How magic is MagicJack?

My 12 year old is ready to start babysitting. But I am unwilling to leave him at home without a phone to call out on in an emergency. Unfortunately I don’t have a phone at home. I went all cellular years ago. And while in theory he has a cell of his own, it is frequently without a charge, or otherwise unusable. So it isn’t an adequate solution either.

So suddenly I’m thinking, what about MagicJack or one of its competitors if there are any? Anybody got any experiences you would like to share? I would especially like to know if anyone has found an option that I could just put on my WiFi without the need of leaving a PC on all the time.

Screw that. Teach the kid to charge his phone, make showing you a fully charged phone a condition precedent to embarking on a babysitting venture.

I wouldn’t go with MagicJack in this situation. It has to be hooked up to your computer and your computer needs to be on.

Many of the voip providers are very good now. The big one is Vonage. There are many smaller ones that have great service and are much cheaper. I use PhonePower and have been very happy. I pay about $9/mo.

These providers give you a little box that you hook into your ethernet. Then you plug a phone cord into the box. You phone works exactly as if you had service from the phone company. The only problem is that if you have power/internet outage you can’t use the phone.

Agreed. If he’s not responsible enough to maintain a cell phone, he’s not responsible enough to babysit.

Magicjack is garbage - about 50% of the numbers I tried to call wouldn’t work, and the reliability of receiving calls and being able to be heard by the other end was suspect, at best.
I’ve used Vonage, and Packet8 as well prior to magicjack - those were ok but obviously well more expensive.
Right now I went with buying my own adapter the Cisco SPA2102 http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-SPA2102-Phone-Adapter-Router/dp/B000FKP55K/ref=dp_cp_ob_e_title_1
And then I bought my phone service from Voip.ms. With them an incoming number is 1.95/mo (in the cheaper area codes - don't just look in your own if it costs more) + approx .01/minute incoming + outgoing. Also can choose 4.95/mo for like 5000 minutes incoming + .01/min outgoing. No crazy taxes or fees to pay either unless you optionally sign up for E911.
If I decide I don’t like them there are many other providers I can sign up for that are similar, all using the same adapter. And any SIP provider you can also connect directly on your computer using a Softphone like Xlite, and use your computer speakers/microphone to talk.

Word up.

Also, on reading the OP, it sounds like … the OP’s 12-year-old is babysitting other people’s kids in the OP’s home? Ferreals? When I babysat, it was in the home of the people employing me (and the home of the child in question) so whether or not I as the babysitter had a phone was a moot point.

… or is this a case of the 12-year-old babysitting his own siblings? If that’s what’s going on, then I fall back on the previous assertion: you can’t keep a phone charged, you canNOT be in charge of a little kid. (pun completely intended)

Either way: Need more info.

As other posters have said, not cool. Unless there’s an actual technical problem with the phone or charger, if he’s not responsible enough to keep his phone charged, on him, and answer it when you call, he’s *not *ready for babysitting.

We made a deal with our son when he got his first cell phone: if he answered when I called at random, he’d earn $5 (regular calls to communicate something didn’t count for payment, but once or twice a month, I’d make the Money Call). If he didn’t answer when I called, he owed me $10. Took about three missed calls before he learned his lesson.

Nope, not other kids, just his 7 year old brother, for say a half hour while I run to the store. And the kid is usually very responsible in most things. The charger thing is a idiosyncrasy not a symptom of normal personality. He’s not as connected as a lot of kids and makes and receives very few calls. The phone is not really part of his regular life and thus gets neglected.

He has taken babysiter training and is ready for the responsibility. I don’t trust him to make sure the fire extinguisher is charged either. That’s my job. But he has been trained to use it and knows where it is if he needs it. I just need to make sure if he needs to call me or 911 he has a reliable tool to do it with.

Make sure his phone is charged regularly.

We’ve had magicjack for… well, years now and we’re very happy with it. We haven’t had any problems calling numbers or hearing clearly. But you have to have your computer on, it thingy has to be plugged in…

Seriously, it’s not any more convenient than making sure a cell is charged.

