Entered CNET Catalog: 04/24/2004
SKU: 0661526360469
Manufacturer: Vonage
Manufacturer description
Marketing description is not available.User opinions
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0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Avoid this service
Pros: the concept is nice
Cons: dropped calls, unauthorized cancellation fees even within 30 days
Review: I had hoped some of the problems discussed in the older reviews had been fixed, but that hasn't happened. Within 3 weeks I knew the service wasn't up to expectations. Cancelled service and still got hit with $200 cancellation fee. All the billing rep said was "challenge us through your credit card."
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Poor Customer Service Strips Away Any Positive
Pros: Poor Customer Service Strips Away Any Positive
Cons: As I told countless Customer Service Reps as I progressed up their chain, the cheap service draws customers but their nonexistant customer service will cause them to lose in the end.
Review: I did not have service for two months as I went back and forth with everyone I could contact in the company. All the way up to their tech management, I was being told the problem with my service was a power adapter. However, as I kept repeating to all who would listen: "I have a light on the unit...it isnt the power...". Not being an electrician, I agreed to wait 2 weeks for them to ship a replacement power adapter to me. Guess what: DIDNT WORK! I called to try and get the 2 months credited back to me, they wouldnt do it. I even spoke to management who claimed no one has the authority to credit an account. When I finally had enough and canceled the account, they charged me another $40 termination fee, even though I had bought all equipment myself from Best Buy. If they are giving you the equipment in turn for a multi-year/month contract, no problem, but in this case they give you nothing, yet charge you when you cancel. I'm filing a complaint with the BBB and posting everywhere possible to all future consumers: Do not use Vonage. I'll train pigeons before I return to Vonage service.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Unethical business practices
Pros: Talk Quality
Cons: Unethical practices. Stay away from this company. They will trap you and force you to spend money on reasons that are unreasonable.
Review: This business uses very bad ethics! I wanted to cancel my service. They told me if I did I would have to pay them $90.00(for the router and disconnection fee). I knew there was a disconnection fee, but I didn't know I was going to be charge for the router also. They told me that they would give me 3 months free if I didn't, so I didn't cancel. Then I was still billed for months that were supposed to be free. I called them up they appolgized. BUT... they wouldn't credit my credit card back. Instead they credited my Vonage account. I had to fight with them to get them to credit my credit card back(and I mean really fight with them...what a burden). And after I finally got them to credit my credit card back, they would only agree to partially credit my credit card. They would not fully reimburse me the amount they charged. Stay away from this company.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
bad syay away
Pros: bad stay away
Cons: bad sta wasay
Review: bad
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Junk Junk Junk!
Pros: There are no Pros to this service.
Cons: Everything is a Con
Review:
User Rating:
2.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Voice good, DATA BADDDDD
Pros: Minimal problems with phone service
Cons: Customer service is a pain, ROUTER IS CRAPPP
Review: If you don't do more then check your e-mail and surf go ahead and get this. If you use peer to peer, put this behind another router that won't block traffic. Otherwise your gonna be spending a LOOOOONG time working on port forwarding only to find out that it doesn't matter what you do, it will block you ALLL THE TIME. I hate the router, love the phone.
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
TERRIBLE customer service
Pros: good voiced when i used it
Cons: Customer service will HARRASS you
Review: I opened a Vonage account years back, however I started using another VoIP last year and decided to cancel my Vonage number. When I called to cancel last August, they convinced me to keep the a/c open with a small plan of 4.99. I thought it would not hurt to give it a try; I wanted to see if I was truly happy with my other VoIP. Recently I decided to close my Vonage account for good because I really have not used it in one whole year.
When the customer rep learned I wanted to close my account he started by offering some deal. I cut him off and said, “I am sorry, but I don’t use this a/c and I want it closed, if I ever decide to come back, I’ll call again and reopen a new acct”. In a tone of voice of someone who really does not care for customer service and completely disregarding what I had just said, he continued pestering me by saying that “he’d hate for me to pay another activation fee” and I said “that is my call”. He continued almost intentionally to instigate me by not hearing what I was asking and continued to ask me stupid questions like “do you have a fax, would you like a fax”? I asked him, “Does that make sense to you?” I am calling to cancel and I will end up with a Fax line! He offered three months free etc!!! I told him I want my acct CLOSED NOW! And based on this experience I will ENSURE NEVER TO RETURN TO VONAGE again!!! The more I tried to cut him off and get to the point the calmer he became, almost as if getting upset was a catalyst to his cynicism. He was even mocking the way I pronounce Vonage, and I told him I pronounce I WANT to pronounce it; it’s none of his business. I was actually sick and the more upset I got, the hoarser my voice became.
He continued to harass me!! He went in as far as to tell me that he’d hate to see my blood pressure rise! Complete disrespect and disregard for customer! I found this behavior so unprofessional and aggravating that I lost all respect for the person on the phone and also ensure to throw in a few descriptive words of what I thought of him and his low tactics to keep customers. With a very cool voice he said, “oh please don’t curse” and I said “get over it”… then he dared compare me to his mother! “oh you sound like my mother” in an almost mocking tone with a hint of joy at hearing me upset.
I was in disbelief that this man was actually going to make me hang up without closing my account! But I was determined to close my a/c then, because I already tried other times and there are limitations as to WHEN you can actually close an acct. It needs to be Monday thru Friday between 8am and 9pm and you need to speak to one of these harassing people in order to close the acct. You cannot do it online nor on the weekend.
If I ever thought one day I’d return to Vonage, this experience taught me that I NEVER EVER **EVER** WILL OPEN AN ACCT WITH VONAGE AGAIN!!!! Just so I don’t have to go thought the aggravation of closing it!
