V-Tech IP8100 phone with broken AC adapter

Posted on: June 17, 2008

V-Tech’s IP8100 broadband phone has multiple reported issues where the power adapter craps out: specifically after some months, you may suddenly find that the indicator lights (on both the front and for the Ethernet connections on the back) stop working. The paging button works to ring the handset, but for practical intents and purposes, it’s broken. Here are some examples from various forums:

As you can see, the similarities are striking — if you’ve experienced this, you’re not alone. My wife and I noticed this today. I spent more time than I cared to trying to figure out what was going wrong.

I eventually called Vonage (via Skype) and they were very helpful, saying that (1) it was no problem to send a replacement AC adapter out via 2-day shipping and (2) most people blame the unit instead of being more specific, so they appreciated that on my part. While I’m not absolutely sure that the problem is confined to the adapter, we’ll find out in a couple days or so.

Bummed by the disruption of service, but understanding tech failures do happen — I wonder how common this is, and who’s having/had the issue who hasn’t shared their experiences? Thanks to the above reports, I was able to make more sense of the situation.

4 Responses to “V-Tech IP8100 phone with broken AC adapter”

  1. susie Says:
    July 9th, 2008 at 12:43 PM PDT

    even I faced the same problem , My vtech 5.8 broadband phone adapter suddenly stopped working and it was hard time for me to figure out what when wrong . Finally it took me months to realize something is not right and hence I took time to call the vonage customer service. They after a few questions asked me to send back the whole unit and said will ship me the new one. Ofcourse they did what they said and the new one worked perfectly well but only for few month again and the machine now hangs up on me with no lights on and only intercom working.

  2. Mel Says:
    July 30th, 2008 at 5:28 PM PDT

    I had the exact same thing happend to me a few months ago, may be around april of this year.
    When I called vonage, one of the higher end tech guy told me that this happend due to a firmware upgrade that was send out to these systems. apparently there was some glitch or something that cause the power adapter to go out, (im thinking improper code or something maybe with the power requirements were not set correctly in the firmware). Please do not argue about that it can't happen because this is just a piece of software blah blah, know your computer programming first. Firmware is not the same as a driver. (I had to argue this with one of the lower end tech guys cuz they had not mailed my adapter and i had to call them again, and remind them about this open case). Finally I received my new adapter plus a 10 dollar credit on my account for the service that I had lost for 5 days or so.

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