I haven’t read a single other post in the thread. But I feel confident in stating that your 12 year old is not ready to start babysitting. If a person cannot reliably figure out how to plug in a phone and dial 911 in an emergency, why would you entrust them with a human life?

Please understand the difference between your child being ready to babysit, and you being ready for your child to babysit.

If he’s at home, isn’t the charger somewhere close by? I thought most cell phones worked while plugged in to the charger (mine does)? If that is the case you might not be able to call him (if the phone is off or dead) but he should always be able to call out by connecting the charger if he needed to.

There’s a difference between being irresponsible and not caring about something. If having a charged phone isn’t a priority for the OP’s son and no one has made it a priority for him, not charging it is not irresponsible.

However instead of buying another product I would make it a priority for him. Keep the phone charged or plug it in before you leave him babysitting, anytime the phone is not charged when you need him to babysit it stays plugged in and he doesn’t get paid. Pretty soon the phone will always be charged and ready.

I can’t disagree. But although not charging a phone is not necessarily irresponsible in itself, not having a charged phone while babysitting IS. Meaning OP’s child is not yet ready to babysit.

Must be nice to get paid to watch your younger siblings. I did it for years for free :stuck_out_tongue:

As another poster stated, doesn’t the phone work when plugged in? Put the charger in one particular place and just leave the phone plugged in there or direct him to plug it there if he picks it up and it’s low on charge. Why search for a more complicated solution than that? Or on your way out the door, say “Give me your phone” and plug it in yourself. Easy enough.

No. Both the phone and charger are usually at his mother’s. Occasionally one or the other migrates to my home.Seriously, responsibility is not the issue here folks. Can we all forget I mentioned it? If you want to start a discussion about how irresponsible I am by wanting my child to babysit, please take it elsewhere. I’ll even come and participate. If possible I would like to use this thread to discuss the reliability or lack there of, of Magic Jack.

But it sounds like people don’t consider Magic Jack to be a reliable land line replacement.

How about ooma? Has anyone tried that?

Or is there some other alternative I am unaware of.

Ooma costs roughly $250 up front and about $3.50 a month after that. While it’s better than VoIP in that the Ooma Hub doesn’t go out during a power or internet failure, I’d suggest instead getting a pay-as-you-go cell phone that *stays *at your house. Stays plugged in, if need be, so it’s just like an old fashioned corded phone but will have a battery in case of power outages. You’ll only need to pay for it when he needs to use it, and if it’s for emergencies only, should cost you far less than $300 this year.

Ooma can be had for between 100-150 refurbished if you watch woot.com - they’ve had them up there several times. But then you do also have to pay monthly taxes, and contrary to the previous poster Ooma IS Voip and DOES NOT work during an internet or power failure (unless you use a version of ooma also plugged into your local-only regular telephone line that you continued to pay for, and thus did work during a power outage, but it was your POTS that continued to work). Ooma is however a separate box and doesn’t require you to leave your computer on.

I think the most similar to magicjack is the “nettalk duo” which is also an upfront fee and then $30/yr. Haven’t tried them though. Probably have similar problems as magicjack, which basically boil down to “you can’t let people call expensive telcos for that low of a flat fee” - many rural telephone companies don’t work right on magicjack because it costs magicjack too much to call there. Its why I ultimately switched to one of the pay-per-minute providers - how they pay out is lined up with how I pay in so I can get Phone service basically at cost + a small markup, instead of a larger monthly fee to cover heavy users.

I did not know having a cellphone was so critical to babysitting.

Buy a second charger and leave it at your house so at least if he has the phone, he can charge it if necessary. But, I mean, if push comes to shove he could run over to a neighbor and ask to use their phone.

It’s not, but having someway to communicate with parents and emergency services is. And neighbors often aren’t home these days.

This. Shop around at Wal Mart and K Mart and the like, often you can get phone chargers for around $15 that will work fine. In fact, a lot of the newer phones all use a micro USB jack anyways, which should make finding a compatible charger even easier.