Bottom Line: yes, voice was good when I used the phone… but BRACE yourself if you EVER want to cancel! They WILL HARRASS YOU and try your patience.
When the customer rep learned I wanted to close my account he started by offering some deal. I cut him off and said, “I am sorry, but I don’t use this a/c and I want it closed, if I ever decide to come back, I’ll call again and reopen a new acct”. In a tone of voice of someone who really does not care for customer service and completely disregarding what I had just said, he continued pestering me by saying that “he’d hate for me to pay another activation fee” and I said “that is my call”. He continued almost intentionally to instigate me by not hearing what I was asking and continued to ask me stupid questions like “do you have a fax, would you like a fax”? I asked him, “Does that make sense to you?” I am calling to cancel and I will end up with a Fax line! He offered three months free etc!!! I told him I want my acct CLOSED NOW! And based on this experience I will ENSURE NEVER TO RETURN TO VONAGE again!!! The more I tried to cut him off and get to the point the calmer he became, almost as if getting upset was a catalyst to his cynicism. He was even mocking the way I pronounce Vonage, and I told him I pronounce I WANT to pronounce it; it’s none of his business. I was actually sick and the more upset I got, the hoarser my voice became.
He continued to harass me!! He went in as far as to tell me that he’d hate to see my blood pressure rise! Complete disrespect and disregard for customer! I found this behavior so unprofessional and aggravating that I lost all respect for the person on the phone and also ensure to throw in a few descriptive words of what I thought of him and his low tactics to keep customers. With a very cool voice he said, “oh please don’t curse” and I said “get over it”… then he dared compare me to his mother! “oh you sound like my mother” in an almost mocking tone with a hint of joy at hearing me upset.
I was in disbelief that this man was actually going to make me hang up without closing my account! But I was determined to close my a/c then, because I already tried other times and there are limitations as to WHEN you can actually close an acct. It needs to be Monday thru Friday between 8am and 9pm and you need to speak to one of these harassing people in order to close the acct. You cannot do it online nor on the weekend.
If I ever thought one day I’d return to Vonage, this experience taught me that I NEVER EVER **EVER** WILL OPEN AN ACCT WITH VONAGE AGAIN!!!! Just so I don’t have to go thought the aggravation of closing it!
Bottom Line: yes, voice was good when I used the phone… but BRACE yourself if you EVER want to cancel! They WILL HARRASS YOU and try your patience.
User Rating:
2.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
hard to cancel after you review service
Pros: cheap one price rate
Cons: had to change our phone number becuase we use AT&T DSL.
Review: Vonage might have been fine if we did not have to change our phone number, if we did not have to have our answering system in the back room were the computer is, and if the quality of the sound was better. They put me on hold for a very long time when I said I wanted to cancel my service. They charged me a $42.99 temporary security deposit to send their equipment back, said they will refund this after they inspect the equipment.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Worst Customer Service in the World - Bar None.
Pros: Nothing Good to Say about this company.
Cons: Terrible Customer Service - Criminal Billing Practices
Review: I signed up for 2 months free. They billed me for the second month. When I tried to get them to refund back to my Credit Card they refused. Instead they offered a convoluted solution that they never followed through on. After wasting at least 6 hours on Customer Support calls over a period of 8 weeks - I canceled their service. They had the nerve to then try and charge me a $40 termination fee. I refused to pay and have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Do yourself a favor and stay away from these bums.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
BEWARE! Proceed with caution. 6,200+ BBB Complaints; Vonage in NO GOOD!
Pros: Low monthly service price for a lot of features
Cons: Horrible customer service, so-so call quality, phone is reliant on modem, ISP, and electric company all working smoothly or its a NO GO. False advertising.
Review: I got rid of my traditional land line phone over 5-years ago when the only calls I received on it were telemarketers. Everyone I knew called my cell phone, and I have never had a problem with my Sprint service. In August however, I started working a few days a week from home and decided to get a home phone line... that's when the nightmare began!
I decided to go with Vonage service, because the service was so cheap and it came with a lot of features including unlimited long distance. The sign up process was a breeze online, and my positive experience with Vonage stops there.
From day one I had trouble with the UTStarcom Wi-Fi phone I had purchased for $102.48, including activation and 1st month's service. Customer support was irritating at best: I first had to navigate through an automated voice response system, then I was transferred to a live person, in the Philippines, who listened to my issues and then cold transferred me to tech support, in India. Tech support wasn't able to resolve my issue, so they cold transferred me to advanced tech support in New Jersey.
Advanced tech support fixed my initial problems, but I never found the phone service be reliable enough to use when I worked from home. Subsequently, I tried to cancel my account four times over the next 60 days and get my money back, as the company advertises a 60-day satisfaction guarantee. No such luck, i just kept getting transferred to very aggressive sales agents who would talk me into circles and frustrate me until I would hang up.
THEY WOULD NOT CANCELL MY SERVICE. I had to call my local telephone company to have my number ported over at which point Vonage charged me a $130 early termination penalty.
In the end I paid over $300 for less than 3-hours of phone service. I have filed complaints with the BBB and the New Jersey Attorney General. PLEASE DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER VONAGE. Thank You.
I decided to go with Vonage service, because the service was so cheap and it came with a lot of features including unlimited long distance. The sign up process was a breeze online, and my positive experience with Vonage stops there.
