Review on Vtech I5871 Expandable Digital Answering by Theresa Brown

We have had this phone for about a year now. At first we only bought the base system (no additional handsets) but over the course of 6 months it was frequently dropping calls and showing 'searching for base' on the handset. We thought the base might be too far away (it was upstairs - my old Panasonic WiFi worked fine at that distance). Anyway, we added an extra tube below and it worked fine, you guessed it, 6 months. Again, we're back to frequent and now predictable call drops. For a while it did so after being about 30 minutes away from the base, but now, after only 1-2 minutes of conversation, the ominous "searching for base" signals another lost call. For the money I spent on this phone I could have gotten 5 other more reliable cordless phones. Needless to say, this is the last time I will buy Vtech. **Update** Based on recommendations in other reviews I replaced the battery with a regular battery bought on ebay and now the phone works great. These supposedly "rechargeable" batteries run out pretty quickly - expect to replace the battery every 6 months when it stops charging.