customer service … very Odd to say the least … if any one has found a way to contact majic jack for service etc please let me know … It would be great if it really worked and you could contact them for any needed customer support
@John: for the first time (and I don’t have any vested interest in MJ) their server was down about 5:15-5:30 CST or so. I could get a dial tone and then fast busy signal.
I tried it later and worked OK.
That’s about all I can do to help.
If you feeling like messing around, you should try a different port, and run all the upgrades and the MJ Fix and do a little trial and error.
Good luck.
Got my MJ today. Not very happy. Like some others, installed, have dial-tone, but can’t dial. I get an Error 3, but can’t find anything on their website to tell me what that is, or how to fix it. Tried to call the 888 number which came up during install, it doesn’t ring or give a busy tone or anything, just dead-air. Tried Tech Chat, that was useless too. On top of all that, the Area Code list they have on their website shows my local area code as ACTIVE, 954. But when I installed the MJ, guess what, that was not an area code I could select. Will probably return it before the trial is over, unless they help or I can get it working to call out and receive calls. Anyone know anything about this problem?
IT IS THE MIRACLE OF PERSISTENCE, ROFL. I CONTACTED THEM ABOUT 9 TIMES, AND TOLD THE LAST AGENT TO WHOM I SPOKE THAT IF I DIDN’T GET SOME INFO ON MY REFUND, I WAS CONTACTING THE STATE ATTORNEY. ALSO I THINK PAYPAL DID SOME INVESTIGATING EVEN THO THEY CLAIMED IT WASN’T THE TYPE OF COMPLAINT THEY DEALT WITH. I WILL NEVER KNOW FOR SURE, BUT I VERY THANKFUL THE WORRY AND AGGRAVATION IS OVER WITH. AND I LEARNED AN IMPORTANT LESSON–AS I SAID ABOVE, NO WAY TO CONTACT A COMPANY MEANS NO SALE!!!
CAROLE
@Carole: It’s the “miracle” of the blogogians!
A MIRACLE HAPPENED THIS AFTERNOON!! I RECEIVED AN EMAIL FROM PAYPAL INFORMING ME THAT I HAD RECEIVED A REFUND FROM MAGIC JACK!!! THEY EVEN REFUNDED THE FULL SHIPPING AMOUNT ALSO!!!!!!!! DON’T KNOW IF IT WAS PROMISE TO THE LAST AGENT I SPOKE WITH THAT MY NEXT COMMUNICATION WOULD BE WITH THE FLORIDA STATE ATTORNEY THAT MADE THEM CHECK ALL THE INFO I SUPPLIED OR WHAT.
I DO KNOW THAT BEFORE I EVER BUY ANYTHING ONLINE AGAIN, I WILL VERIFY THAT THEY HAVE A PHONE NUMBER, AND AN EMAIL ADDRESS TO CONTACT THEM WITH.
GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE!!
CAROLE
I AM ANOTHER WHO GOT THE MAGIC JACK THAT WOULD NOT WORK. I SENT IT BACK AND AM ALSO GETTING THE RUN AROUND ABOUT MY REFUND. THEY WILL NOT GIVE A TICKET NUMBER, OR ANY USEFUL INFORMATION. AFTER THREE WEEKS, I CALLED THE FLORIDA STATE ATTORNEYS OFFICSE, AND THEY REFERRED ME TO THE DIVISION OF CONSUMER SERVICE. THE GUY TOLD ME THAT ANYONE ELSE HAVING TROUBLE WITH REFUNDS SHOULD CONTACT THEIR STATE DIV. OF CONSUMER SERVICES.
THEIR WEBSITE FOR FLORIDA IS http://WWW.800HELPFLA.COM ON THE LEFT COLUMN IS A LINK TO “FILE Complaint”.
HTH
Now . . . does anyone know where to get MJ-cheap broadband or DSL?
@Sheldon Armus: You may be right about being overwhelmed. With all the great press they got, it could have been a big hit all of a sudden.
I’m somewhat enthralled with the idea of beating out the phone Co. If this continues to work well, it could be the hydrogen car for the communications industry. My sense, at this time is that the company’s infrastructure isn’t working smoothly enough to handle the thousands of daily hits its web site is getting. No way could they answer the phone. Also, the product may not yet be 100% compatible with everyone’s PC. I sense that they’re building band width for the site while they’re designing updates for the device. Every company would love such problems.
@Sheldon Armus: well done. “eyes wide open” for sure. Thanks for sharing the background info and your experience. It’s pretty much the same experience I am having.