From day one I had trouble with the UTStarcom Wi-Fi phone I had purchased for $102.48, including activation and 1st month's service. Customer support was irritating at best: I first had to navigate through an automated voice response system, then I was transferred to a live person, in the Philippines, who listened to my issues and then cold transferred me to tech support, in India. Tech support wasn't able to resolve my issue, so they cold transferred me to advanced tech support in New Jersey.
Advanced tech support fixed my initial problems, but I never found the phone service be reliable enough to use when I worked from home. Subsequently, I tried to cancel my account four times over the next 60 days and get my money back, as the company advertises a 60-day satisfaction guarantee. No such luck, i just kept getting transferred to very aggressive sales agents who would talk me into circles and frustrate me until I would hang up.
THEY WOULD NOT CANCELL MY SERVICE. I had to call my local telephone company to have my number ported over at which point Vonage charged me a $130 early termination penalty.
In the end I paid over $300 for less than 3-hours of phone service. I have filed complaints with the BBB and the New Jersey Attorney General. PLEASE DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER VONAGE. Thank You.
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Good service - but buyer beware when you move to another provider
Pros: Reliable service, cheap for US based calling
Cons: Expensive international rates, terrible disconnect experience
Review: I was reasonably happy with Vonage except for the international rates. The day I disconnected and went to a cheaper, more reliable provider, I realized that Vonage are very much a second rate company.
Only after searching the Internet did I find hundreds of people with similarly unpleasant experiences.
Only after searching the Internet did I find hundreds of people with similarly unpleasant experiences.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE
Pros: Service is actually good, but depends on other factors like your internet connection
Cons: DO NOT USE YOUR BANK ACCOUNT TO SIGN UP FOR THIS SERVICE USE A PROTECTED CREDIT CARD INSTEAD!!
Review: Seems that CNet has this product on here more than once. I'll recap what I said on my other review (http://reviews.cnet.com/voip/vonage/4864-9238_7-30974765.html?ctype=msgid&messageSiteID=7&messageID=2513917&cval=2513917&tag=uolst)
Horrible Customer Service. The actual product has been working fine after the initial problem was fixed, which was a faulty activation of my account on their end. To fix it, they had to delete my account and re add it to my account. And of course, they charged me not once but twice for doing it, each time more money than the original purchase price ($141.53 total), even though I was assured that I would not see any billing when the fix was taking place. Now, I am being denied a refund, simply because they do not offer refunds, even though they charged my bank account without my authorization. However, due to technicalities out of my knowledge or understanding, it seems that once you allow a company to charge your bank account, you are basically opening the door for them to charge you for whatever else they desire afterwards and it will not be labeled as an unauthorized charge, therefore the bank will take no action against it and you are left alone to deal with a vendor, in this case a vendor that does not know a single drop of what Customer Service or Logic is.
I wanted to recap, but this company drove me over the edge. Even the BBB took them off their membership as of March, 2007.
IF YOU USE THEM, MAKE SURE YOU USE A PROTECTED CREDIT CARD THAT WILL NOT HASSLE YOU IF YOU NEED TO DO A CHARGE BACK, BECAUSE THIS COMPANY HAS NO ISSUES WITH CHARGING YOUR ACCOUNT WITHOUT EVEN TELLING YOU.
As far as service is concerned, it has been good so far, so no real complaints there. So if you are one of the lucky few that does not have an issue, then you will love it most likely, which is where you will see many of the good reviews. However, be warned, if you do have a serious issue (such as being wrongfully billed), you better get ready for some frustration because their OUTSOURCED Customer Service people only follow a script, and if you fall off the script they will put you on hold for undetermined amounts of times to try to get you to hang up. If you survive that stunt, be ready to repeat yourself over and over again anyways.
Horrible Customer Service. The actual product has been working fine after the initial problem was fixed, which was a faulty activation of my account on their end. To fix it, they had to delete my account and re add it to my account. And of course, they charged me not once but twice for doing it, each time more money than the original purchase price ($141.53 total), even though I was assured that I would not see any billing when the fix was taking place. Now, I am being denied a refund, simply because they do not offer refunds, even though they charged my bank account without my authorization. However, due to technicalities out of my knowledge or understanding, it seems that once you allow a company to charge your bank account, you are basically opening the door for them to charge you for whatever else they desire afterwards and it will not be labeled as an unauthorized charge, therefore the bank will take no action against it and you are left alone to deal with a vendor, in this case a vendor that does not know a single drop of what Customer Service or Logic is.
I wanted to recap, but this company drove me over the edge. Even the BBB took them off their membership as of March, 2007.
IF YOU USE THEM, MAKE SURE YOU USE A PROTECTED CREDIT CARD THAT WILL NOT HASSLE YOU IF YOU NEED TO DO A CHARGE BACK, BECAUSE THIS COMPANY HAS NO ISSUES WITH CHARGING YOUR ACCOUNT WITHOUT EVEN TELLING YOU.
As far as service is concerned, it has been good so far, so no real complaints there. So if you are one of the lucky few that does not have an issue, then you will love it most likely, which is where you will see many of the good reviews. However, be warned, if you do have a serious issue (such as being wrongfully billed), you better get ready for some frustration because their OUTSOURCED Customer Service people only follow a script, and if you fall off the script they will put you on hold for undetermined amounts of times to try to get you to hang up. If you survive that stunt, be ready to repeat yourself over and over again anyways.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Unacceptable call quality.
Pros: Couldn't find any.
Cons: Call quality and customer service reps.
