Complaint Review: Magic Jack - West Palm Beach Florida

PLAIN OLD COMMON SENSE: ADVERTISEMENTS from the Federal Trade Commission website: The appearance of ads in media outlets that you recognize - like your local newspaper or radio station - is no guarantee of the legitimacy of the company behind the ad.

So, with the money you lost in this little adventure, you could've bought a spelling/grammar checker for your PC. Shucks!

I am coming up on year 1 of ownership. I rarely used it or even had it plugged in as I have MetroPCS cellular and using the cellphone was just easier for me. I still have MetroPCS But I've moved and Literally two blocks from my old residence I rarely get any signal on my cellphone. I programmed in forwarding from my cell so that I just have to hold 5 and it forwards to my Magic Jack while I'm home, I then just hold down 6 to start taking calls on my cellphone when I leave the house. Since I've been here at this new address for about a month I have relied solely on the MJ for making and taking calls at home. It has been phenominal. I did have an issue with the volume being very low. I went into the settings in the MJ application and jacked the speaker and microphone all the way up. It's been great ever since. Here are some things to consider 1. Not all USB ports are created equal. They may all be 2.0 but depending on how many USB Devices you have connected at one time you may run into an issue of having low power on the entire USB Bus(All ports are generally powered by the same bus). This can cause all sorts of weird problems, calls dropping randomly mouse or keyboard just stop working etc... and so on.. Here is a great solution. Go to walmart, compusa, bestbuy, walgreens, radio shack, etc... Buy a USB 2.0 powered USB Hub. Not the itty bitty one but one with a seperate power supply. What that does Is creates its own powered USB Hub so that you aren't making your motherboard juice up your Ipod, USB Speakers, 2.5" USB External Hard drive, Mouse&Keyboard, Webcam, Digital Camera, Game Controllers, USB Light, etc and so on... 2. You "Can" Plug it into your wall outlet and service the rest of your house. The issue with this is that the MJ was designed to be a one station device. It can only handle enough current to power one or possibly two normal handset telephones. If you have multiple telephones and they all ring a few things can and probably will happen. a. The MJ will overheat and shut down or die b. The USB Bus will be overloaded over heat and shut down the computer. c. Your Mother board will die because it fails to protect it's self from a USB Bus Electrical draw Overload What you can do is keep a plain old regular telephone for emergencies. Buy a multipoint portable phone setup and keep the main hub plugged into the MJ. Or Buy multiple seperate portable phones and back feed the magic jack through the existing wiring in your house, plug the different portable phones into the jacks throughout your house. Portable phones Are self powered so all they do is pull the least amount of juice from the MJ. What I would personally do (and I did) is buy a Powered USB 2.0 Hub(they are cheap) and plug anything that relies on USB for it's power into the hub. This is just good practice with or without a Magic Jack. I can say that Before I ever heard of Magic Jack I have heard of the seemingly weird problems people are seeing. I have trashed motherboards because people thought that they OK to plug in a reading light, A USB Powered Backup drive, A Backlit Keyboard, A Web cam, A Controller with Rumble Packs, USB powered 5.1 surround sound, and many other things. They start playing a game turn up the audio and get two minutes into some heavy action and blink the computer shuts down. They do it again same thing, and again, and again. Then suddenly they realize that they have no USB at all. Guess what happened. Too many items drawing power from the USB bus and it fizzled out. Sometimes that will render the Motherboard useless. Sometimes you can install a USB card into a pci slot. USE A USB POWERED HUB when attaching items that draw power from the usb ports.