My nightmare with Vonage began on June 6, 2004. I ordered their service through their website and received an email saying I would receive my startup kit on or before June 11, 2004. On June 11, I was concerned because their website still said my order was "processing," despite them having already charged my credit card.
On June 12, I made a series of 3 calls to see why I hadn't received my startup kit yet. I do this a lot to companies that are fairly new. After convincingly tapping random computer keys in the background for a few minutes, CSR #1 told me that my kit was scheduled to ship out the following day. I said, "Really? It's shipping out tomorrow?" "Yep," he said. "On Sunday?" I asked.
Pause. More tapping. More tapping.
"Oh, I'm sorry it seems that we're out of startup kits."
"Really. I thought you just said it was going to ship out tomorrow, on Sunday?"
"My mistake, sir." Then he went on to explain that their retail rollout at Best Buy stores had caused them to sell out of all their startup kits and that some should be going out on Monday.
Whatever. I thanked him for his time. I waited about an hour and called back.
CSR #2 said that my unit had already been shipped and that it was refused. "Really? Your website says it hadn't been shipped yet."
Pause. Tapping. Tapping. More tapping.
The she apologized and said that there was a mix-up, she must of entered the wrong account number. "But you didn't look up my account by my account number," I reminded her, "you looked it up by my email address, which you read back to me and confirmed my account information."
"Uhhh..." Pause. Tapping.
She said that she would forward my ticket to a supervisor and said I would receive a call on Monday or Tuesday, but no later than Wednesday. Yeah, right.
I called back an hour later and spoke to CSR #3, who, after looking up my account said that my device should have been sent via UPS by then. I asked him if there was a shortage of startup kits. He said no. I told him that's what CSR #1 told me and asked him to transfer me to a supervisor.
When I spoke with the supervisor, he apologized somewhat sincerely and said that the kit would be shipped on Monday via FedEx overnight. Finally getting somewhere.
Monday came and sure enough, their website listed the FedEx overnight package on its way. Yay!
On Tuesday, I got the device.
It was clearly a used unit with pen markings on the back and fingerprints that were partially missed when it was cleaned, I mean... "refurbished".
The device was defective, but it took 4 more calls to tech support to convince them of that. I will not go into those calls here, because it's all technical stuff that doesn't relate to the review.
Anyway, on Wednesday, I had to ship back the device using a FedEx label they provided through the Internet. I was inconvenienced though because the closest FedEx drop-off center to me was 30 miles away. There goes a half tank of gas at $2 a gallon.
They received it on Saturday according to the FedEx website, but they didn't acknowledge receiving it until Tuesday, DESPITE me having the signature of the person who signed for the FedEx shipment!!!
So on Tuesday, they send out a new kit, by Ground UPS.
Sigh.
It took them 18 days PAST their promised delivery date to finally get a working kit to me.
All right, so it's hooked up, it's working. I expand my server to unlimited, sign up for a second line and an 800#. Things are going well.
Then they bill my credit card $99.99 out of the blue 2 months into my server. I called them and they said it was for the defective unit I didn't return. Dear God. I fax them the FedEx paperwork with the signature of the person who received it. Three days later, they "reverse" the charge on my credit card, which then takes 30 days to actually appear in my account. So they got to use my $99.99 for 30 days. So what.
So things go fairly well in August and most of September. The credit card that I had on file with them sine June is suddenly declined for my September bill. It had plenty of limit left and I called them and told them to re-bill it. They said it was refused because the addresses didn't match.
"Really," I said, "because I haven't moved or changed my account information since June, and you've successfully billed my card every month since June."
I emailed customer support back and forth at least 20 times about my billing. I double-checked with the bank like they asked me to and confirmed what I was telling them ALL ALONG -- NOTHING CHANGED ON MY SIDE!!
I called and talked to a supervisor and told him that I confirmed everything with my bank and they back me up -- the problem is on Vonage's side. He promised to call me back within 24 hours to help get the problem worked out.
That very night, I received an email from Vonage saying my account had been terminated and that I could not reactivate my account due to my failure to pay. This, folks, over a $24.95 billing error that my card issuing bank AND Visa confirmed was with Vonage.
As luck would have it, though, about a week after being greased up and screwed by Vonage, I discovered Lingo.com, who is $15 a month LESS than Vonage and even offers unlimited calling to Europe as part of their regular unlimited plan.
Avoid Vonage.com at all costs. They are rude, technically-illiterate people who don't think twice about screwing their customers.
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What I didn't talk about above was the technical problems I experience throughout this entire Customer Service nightmare.
At one point, ALL MY VOICEMAILS were ending up in the inbox of a Vonage customer in Phoenix, Arizona. I live in Ohio. He was kind enough to call me EVERY NIGHT for a week and let me listen to my voicemails. When I called Vonage about this, they INSISTED there was nothing wrong.
Then there was the time for 4 days that every time I tried to place a call, I heard a busy signal, while the person I was trying to call heard a ringtone followed by a random Vonage customer picking up their phone and saying "Hello." Once again, Vonage INSISTED nothing was wrong. Ha!
Of course, there are the dozens of time Caller ID just stopped working. The only way to fix it was to power down the hardware for 5 minutes and restart it, and then it would usally take 10-15 minutes for my dialtone to come back. But you can't check to see if your dialtone's back during this process because if you do, you'll PERMANANTLY BREAK your hardware unit and they will have to send you a new one. NO JOKE people. If you pick up the phone when they are performing maintenance on it, you BREAK the HARDWARE. It won't function anymore.
Let's see... what else? There was the time that my 800# stopped working for no reason. It would work if a Vonage customer would call it, but someone from a regular phone would go right into voicemail. It was like pulling teeth to get the Vonage people to even see the problem.
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