Review: I was a sunrocket user for over a year. It worked fairly well for most of that time, but towards the end call quality became very bad. As soon as I heard Sunrocket was going out of business I signed up with Vonage so I could port my #. That went ok. It took a little over two weeks to port the number, but I was just happy it happened at all. I received the device in 4 or 5 days which isn't too bad except the Sunrocket special said overnight. It also said two months free and free box shipped free. My family and I tried using it for a couple of days and found the service and call quality unreliable. Calls were completed successfully only about 75% of the time. That's better than Sunrocket over their last month, but nothing like the Sunrocket of a year ago. After that I decided VOIP wouldn't work for my family. I can take the call quality issues, but my family is a little less forgiving. So, we called Verizon and signed up for their overpriced service. They ported our number in about a week. This is when the big problems started with Vonage. They don't tell you this up front, but there is a disconnect fee ($40) for each line. Before the Vonage lovers get their panties in a bunch, it does say that in the fine print they call the terms of service. But, if you have nothing to hide, make it clear up front. They have plenty to hide. Also, to my surprise I only had 30 days to cancel the service even though the current terms of service say 60 days. They said it was 30 when I signed up. So, now I owe $40 plus $50 for the box and $20 for shipping and taxes etc. So, its like $113 total. After arguing over several calls I tried email support. After much back-and-forth they said all of it would be reimbursed. So, I called to cancel and they said none of it would be reimbursed and they didn't want the box back and said the email support guy didn't know what he was talking about. Each rep told me something different. It seems like they make it up as they go along. A legit business with a decent product wouldn't have these issues. Anyway, I used one of those shopsafe credit card numbers with a low limit, so when they tried to charge my card it failed. I have since cancelled the shopsafe number and will never give them a penny. Except for the 410 pennies they inexplicably charged me when I signed up. They were never able to provide me with a usable service.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Unreliable phone, fax rarely worked because of line noise, Cancel Fee even when phone was inoperable
Pros: Cheap Service
Cons: Extremely unreliable, Can't get out of contract without $40 Cancellation Fee
Review: This was the worst phone move I ever made.
I have had Vonage for almost a year. During this year, I have lost phone service countless times. Despite the multiple calls to customer service (with average hold times of 30 minutes to a hour), they could not fix the problem. When others would call me, there would be no sound when I answered the phone. When I called out, there would be no sound for about 45 seconds, then the sound would come in. Vonage could never fix the problem. Even when my Vonage "worked" I had constant -pauses- in my conversations.
Faxes were a whole different story. They NEVER worked right. If I tried sending a fax out or in, I would get "poor line status" and the faxes would fail. If I tried sending it over and over, eventually it would go through (sometimes partially). Since I use my fax for business purposes, it was terrible to make clients re-fax the same documents over and over until it finally went through.
I finally gave up when my phone quit working altogether. I have had to use my cell phone constantly because my phone never worked. After numerous calls to Vonage, with no solution, I switched phone service (using my cell phone!). When I called Vonage to cancel my account, they charged me a $40 cancellation fee since I didn't have my service for 1 year (I made it 11 months!). I think this is insane, since I was cancelling because THEIR service did NOT work and I could not use my phone! Customer service told me that according to my contract, REGARDLESS of whether their service works or not, you are responsible for the $40 cancellation charge. I asked to speak to a manager, (I had to ask 4 times before they finally agreed to transfer me) in which they put me on hold for 3+ hours, in which they never answered and eventually hung up on me.
I have had Vonage for almost a year. During this year, I have lost phone service countless times. Despite the multiple calls to customer service (with average hold times of 30 minutes to a hour), they could not fix the problem. When others would call me, there would be no sound when I answered the phone. When I called out, there would be no sound for about 45 seconds, then the sound would come in. Vonage could never fix the problem. Even when my Vonage "worked" I had constant -pauses- in my conversations.
Faxes were a whole different story. They NEVER worked right. If I tried sending a fax out or in, I would get "poor line status" and the faxes would fail. If I tried sending it over and over, eventually it would go through (sometimes partially). Since I use my fax for business purposes, it was terrible to make clients re-fax the same documents over and over until it finally went through.
I finally gave up when my phone quit working altogether. I have had to use my cell phone constantly because my phone never worked. After numerous calls to Vonage, with no solution, I switched phone service (using my cell phone!). When I called Vonage to cancel my account, they charged me a $40 cancellation fee since I didn't have my service for 1 year (I made it 11 months!). I think this is insane, since I was cancelling because THEIR service did NOT work and I could not use my phone! Customer service told me that according to my contract, REGARDLESS of whether their service works or not, you are responsible for the $40 cancellation charge. I asked to speak to a manager, (I had to ask 4 times before they finally agreed to transfer me) in which they put me on hold for 3+ hours, in which they never answered and eventually hung up on me.
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
avoid vonage like drug resistant plague mixed with aids and herpes carried by highly radioactive ser
Pros: advertised price
Cons: actual price, sociopathic customer service and technical support, predatory billing
Review: have vonage and the price is ok, its not great, they're charging me $10/mo. in fees which is as much as 50% more than any other VOIP provider.
Also, my voicemail has been broken for 6 months where whenever someone leaves a voicemail, the only thing that will make that stutter tone go away is to unplug my vonage adapter for 20 minutes, and I can't get them to fix it because of their passive aggressive "technical support" and "customer service" people, all of whom operate under procedures which are CLEARLY designed to discourage customers from calling by deliberately making any call you place to them for a 60 second issue take 1/2 hour with aggressive long windedness wherein if they're spending 60 seconds stating some obvious point, they won't stop talking when you start trying to speak, they raise their voice above yours, among other things. I call them and they all want me to sit through the same 30-60 minute steps of their card reading trouble shooting before they transfer my call to a supposedly more competent support department who do the same thing. So if you know, if you've been unfortunate enough to find out there's a department called ATS which may have some ability, you can ask "technical support" or "customer service" to connect you to them, in which case they will tell you there's no such thing as ATS, then you ask to speak to that ATS denier's supervisor and about 50% of the time they will tell you they don't have a supervisor.
