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Problems using My Ooma? Ideas on how we can make it better? You’ve come to the right place.
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lbmofo
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Re: fees

Post by lbmofo » Fri Apr 23, 2010 6:41 am

fishhawk wrote:Asking this here, since I didn't get a reply on another thread.

My daughter recently (3 weeks ago) bought an Ooma Hub refurb from Fry's Electronics, but now she has changed her mind and has decided to go with the Telo instead. Some additional questions:

1) The old hub requires a $3.47/mo RRF after the 1st month, and that's what we see when we look at her account online. The new Telo box says the fee will be roughly $11.75 after the 1st year. Does this mean after activating the new Telo, her account should change so that her RRF will actually be roughly $11.75 after the 1st year?

2) She currently has a number port in progress. WIll swapping out the old hub for the new Telo affect the porting process at all?

Thanks for any help.
My understanding is your tax paying category stays with you when you change device. Also, I wasn't aware of any Hubs that had this new monthly tax. You ought to give CS a call to find out, she may already be in the $11.75 per year category.

fishhawk
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Re: fees

Post by fishhawk » Fri Apr 23, 2010 7:04 am

lbmofo wrote:
fishhawk wrote:Asking this here, since I didn't get a reply on another thread.

My daughter recently (3 weeks ago) bought an Ooma Hub refurb from Fry's Electronics, but now she has changed her mind and has decided to go with the Telo instead. Some additional questions:

1) The old hub requires a $3.47/mo RRF after the 1st month, and that's what we see when we look at her account online. The new Telo box says the fee will be roughly $11.75 after the 1st year. Does this mean after activating the new Telo, her account should change so that her RRF will actually be roughly $11.75 after the 1st year?

2) She currently has a number port in progress. WIll swapping out the old hub for the new Telo affect the porting process at all?

Thanks for any help.
My understanding is your tax paying category stays with you when you change device. Also, I wasn't aware of any Hubs that had this new monthly tax. You ought to give CS a call to find out, she may already be in the $11.75 per year category.
We did call customer service. They confirmed her RRF will be $3.47/mo on her refurbished Fry's hub, saying it was because she activated after the beginning of April. At the time, she had not yet purchased the Telo.

Seems like a bad deal, if you buy the wrong unit and activate it, you could get stuck with a higher RRF. If we had known this in advance, she would have bought the Telo instead of the refurb hub, and saved herself some hassles. Maybe if an Ooma rep sees this, they can chime in.

EDIT: The refurb box the hub came in says nothing about fees. In fact, it's just like the black box that ispackaged together with the Scout in a core (hub+scout) package.

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lbmofo
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Re: fees

Post by lbmofo » Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:28 am

If the Fry's unit was a "refurb Core," then there shouldn't even be any tax is what I heard. Check with CS again, you might have gotten a rep that didn't know what he/she was talking about. I would have the rep look up your Hub serial # to determine your tax category to make sure.

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Re: fees

Post by fishhawk » Fri Apr 23, 2010 11:58 am

lbmofo wrote:If the Fry's unit was a "refurb Core," then there shouldn't even be any tax is what I heard. Check with CS again, you might have gotten a rep that didn't know what he/she was talking about. I would have the rep look up your Hub serial # to determine your tax category to make sure.
The Fry's refurb is called "Ooma - ooma Hub VoIP Home Phone Service with no monthly service bills (Refurbished)" You can see it here: http://www.frys.com/product/5983204. Since it says "Hub", it looks like it is treated like the Costco Hub. It came in a black box without anything about fees.

The CS rep did check the serial number, and said $3.47/mo.

fishhawk
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Re: fees

Post by fishhawk » Sat Apr 24, 2010 12:20 pm

Update: Called CS ("Angelo" - very nice and easy to understand), and asked if ugrading to a Telo would affect a number port in progress. He said "no".

The Telo box says roughly $11.75 RRF, so I asked what will happen after we upgrade from her Fry's refurb ($3.47/mo - he confirmed the rate) to the Telo, and he said the terms and conditions of the original activation of the refurb hub wouild remain. I argued that the refurb box says nothing, Fry's web site says "no monthly service bills", and we are upgrading to a Telo whose box says "roughly 11.75/yr". He repeated that it stays at the rate of the original activation. He said the governments have "forced" Ooma to do this.

Well, my daughter wanted the Telo anyway, because she got it with a free handset. So I asked Angelo to proceed with the upgrade. He said we would have to create a dummy account to activate the new Telo. He waited while I went online to create a new account with a new phone number, then he said he would use the new number to open a ticket to request tech support to merge the new account into the old account (he said they needed an account to activate the Telo). He said it would take 24-72hrs for it to take effect.

After I hung up, I plugged in the Telo and waited for it to activate. I logged into the new account, and it said the RRF was $11.75/yr after the 1st year! :?

So, it will be interesting to see what the RRF is after the merge is complete. In the meantime, my advice is DO NOT BUY THE FRY'S OOMA HUB REFURB. Any cost savings will be quickly (<yr) eaten up by higher RRF.

I will report back after the merge is complete to say what happened to the RRF.

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Re: fees

Post by sfhub » Mon Apr 26, 2010 9:44 am

Personally I would screen capture the $11.75 and if it doesn't stay that way after merge, tell them you didn't like the fees on the hub you had purchased so you returned it and bought a telo that had the terms you wanted.