I have had my Magic Jack for almost two months and it works flawlessly.
I saw the ad, did a little research, My research turned up that MJ is owned by a real LD phone company called YMAX Communications Corp. The web site is a little hinky but risked the $40 anyway. I’ve made and lost larger and dumber investments.I had a terrible time with the phone company. I only ordered MJ because they couldn’t lie to me more than the phone company did and I was tired of their expensive arogance.
I just received my MJ on Fri. after ordering it on Wed. When I received it, it didn’t auto-boot as promised, but took me to MagicFix. I found and clicked on “MJ won’t start” and it downloaded some software. The MJ immediately worked. I was paying ATT $44/month, or $528/yr. I have cell phones but like a regular phone for at-home sound quality. So far everything is just fine. We’ll see . . . I have 25 more days to the trial. I went into this with my eyes wide opened.
I have a question:
If you purchased the magic jack in Canada, could you use it to call any land line in Canada.
@Sherry: good info… has anybody tried to call the 800# that Victor Rosetanni posted?
In order for me to get any answers I had to post a message on http://magicjack.wordpress.com/ and then I got results in less than 24 hours
I ordered magicjack and paid to have it rushed delivered to me and to no surprise the chat advisor can not tell me anything. The money came out of my account the day I ordered it but they can’t even tell me if it was mailed out. Everytime I talk to Maggie on the live chat she tells me I escalated your problem and check back in 24 hours. This is bs. Can someone help me?
This is for the people that are having issues with your Magic Jack and cant get support. You see there are people selling you Magic Jacks that don’t offer support to there customers. Those people are resellers trying to make a buck.
themagicjack.ca we are an authorized dealer of Magic Jack and support everyone of our customers, if you have an issue you have probably talked with Victor (Me) and I have either fixed your problem or exchanged your Magic Jack or refunded your money plain and simple. No stories, no excuses.
When you are buying your magic jack check out where you are buying from, ask questions to the seller about support and exchange and refund policies. If you have any questions or concerns give us a call or an email.
info@themagicjack or 1.877.901.jack(5225)
Victor
Hello Trina
I can assure you that Magic Jack is a legit US company and definetly not a scam. Its just that we are all so used to paying much higher prices for long distance, that when a great deal comes along we sometimes think its too good to be true. Example, here in Canada before deregulation by the CRTC, the equivalent or your FCC, we used to really get screwed by the big Bell Canada monopoly such as paying 46 cents a minute between Timmins and Toronto, only 300 miles away. Now with the many cell phone companies, satelite phones, calling cards and about 100 voip companies, we can now make that same for for 2 cents a minute or even free with MJ. When my family members called Holland, they payed about $4 a minute, if you can believe it. Now its 2 cents a minute. I don’t know how we ever got by in those days. I guess we just talked fast and not very often. Thank God for competition, it keeps the prices down for us the consumers.
I wouldn’t worry about identity theft, cause if they did that, it would be out right fraud and they would be shut down. I do agree that its always much safer to pay by money order or certified check, or pay pal but so far they don’t seem to offer that.
When I resell here, I just take cash, or certified checks or money orders. Hope that my explanation helps somewhat.
roger
@Roger de Brabant: Thanks for posting this information. I sure hope the U.S. division gets their act together. IMHO it’s a great product.
Hello everyone
As previously mentioned I am a Canadian dealer for MJ and am sorry to hear that several US customers are having a hard time to get any customer service from them. I noticed the Canadian MJ web site http://www.themagicjack.ca actually has more information on it and even an 800 phone number for sales and the FAQ section is working.
I will contact the US MJ people to relay your concerns and find the answers for you so you will get some customer service. So far I found out that the techs are upgrading the US MJ site and thats why the FAQ’ s in not working right now. I am working with the company to get an 800 phone number for all their US customers, who deserve better service. More on this later. My e mail address chimfm@vianet.ca
@New User: I don’t have a clue.
@Trina: I have a lower paranoia threat: 1. Identity theft? They already have my credit card number and address, etc. 2. Go to their website and read their recommendations that are from some very savvy tech magazines. I trust the magazines. 3. If low cost isn’t a factor, they why are you interested? That is MJ’s only advantage over regular phone or VOIP. 🙂
I just saw the commercial for this product and wondering how and why they can do this for such a low price. I keep thinking that it’s somehow accessing your information on your computer and able to transfer it to the company, the grandest of all identity theft, the majorest of all scams?? Maybe it’s a paranoia of mine, but that was my gut reaction, and until I can see that this is NOT the case, the small $$$ for this product is not a selling factor for me at all. If anyone can tell me if this has been explored I would be thrilled to hear from someone. tstopen@yahoo.com
Why doesn’t the FAQ and update work at magicjack.com?