If that wasn't enough to make me wish there was equipment of theirs on utility poles which I could destroy, they charge you like 40 bucks if you cancel your service less than 2 years after you sign up.. 2 years the only notification of which is buried deep in fine print in your agreement!
Bottom line, avoid vonage like drug resistant plague mixed with aids and herpes carried by highly radioactive serial killers. The quality of your VOIP is almost entirely dependent on the quality of your internet connection and Viatalk is supposed to have great customer service and they're much cheaper.
Also, my voicemail has been broken for 6 months where whenever someone leaves a voicemail, the only thing that will make that stutter tone go away is to unplug my vonage adapter for 20 minutes, and I can't get them to fix it because of their passive aggressive "technical support" and "customer service" people, all of whom operate under procedures which are CLEARLY designed to discourage customers from calling by deliberately making any call you place to them for a 60 second issue take 1/2 hour with aggressive long windedness wherein if they're spending 60 seconds stating some obvious point, they won't stop talking when you start trying to speak, they raise their voice above yours, among other things. I call them and they all want me to sit through the same 30-60 minute steps of their card reading trouble shooting before they transfer my call to a supposedly more competent support department who do the same thing. So if you know, if you've been unfortunate enough to find out there's a department called ATS which may have some ability, you can ask "technical support" or "customer service" to connect you to them, in which case they will tell you there's no such thing as ATS, then you ask to speak to that ATS denier's supervisor and about 50% of the time they will tell you they don't have a supervisor.
If that wasn't enough to make me wish there was equipment of theirs on utility poles which I could destroy, they charge you like 40 bucks if you cancel your service less than 2 years after you sign up.. 2 years the only notification of which is buried deep in fine print in your agreement!
Bottom line, avoid vonage like drug resistant plague mixed with aids and herpes carried by highly radioactive serial killers. The quality of your VOIP is almost entirely dependent on the quality of your internet connection and Viatalk is supposed to have great customer service and they're much cheaper.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Vonage Service is Terrible
Pros: Polite technical staff
Cons: Long hold times; Couldn't resolve technical problem
Review: Vonage service is terrible. After explaining my home fiberoptics connection to a Circuit City employee, they suggested (and I bought), a Vonage router. I drove home and tried to connect it to my wall outlet and discovered that this router would not work. I had called Vonage's technical team and had a great deal of difficulty trying to understand the directions they gave. I think I was calling Mumbai, India. After a lengthy conversation with their techie, he suggested a different router. I returned the 12 miles to circuit city and again came home with a different router, (this time costing $94.00), and hooked it up as instructed. This one, again, did not work out.....no dial tone. Using many more cellphone minutes, I called Vonage again. The techie was very polite but difficult to understand. Still the router didn't work. No one seemed to know how to solve this problem. After losing an entire days time, lots of gas and cell phone minutes, I decided to cancel Vonage and try Comcast's digital phone service. I called Comcast and by the next day had a working phone. I even got to pick from a list of phone numbers. They were great and so far service is good.
Now three days later, I still have been unable to get my Vonage account cancelled. Every time I called I gave my account info and phone number to several representatives and was then placed on hold for at least 30 minutes before being disconnected. I even tried getting transferred through the technical support department. The last two times I called, after being transferred several times (each time repeating my account info), I was told that their system was down. I will have to send a certified, return receipt letter.
Now three days later, I still have been unable to get my Vonage account cancelled. Every time I called I gave my account info and phone number to several representatives and was then placed on hold for at least 30 minutes before being disconnected. I even tried getting transferred through the technical support department. The last two times I called, after being transferred several times (each time repeating my account info), I was told that their system was down. I will have to send a certified, return receipt letter.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Poor voice quality, unreliable and horrendous customer service
Pros: cheap, easy to set up, control via the web
Cons: voice quality, reliability, customer services
Review: We wanted this to work very badly and stuck with it for a year hoping Vonage would improve their service. We tried Vonage with both Clearwire and Comcast and got the same results: poor voice quality and sporadic service that would stop working for days at a time. The forwarding feature works well but we had to upgrade our mobile minutes because the service was out so often. In the end the extra mobile minutes negated a big chunk of the potential savings and the hassle alone made us switch to mobile only.
The most frustrating experience was the customer service. When we decided to cancel the service it was virtually impossible to get in touch with customer service. They let you manage your account for everything other than cancellation through their website but require you speak with them on the phone in order to cancel. On the voice menu's they send you to a specific department for cancellations. I tried 6 times (different days and different times of day) and waited as long as 40 minutes on hold but wasn't able to get someone. I tried their sales line and was able to get through in under a minute. Unofrtunately, despite my begging and pleading all they could do was forward my call to the cancellation queue. At this point, cancelling my account has become something of a hobby.
The most frustrating experience was the customer service. When we decided to cancel the service it was virtually impossible to get in touch with customer service. They let you manage your account for everything other than cancellation through their website but require you speak with them on the phone in order to cancel. On the voice menu's they send you to a specific department for cancellations. I tried 6 times (different days and different times of day) and waited as long as 40 minutes on hold but wasn't able to get someone. I tried their sales line and was able to get through in under a minute. Unofrtunately, despite my begging and pleading all they could do was forward my call to the cancellation queue. At this point, cancelling my account has become something of a hobby.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Works Wonderfully!