Most people here who are changing units will be the opposite, where they bought and activated an older model with terms they wanted a year or so ago, then are upgrading to Telo and want the old terms transferred over. That's probably what they do by default, and is why I'm thinking you might have some troubles but I think eventually you'll get it set up the way you want if you are lucky or persistent.

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Re: fees

Post by fishhawk » Mon Apr 26, 2010 10:02 am

sfhub wrote:Personally I would screen capture the $11.75 and if it doesn't stay that way after merge, tell them you didn't like the fees on the hub you had purchased so you returned it and bought a telo that had the terms you wanted.

Most people here who are changing units will be the opposite, where they bought and activated an older model with terms they wanted a year or so ago, then are upgrading to Telo and want the old terms transferred over. That's probably what they do by default, and is why I'm thinking you might have some troubles but I think eventually you'll get it set up the way you want if you are lucky or persistent.
Yes, I have already done a screen capture of that page. And yes, I think you are right, in the normal upgrade case when you have the "free for life" service, you want that to follow you when you upgrade to new equipment. My daughter's case is different, she changed her mind, wants to return the refurb hub (< 30 days), and get the new Telo. As with most things, if you are following a normal path, things are easy, but deviate from the expected path, and things get hairy. I hope it all works out, as the reason my daughter is switching to Ooma is because my hub+scout has been so trouble free.

EDIT: 48hrs so far, and the Telo is still not activated on her original account.

murphy
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Re: fees

Post by murphy » Mon Apr 26, 2010 10:17 am

fishhawk wrote:
sfhub wrote:Personally I would screen capture the $11.75 and if it doesn't stay that way after merge, tell them you didn't like the fees on the hub you had purchased so you returned it and bought a telo that had the terms you wanted.

Most people here who are changing units will be the opposite, where they bought and activated an older model with terms they wanted a year or so ago, then are upgrading to Telo and want the old terms transferred over. That's probably what they do by default, and is why I'm thinking you might have some troubles but I think eventually you'll get it set up the way you want if you are lucky or persistent.
Yes, I have already done a screen capture of that page. And yes, I think you are right, in the normal upgrade case when you have the "free for life" service, you want that to follow you when you upgrade to new equipment. My daughter's case is different, she changed her mind, wants to return the refurb hub (< 30 days), and get the new Telo. As with most things, if you are following a normal path, things are easy, but deviate from the expected path, and things get hairy. I hope it all works out, as the reason my daughter is switching to Ooma is because my hub+scout has been so trouble free.

EDIT: 48hrs so far, and the Telo is still not activated on her original account.
If she returned the hub, she can't transfer the hub features to the Telo. They also won't do a transfer from a hub to a Telo until 30 days after the hub was registered. Once a hub is transferred to a Telo the hub is a dead box. You can sell it to someone else and it will cost them $60 to get it re-activated.
Customer since January 2009
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sfhub
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Re: fees

Post by sfhub » Mon Apr 26, 2010 12:28 pm

murphy wrote:If she returned the hub, she can't transfer the hub features to the Telo. They also won't do a transfer from a hub to a Telo until 30 days after the hub was registered. Once a hub is transferred to a Telo the hub is a dead box. You can sell it to someone else and it will cost them $60 to get it re-activated.
In the end, the goal is not to get transferred features.

It is really to make sure the port doesn't get screwed up.

OP could have bought a Hub, not liked the taxes on that unit, returned it under 30-day return, and canceled service.

OP could then have bought a Telo, because of the taxes that were preferable, and activated. Again no problem.

The only issue then is that the port was initiated when the Hub was the active unit and OP doesn't want that to get messed up.

I do believe in the end, the OP can get the Telo on the account with the Telo $11.75/yr taxes that was included with the marketing on the box along with the number ported properly, though it might require manual intervention on the part of Ooma to get it done right.

fishhawk
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Re: fees

Post by fishhawk » Mon Apr 26, 2010 1:16 pm

sfhub wrote:
murphy wrote:If she returned the hub, she can't transfer the hub features to the Telo. They also won't do a transfer from a hub to a Telo until 30 days after the hub was registered. Once a hub is transferred to a Telo the hub is a dead box. You can sell it to someone else and it will cost them $60 to get it re-activated.
In the end, the goal is not to get transferred features.

It is really to make sure the port doesn't get screwed up.

OP could have bought a Hub, not liked the taxes on that unit, returned it under 30-day return, and canceled service.

OP could then have bought a Telo, because of the taxes that were preferable, and activated. Again no problem.

The only issue then is that the port was initiated when the Hub was the active unit and OP doesn't want that to get messed up.

I do believe in the end, the OP can get the Telo on the account with the Telo $11.75/yr taxes that was included with the marketing on the box along with the number ported properly, though it might require manual intervention on the part of Ooma to get it done right.
Yes, sfhub has it exactly right - thanks for making sense of my rambling. It's all about the port. My daughter bought the refurb hub, activated it, started the port, then saw the $3.47/mo in taxes. Then she saw the Telo taxes were 11.75/yr, so she bought/activated the Telo and wants to return the refurb hub, but wants to make sure the port still happens. I'm afraid this won't go well, so I'll email either Bobby B or Dennis P to see if they can help.

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