Vicious Vonage
May 25, 2006
Just sending this out as a warning to anyone who considers signing up for Vonage. I’ve had the service since August and honestly, it was pretty good. Over the last month or so, however, the quality has been degrading considerably and so I attempted on several occasions to contact customer support.
That didn’t go well. Hold times are frequently in excess of 45 minutes to an hour, and once connected the support representatives are completely clueless with regard to problems with service. They’ll offer to send you to Tier 2 support, which means another half hour or so of holding. Once there, you’re just as likely as anything to be told that the problem lies with your ISP and to try it again later.
On the 24th, I signed up for SoftPhone, Vonage’s PC-based additional line service. The login credentials provided to me were incorrect and as such, I never used the service. I called again and was on hold for 90 minutes before I gave up. I called back this morning to cancel my account.
Cancellation is the worst part of using Vonage. If you cancel within a year of signing up (and believe me, you will) you’re charged a $39.99 disconnection fee. And despite the fact that it never worked, I was stuck with the $9.99 SoftPhone activation fee and $9.99 for the first month of SoftPhone service. Additionally, despite the fact that I’d recently paid for service on my main line ($14.99) and a fax line ($9.99), Vonage doesn’t offer any credits for unused service when an account is cancelled.
Bad product, bad service, bad policies. And with landlines from real phone providers like BellSouth as low as $15 now, there’s really no longer any reason to try it.
Vonage’s service is a costly gamble. I loved it when it worked, but when it goes bad, it goes really bad. If you’re aching to try IP telephony, get hooked up with a provider that doesn’t keep you in a chokehold. If you thought cell companies were bad about managing your account, you’ll be singing their praises once you get a taste of Vonage.
I’ve been using BroadVoice for the past five months and have been happy with their service. I haven’t really had any problems but the few times that I did they were relatively quick to respond to my emails.
I’ve been using Vonage since the first of February and I’ve had no outages, no problems at all, actually. I keep hearing all of these Vonage stories, but haven’t yet experienced it, so I remain a huge fan of their offering.
Anytime my phone has been out it’s actually been a local networking problem (my router acted up), not anything to do with Vonage.
I won’t pretend Vonage doesn’t have big problems, with their huge growth at such a fast pace, but I remain a happy customer.
Just another data point: 1 year, no problems, and while $15 sounds pretty good, it’s be hard to get the same features (simulring, 800# for $5/month, email-alerts of voicemail, unlimited long distance) for the same price.
It’s a perfectly reasonable point, but one should understand that they’re getting those features at that price at the expense of customer service.
I once emailed them and they responded to me saying that my email was very important to them but due to high email volume they were unable to accept my email and that I should try again later. Isn’t the whole point of email that it waits for you until you get around to answering it?!?!?!?
Heres a pic of what they sent me:
http://www.designerdriftwood.com/images/vonageblows.jpg
I can’t wait to cancel my Vonage! I just spent another hour on the phone with them (actually 1 hour 5 minutes and 59 seconds). Here’s the story:
I had a Linksys router that was defective so I called Vonage. The woman I spoke to said she would send a Motorola to replace it at no charge! When I received the Motorola router I was charged $116.94 so I called immediately. After 1 hour 51 minutes and 36 seconds on the line, I finally got a supervisor in accounts management (they all say they’re supervisors now) who told me that I needed to return the defective Linksys router (I hadn’t been told that and honestly didn’t even think to ask about it). It doesn’t work, I’m more than happy to return it, why wasn’t I told to do that before? Therese (the supervisor) didn’t know why I wasn’t told that, but she gave me a return authorization number for the router and told me that when Vonage received the router, they would push back a credit to my credit card number for the $116.94. Fine, so now I have to send them the router (at my cost) and wait for my funds to be returned (Therese said it would be within a week).
This morning I received an email that the router had been received by Vonage on August 7th so I decided to call to check on the status of the refund. After spending one hour 5 minutes and 59 seconds on the phone with Dennis I am expecting a refund but not for the $116.94, I will be getting a refund of $54.33. He said he could push back the full refund but he wouldn’t. He said the difference could be put on my account as a credit toward future invoices.
I argued with him for nearly an hour and completely feel like I’ve been screwed. The bottom line, I can cancel my vonage and get digital telephone service with my local cable company (Brighthouse) and save $17 a month! I have been with Vonage for 2 years so I’m not expecting any cancellation charge, the day I receive that refund I’m calling to cancel and I cannot wait!!
I’m thinking someone should register a domain like (www.dontusevonage.com) to provide a site for dissatisfied customers and former customers to share these experiences! It’s cheap enough to register a domain, I’m serious thinking I’ll do that!
I was sold their phone service, the representative at the mall kiosk told me it was an aircard which would provide me with wireless internet service. Needless to say I brought it back the very next day, and I was told I had to call customer service to get a refund. I sat on hold until hell froze over and then they asked me what the problem was. I told them and they didn’t apologize for their fraud and stupidity, but rather tried to convince me to keep the service, asking me over and over how much I paid for phone service. Three weeks later and there is no refund, I had to go back to the kiosk and tell the person why, when asked, I was canceling, then they called CS again who told me the problem was with my bank and they tried to give a refund. I spoke with my bank and they said there was no reason why they shouldn’t be able to give me a refund. I guess I’ll go back a third time, do you think they’ll ask why I don’t want to keep it??