@Steve: I have no inside information. I am not affiliated with them.
There is only one piece to Magic Jack. Plug phone in one end and plug the Magic Jack into USB.
@Greg: They are very stealth for sure. Which is too bad, makes them look shady.
I eventually got my money back – but not without considerable effort and much confusion. NO,, I never was able to find their actual physical address and NO,, I was never given their phone number – if they even have one?
Greg
gregandsheila@triad.rr.com
I ordered this product and received it today. The only thing wrong so far is that I am missing one of the magic jacks. I am looking for a way to contact this company so that I can get my missing product. I know that I will get a runaround if I try the tech support chat. Can you help me out? E-mail me at smokey0110@aol.com.
Hi Robert
Now I understand your situation better. Even if the MJ failed after a month, the company should refund you or give you another unit. Sounds like the dealer isn’t doing his job because there is a guarantee.
I think its unfair how the company has treated you and I would be happy yo fix things up for you at my own cost, even though your dealer should have backed you up. If you give me your mailing address I will mail you a brand new unit guaranteed to work for free and postage paid.
You can contact me at my companies e mail address chimfm@vianet.ca if you like.
When I first got Vonage …edited by GoingLikeSixty
Hopefully MJ will stand behind their products in all cases from now on.
roger
To: roger de brabant
My Canadian friend:
You are correct that if you have a problem MJ within the first 30 days that you can return it. The point was that in my case and I know of at least two others that the MJ for some mysterious reason fails after the 30 days which means you have lost your investment.
…edited by Going Like Sixty… (I don’t want to be a clearinghouse for phone options, just for feedback on Magic Jack.)
Thanks, Robert
Tim,
I run a cordless base with three handsets using Vonage and have had zero problems. I am now using a two in one adapter to add my fax to the single Vonage line. I fired the Telephone company but will still kep my cell phone. At a minimum I expect my cell phone minutes to go down which will pay for my Vonage line. I just need stuff to consistently work when I need it. For me it’s about the “total cost” including my time and the person’s time that is trying to talk to me. For some the MJ seems to be working..for now.
@Tim Campbell: I doubt that I will cancel landline, but the thought is always in the back of my mind.
I got my MJ…and so far seems to be working ok. On occasion the call quality if poor. I simply hang up and dial again.
For $40.00 for the first year and $20.00 a year thereafter, it may be worth a sacrafice in quality.
I’m not cancelling my land line just yet. I’m going to keep testing for another month or so.
I tossed my MJ in the trash yesterday since I will never see my money. Vonage is working great.
@laura: I’m not affiliated with MJ. All that info should be on their website.
hi do u have the customer telephone number for MJ? and/or the live chat address?
i have a verizon broadband usb as my internet broadband. I’ve order a MJ. will this work w/ my verzion usb/ card or do i have to have a landline or cable w/ broadbrand? thanks for u’r help.
Laura, I have verizon and it works well. I got the usb for business trips, still works fine.
If you need, go to: http://www.magicjack.com/6/index.asp, look to the bottom of the page and click on Customer Care. It will give you an option to ask a question or connect with a live agent. I have used this a few times, usually ends up being a simple fix.
By the way, you don’t need your computer turned on to receive calls, you can set MJ to forward to another phone if you are not online. Very convenient, unless I want the peace and quiet of phones not ringing!
@aikiwalk: yes, mine works great and a co-worker uses his regularly.
Is MagicJack working for anyone currently? I have run all fixes, all upgrades. Live Chat will not respond AT ALL for me. It worked well for about a month and a half then bust, nothing.
I don’t understand all the negative comments. I have been using Magic Jack for three years now and very happily not paying the phone company, or Vonage for that matter.
You do need a high speed internet, maybe part of the problems? I have taken my computer on vacation, set it up with a portable house phone and, bingo, free phone calls from all over the country.
I also have a wonderful choice for local area codes and I know they are expanding all the time.
I also use it for my office line. Conferencing is easy and clear as a bell. They did have it down for a bit recently for upgrades, but I didn’t mind, they emailed me in advance to let me know it would be down. Hey, IT at my company pulls systems down all the time to update.