Pros: Great everything
Cons: Horrible customer service
Review: I have had Vonage for over a year now. It works fine with my dish network satellite tv updates. My phone number was transferred within 2 weeks. I have downgraded to the $14.99 package which includes 500 out going minutes (which doesnt matter just tell the person u called to hangup and call u right back), free incoming, free long distance, free 800 calls and all free features like call blocking, call notes, two way and three way calling, call transfer etc. The phone system comes through all phones in my house. It works just like a regular land line totally. Dont know about monitored alarm systems though. My phone bill has ever been over $20.00.
Now the bad which isnt really much. If u are doing a donwload of a movie or music, ur phone reception will be distorted until u turn ur downloading software off. So just wait until u r not using ur phone to do this.
Now if u have to deal with customer service for technical support they will route u overseas and u will get a someone u cant understand but when u sign up it is in america of course. like all business they want u to understand each other when signing up to get ur money but once u sign up they dont give a flip about u.
It took three days when I bought a new router/phone router to update firmware. I lucked out on my 4th try and got an american who was leaving the company the next day and he helped me totally. Once we updated my firmware and it took about 2 hrs, my phone has worked perfectly for over a yr now. what i get for $14.99 with vonage would cost me $150.00 a mth with SBC. My cable has rarely gone out and I havent been without service practically no time at all.
So if u luck out and get a good conection from the and never need customer service which u probably wont need once it gets going then I strongly recommend, because the price will out weigh the hassle of setting up trust me it is worth it.
PS, U NEED TO HAVE CABLE INTERNET CONNECTION TO USE IF U WANT TO GET RID OF UR LANDLINE. THEY WONT TELL U THAT. U CAN USE WITH DSL BUT U WILL STILL NEED UR LANDLINE.
Now the bad which isnt really much. If u are doing a donwload of a movie or music, ur phone reception will be distorted until u turn ur downloading software off. So just wait until u r not using ur phone to do this.
Now if u have to deal with customer service for technical support they will route u overseas and u will get a someone u cant understand but when u sign up it is in america of course. like all business they want u to understand each other when signing up to get ur money but once u sign up they dont give a flip about u.
It took three days when I bought a new router/phone router to update firmware. I lucked out on my 4th try and got an american who was leaving the company the next day and he helped me totally. Once we updated my firmware and it took about 2 hrs, my phone has worked perfectly for over a yr now. what i get for $14.99 with vonage would cost me $150.00 a mth with SBC. My cable has rarely gone out and I havent been without service practically no time at all.
So if u luck out and get a good conection from the and never need customer service which u probably wont need once it gets going then I strongly recommend, because the price will out weigh the hassle of setting up trust me it is worth it.
PS, U NEED TO HAVE CABLE INTERNET CONNECTION TO USE IF U WANT TO GET RID OF UR LANDLINE. THEY WONT TELL U THAT. U CAN USE WITH DSL BUT U WILL STILL NEED UR LANDLINE.
User Rating:
4.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
EASY, RELIABLE, INEXPENSIVE - FOOL TO USE ANY OTHER SERVICE
Pros: EASY INSTALLATION, RELIABLE, AFFORDABLE
Cons: CUSTOMER SERVICE
Review: I've been in this business a long time. If you have a reliable, high-speed internet connection, this service is rock solid. If your internet connection is suspect, then avoid ALL VOIP products. I've had this in place for 4 years, transferred my numbers over, and added/deleted additional numbers...All without issue. I also put my 75 yr old parents on the service. They have had no issues either. But again, rock solid internet connectivity is a must with any VOIP Service.
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
If you have DSL and want to keep your existing number, forget it
Pros: costs less?
Cons: nearly impossible to keep current phone # if using DSL
Review: I called Vonage and asked if my DSL being tied to my existing phone account would be a problem before I signed up, and the customer service rep cheerfully replied that there would be no problem. After signing up online for Vonage, however, I received an email saying I couldn't keep my existing phone # since that was the one my DSL was linked to. Upset that the first CS agent had lied to me, I called Vonage back (and waited on hold again) only to have them tell me that I need to call AT&T and see if they will offer a "standalone" DSL line, separate from my phone service. At first they said "no", but when I told them that Federal Law requires it, they told me they could, but it would cost more than twice as much, would require a hefty setup fee, and would also require service downtime - they would cancel my current DSL immediately, and I would have to wait for them to set up the new line. This wouldn't work with Vonage. So I called Vonage back to cancel, and the first agent hung up in the middle of our transaction. The second one told me I'd still be charged for the setup and would have to wait for a refund. WHAT A HASSLE! If you have DSL, just go with Comcast's bundle!
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Risk Free = $200
Pros: Delivered Product Quickly
Cons: Terrible product, hideous customer service, deceptive advertising, fraudulent billing practices.
Review: Vonage is a fraud. The people who run this company should be in jail.
Understanding fully that VOIP technology doesn’t always work perfectly, I decided to take Vonage up on their “Risk Free Trial”. I kept good records in the event I wanted to cancel, and made sure to hook up the box as soon as it arrived.
Once I connected, I was able to call out, but the voice on the other end was so loud I thought I had the phone in speaker mode. When I called my place of business, the voice menu commands would not work. This was with the cordless phone I use for almost all my home calls. I switched to a conventional corded phone, and although the quality improved, the phone would not hang up!
After several hours and futile conversations with Vonage’s incredibly incompetent tech service, I gave up. I called and cancelled about 5 days after ordering the service, and, after some resistance, was told I would receive an authorization number and information to return the connection box. I also received an email from Vonage the next day stating my service had be cancelled.
