Vonage Sucks
There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of blog posts with the same title. I don’t have time to tell the whole story but they blew it. The only polite and helpful person who actually did what what they said was the guy that actually cancelled the order for me.
I also found the following from Clark Howard, who is a Vonage user:
“Jun 08, 2006 — Vonage gets customer service complaints
Clark gets a lot of feedback on Internet phone calling services, both good and bad. It’s still not mainstream in the U.S., but it’s growing every day. Recently, the feedback has been negative, especially regarding Vonage. The complaints about Vonage involve the company’s poor customer service and technical support, and it’s causing people to drop the service. Clark has used Vonage for years and he hasn’t had much trouble. But the churn rate is more than 2 percent right now, which is high. In addition, the Wall Street Journal contacted Vonage to ask about the complaints and no one responded. That’s just not smart.”
Even after I gave them 4 chances to get it right before cancelling cancelled my order, they even called me up at work to get my credit card number so I can “sign up and start saving money on my phone bill right now.” (Like I’m giving my CC# to people that call me.)
To summarize, I decided to cancel the order because if it took this much effort just to get my order processed (which never actually happened) then I can only imagine how much of a nightmare any technical issues would be.
See also a previous post about communication in regards to customer service.
June 14th, 2006 at 9:15 am
Sorry it didn’t work out for you. I hope the collective joys of a new home out weight the collective pain it took to get there.
December 18th, 2006 at 10:12 am
I have used Voage VOIP since Dec 2003. The technical service has been good. Then, my company said to use Vonage for home office lines, so I opened a second Vonage account.
The Vonage works is the give you a device that you hook up to you broadband and plug your phone into the device. The device supports 2 phone lines. With my second account, I got a second device.
In an effort to simplify my technology, I called up and asked them to put both of my phone lines on a single device. They said a device can only be associated to a single account, so I asked them to merge my accounts. They said no problem, it would take a couple days.
Now, the first problem at this point is the fact it took about 2 hours on the phone with several people to get to this point. Additionally, each person had to reverify my ID.
A couple days later, my old home number had been transfered to the company account. That was good. But my company number wasn’t working. I gave them another day for good measure and called them up.
Seems they disconnected my company number and GAVE IT TO SOMEONE ELSE! Ugh.
For the next several weeks, I attempted to get my number back to no avail. Finally I just transfered my home number to Comcast VOIP and get a new company number with Comcast. That was in November.
So yesterday, I look on my credit card and see Vonage has charged me for another month of service for Dec 16 - Jan 15. They haven’t had my number since November!
I call up this morning (still on the call…) and tell them to refund the $56 and cancel my service. The guy tries to tell me I have been using it. And that I will be charge a disconnect fee because I haven’t met my terms and agreements. He kept telling me he was empowered to solve my problem, but he wouldn’t refund the $56 or waive the cancellation fee. He must of just been trained on what enpowerment means.
He transfers me to billing. I explain the situation again. She tells me I didn’t actually want my company number back in Oct when the account merger happened. No, according to her what I asked for was for them to move my home number to my company account, disconnect my company account line, and give me a new temporary number. I told her that A) that makes absolutely no sense, and B) that is certainly not what I asked for. Then I asked to speak to her supervisor. That made her mad. She came back on and tried to tell me what I wanted again. Finally I got her supervisor.
The supervisor was much more reasonable. I once again explained the situation, said I wanted my $56 for the next month back, and the cancellation fee waived since they gave my phone number away. Finally, the supervisor agreed.
December 18th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
WRITE YOUR LOCAL NEWS STATIONS AND ASK THEM TO RUN A STORY ON THIS SCAM! WE NEED TO AT LEAST WARN PEOPLE ABOUT THIS COMPANY THAT IS SCREWING THOUSANDS.
June 8th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Vonage customer service / Vonage sucks? Wrong! it just blows. I can’t keep service on and have to reset about once every other day when lucky, sometimes up to 4 times a day. I made a big mistake and ported my old number over and now they are holding it hostage and comming up with all sorts of B.S. excuses why they can’t release it back to my new provider. Their Tec. support proves constantaly that English as a second language is to hard for most forigners to master. I have been trying for over three months to get my number transfered. They don’t understand the meaning of the word service and they really are not responsive. Warning don’t use Vonage if you want reliable service. They have not given me service that I would consider in a positive manner.