Anyway, sorry if you had a bad experience. I would recommend this to anyone. And no, I do not work for Magic Jack, just a very happy customer.
Hopefully this reply will kick the comment back into gear to appear. 🙂
After hearing that Greg also had a problem getting the Magic Jack to work (like myself), it is strarting to sound like they may have a quality control problem in manufacturing it consistently.
I signed up for Vonage a few days ago. Robert
Hi Greg
Sorry to hear about your problems with the company. I am a Canadian dealer for Magic Jack in Timmins Ontario and can asure you that so far, everyone here who has tried their free phone calls device have not experienced a problem with the unit or the company. Maybe there was a compatibility issue between your computer and the unit??
roger de brabant
@Gregg: too bad about your problems. Glad to be a clearinghouse for issues. If you get more with the same problem, please post with a link back here to keep everybody in the loop.
In Jan, 2008, I ordered on-line the Magic Jack. After receiving it, I tried to get it to work with poor results, even after about 4 hours back and forth with their chat help on-line.
I retured their product and they stopped the charges against our bank account.
Well, today, over a month later, they again charged our bank account?
I went to chat, and after about a hour of nonsense, they claimed I had ordered the item AGAIN…… Absolutely not true. I was very unhappy the first time and would NEVER have bought another one….
After getting a long run-around from them, I kept the chat and will wait until Monday (today is Feb 28) to see what happens.
They refused to give me their address.
They refused to give me their phone number.
The only way they could have a record of yet a SECOND order is:
(1) Computer error.
(2) Employee error.
(3) Some type of SCAM…….
I don’t know which YET…..
I would like to hear from any others having a similar problem with them:
gregandsheila@triad.rr.com
Received magicjack a few days ago.There were a few minor difficulties but got it working myself in a few minutes. So far I am pleased with the sound quality even on my handsets not connected to the computer.Their support is horrible though.
Anyone have info on the subject of “security” with this phone system?
@Robert: Too bad. I did have to change USB ports (which I think is like reversing the polarity on a plug!) Don’t they offer a 30 day money back guarantee?
Magic Jack has never worked with any of my three phones.
GE cordless, Panasonic cordless and generic corded.
I have worked with their technical support “chat” but all you get is the same basic responses of 1) run the magic fix, 2) try a different usb port 3) try a different phone
I don’t want to be teathered to my computer via headset.
They never discuss the possibility that you may have a defective magic jack that just doesn’t work with phones.
I have also tried mj on two different computers.
This product is very questionable to me.
@Peter Koch: Yes, and your address will display if your town has enhanced 911.
Since we may not be able to get a local area code, will we still be able to call the local 911 numbers in emergencies?
@anthonyv60: Thanks for the report!
@xicilian: Go on the website and get the phone number for live chat. That is your best bet. Always a risk doing business online, for sure. Magic Jack has been reviewed by major media – including computer mags. I don’t think they are a high risk.
I AM VERY INTERESTED IN MAGIC JACK, BUT I HAVE SOME OUESTIONS THAT I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO SOME ONE LIV ON THE PHONE INSTEAD OF A RECORDED MESSAGE. PLEASE EMAIL ME BACK A TELEPHONE NUMBER WERE I CAN TALK TO SOME ONE LIV ON THE PHONE. THANK YOU… the post on top is not mine I do agree that this is odd makes me and alot of friends and family including there friends and family and there friends and family and the list goes on we all find it funny that there is no contact number just a nother scam here one day gone the next make your self rich then run off into the sun shine wish we all could sll could see that this will not last forever there for that not providing a number should make every one think about giving out there info credit cards ‘number’ with out there phon number where we could reach a live person custumer service agent to talk to if there is a problem in the future why should we have to e-mail to get help this is what makes this odd so people its your choice
We had Magic Jack since it first came out…Love it to death. We had absolutely no installation problems what so ever. Running a Copaq Presario 1gb mzh, 1gb Ram and win XPS2. We don’t care for their website though…but you can get support through their live chat feature….local numbers still wanting…we are in Spokane wa. and have to use a Seattle number…but we are patient. Over all an excellent alternative to the Telcos.
@Anonymous: I can see how support would be lacking. They would be better off just to say “no support.” Maybe I could help? email me if you want. goinglikesixty at the big company email that starts with G
i got the magic jack. it won’t work on my computer. customer service is horrible. they run you in circles. now they have blocked me so i can’t get anyone to help me. don’t buy this product. they won’t support it.