I never received the return authorization, and a couple weeks later, got my VISA and noticed a $19.21 monthly charge (not, by the way, the $14.99 featured prominently on their web site.) Called and explained that I had cancelled, and they said there was no record of it. Really?
I asked about returning the box. They said I could keep it. A lot of good that does me. Oh, and by the way, there would be a $96 charge to disconnect, since it was after the trial period. (The fine print on the web site says $39.99.)
At this point, with the setup fee of $60, disconnect fee of $96 and $39 in service charges, I’m up to nearly $200 for this “risk free” venture. What a scam!
My hobby now is posting this message to as many web sites as I can find that discuss this shamefully dishonest organization. Judging from what I read, I’ve got a lot of company.
I also plan to contact the local news outlets to see if any of them will take up the cause. If this were just some local fly-by-night garage operation, I’d probably write this thing off as a learning experience. But given the pervasiveness of their advertising, I think the public needs to be alerted to Vonage’s way of doing business.
Understanding fully that VOIP technology doesn’t always work perfectly, I decided to take Vonage up on their “Risk Free Trial”. I kept good records in the event I wanted to cancel, and made sure to hook up the box as soon as it arrived.
Once I connected, I was able to call out, but the voice on the other end was so loud I thought I had the phone in speaker mode. When I called my place of business, the voice menu commands would not work. This was with the cordless phone I use for almost all my home calls. I switched to a conventional corded phone, and although the quality improved, the phone would not hang up!
After several hours and futile conversations with Vonage’s incredibly incompetent tech service, I gave up. I called and cancelled about 5 days after ordering the service, and, after some resistance, was told I would receive an authorization number and information to return the connection box. I also received an email from Vonage the next day stating my service had be cancelled.
I never received the return authorization, and a couple weeks later, got my VISA and noticed a $19.21 monthly charge (not, by the way, the $14.99 featured prominently on their web site.) Called and explained that I had cancelled, and they said there was no record of it. Really?
I asked about returning the box. They said I could keep it. A lot of good that does me. Oh, and by the way, there would be a $96 charge to disconnect, since it was after the trial period. (The fine print on the web site says $39.99.)
At this point, with the setup fee of $60, disconnect fee of $96 and $39 in service charges, I’m up to nearly $200 for this “risk free” venture. What a scam!
My hobby now is posting this message to as many web sites as I can find that discuss this shamefully dishonest organization. Judging from what I read, I’ve got a lot of company.
I also plan to contact the local news outlets to see if any of them will take up the cause. If this were just some local fly-by-night garage operation, I’d probably write this thing off as a learning experience. But given the pervasiveness of their advertising, I think the public needs to be alerted to Vonage’s way of doing business.
Updated
Risk Free = $200
Vonage is a fraud. The people who run this company should be in jail.
Understanding fully that VOIP technology doesn’t always work perfectly, I decided to take Vonage up on their “Risk Free Trial”. I kept good records in the event I wanted to cancel, and made sure to hook up the box and test the service as soon as it arrived.
Once I connected, I was able to call out, but the voice on the other end was so loud I thought I had the phone in speaker mode. When I called my place of business, the voice menu commands would not work. This was with the cordless phone I use for almost all my home calls. I switched to a conventional corded phone, and although the quality improved, the phone would not hang up!
After several hours and futile conversations with Vonage’s incredibly incompetent tech service, I gave up. I called and cancelled about 5 days after ordering the service, and, after some resistance, was told I would receive an authorization number and information to return the connection box. I also received an email from Vonage the next day stating my service had been cancelled.
I never received the return authorization, and a couple weeks later, got my VISA and noticed a $19.21 monthly charge (not, by the way, the $14.99 featured prominently on their web site.) Called and explained that I had cancelled, and they said there was no record of it. Really?
I asked about returning the box. They said I could keep it. A lot of good that does me. Oh, and by the way, there would be a $96 charge to disconnect, since it was after the trial period. (The fine print on the web site says $39.99.)
At this point, with the setup fee of $60, disconnect fee of $96 and $39 in service charges, I’m up to nearly $200 for this “risk free” venture. What a scam!
My hobby now is posting this message to as many web sites as I can find that discuss this shamefully dishonest organization. Judging from what I read, I’ve got a lot of company.
I also plan to contact the local news outlets to see if any of them will take up the cause. If this were just some local fly-by-night garage operation, I’d probably write this thing off as a learning experience. But given the pervasiveness of their advertising, I think the public needs to be alerted to Vonage’s way of doing business.
Risk Free = $200
Vonage is a fraud. The people who run this company should be in jail.
Understanding fully that VOIP technology doesn’t always work perfectly, I decided to take Vonage up on their “Risk Free Trial”. I kept good records in the event I wanted to cancel, and made sure to hook up the box and test the service as soon as it arrived.
Once I connected, I was able to call out, but the voice on the other end was so loud I thought I had the phone in speaker mode. When I called my place of business, the voice menu commands would not work. This was with the cordless phone I use for almost all my home calls. I switched to a conventional corded phone, and although the quality improved, the phone would not hang up!
After several hours and futile conversations with Vonage’s incredibly incompetent tech service, I gave up. I called and cancelled about 5 days after ordering the service, and, after some resistance, was told I would receive an authorization number and information to return the connection box. I also received an email from Vonage the next day stating my service had been cancelled.
I never received the return authorization, and a couple weeks later, got my VISA and noticed a $19.21 monthly charge (not, by the way, the $14.99 featured prominently on their web site.) Called and explained that I had cancelled, and they said there was no record of it. Really?
I asked about returning the box. They said I could keep it. A lot of good that does me. Oh, and by the way, there would be a $96 charge to disconnect, since it was after the trial period. (The fine print on the web site says $39.99.)
At this point, with the setup fee of $60, disconnect fee of $96 and $39 in service charges, I’m up to nearly $200 for this “risk free” venture. What a scam!
My hobby now is posting this message to as many web sites as I can find that discuss this shamefully dishonest organization. Judging from what I read, I’ve got a lot of company.
I also plan to contact the local news outlets to see if any of them will take up the cause. If this were just some local fly-by-night garage operation, I’d probably write this thing off as a learning experience. But given the pervasiveness of their advertising, I think the public needs to be alerted to Vonage’s way of doing business.
Updated
I filed complaints with the New Jersey BBB and Attorney General's Consumer Affairs Office and finally got a refund for all but about $15. Suggest those of you with billing issues do the same.
While I consider the matter closed, I'm still disgusted with Vonage. What a pathetic way to do business!
I filed complaints with the New Jersey BBB and Attorney General's Consumer Affairs Office and finally got a refund for all but about $15. Suggest those of you with billing issues do the same.
While I consider the matter closed, I'm still disgusted with Vonage. What a pathetic way to do business!
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Do not ever EVER order vonage service!
Pros: Not a single on
Cons: Where do I start
Review: Cons - Customer Service, Modem, problem solving skills, phone would turn off in the middle of the night and I couldn't start it up again, charged me for service I never recieved and didn't refund my money for 10 days so incurred finance charges on my card! I am furious with this company and I would never EVER EVER EVER recommend them to anyone. If you are thinking about using them don't. You'll never get a straight answer to your problem and they are not helpful AT ALL!!!
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Don't get it
Pros: Nothing to recommend
Cons: Garbled connection, worse service, waste of a lot of time.
Review: Stinks. Very autocratic instead of helpful. Too bad there's no zero rating.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
This is the future of phone service.
Pros: Clear communication, Easy set up
Cons: Defective equipment has to be returned at customer's expense.
Review: At first, the shipped Vonage device was defectice. Customer service moved from level 1 support to level 2 support, diagnosed the problem, and arranged for a rplacement unit. Once installed, the new device wouldn't work. And again Vonage customer service diagnosed the problem: my old touch-tone phone was the generator of all of the line static. When I changed over to the portable base unit, it worked perfectly. No complaints with customer service here! I highly recommend dumping The Phone Company and changing over to VoIP service.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Great if you don't need Vonage Tech Service
Pros: Quality of Service is absolutely great.
Cons: Good Luck if you Need Vontage Tech Service
Review: Vontage was easy to hook up without problems except for problem of dropping every other incoming word. Checked with Local cable ISP and they suggested router problem. Called Vontage and with great difficultly communicating, they still did not indentify problem.
My son found a Vontage forum that suggested I bypass some setting on my Netgear Router WGTN834 and problem was solved.
My son found a Vontage forum that suggested I bypass some setting on my Netgear Router WGTN834 and problem was solved.
User Rating:
5.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Best phone option in the UK - landlines watch out!
Pros: Price, easy setup, good customer service, fantastic sound quality
Cons: No phone in power cut, can't transfer existing number (in UK)
Review: I was a bit dubious about Vonage after reading some of the reviews on CNET and elsewhere, however in November I had a flyer pushed through my door offering inclusive UK and international calls fo £7.99 a month. This seemed too good to be true - I make A LOT of overseas calls and was paying up to £90 a month on my standard NTL (cable) line through a poor-quality, 1p per min access number.
The kit arrived the next day, and the installation went without a hitch - good clear instructions were provided, and although I suspect a complete tech novice might struggle a little (as it involves plugging in cables etc) the diagrams and troubleshooting guides were very comprehensive.
The system worked straight out of the box and instantly I noticed how clear calls are with Vonage. I'm on a 2MB cable broadband connection and even whilst surfing the net or using a webcam simultaneously with an international call it's very rare that there's any noticeable effect on sound quality.
Vonage has already saved me an absolute fortune since I subscribed - and all this for a better service than I received with NTL. Extra features such as Caller Display, Call Waiting, Ring Back, Call Divert and even the ability to record your own voicmail greeting - all of which cost significantly more on NTL / BT - are completely free with Vonage.
Plus there's features which you simply don't get anywhere else. Like the level of online control over your account which means you can change your settings or even set up an additional phone number in seconds. This extra number, by the way, can be anywhere in the world - so for just £2.99 a month my girlfriend in Boston can call me at local rates - and because her US plan includes free calls to local numbers, she doesn't pay a cent.
All in all the only issues I've had have been due to my NTL broadband connection, which has dropped out once or twice leaving me without phone service. The contrasts between NTL, with their extortionate prices, horrendous customer service and poor reliability, and Vonage, who fall over themselves to help - could not be more obvious. Even fluctuations in broadband service, however, aren't a huge problem - Vonage allows you to specify another landline or mobile number to which your calls will automatically divert in the event of service failure, so you never miss an incoming call, and again this is completely free.
People are always quite curious about the little flashing box on top of my TV set, and when I tell them what it is they genuinely can't believe how little I pay for calls. "What's the catch" is a common response. I haven't found it yet. It's a very good feeling to know I'm not contributing to the obscene profits of BT and the rest of the telecoms dinosaurs.
All I would say is that you need a reasonably reliable broadband connection - if you suffer a lot of downtime you won't have the same dependable service as a fixed line. Otherwise it's better than a landline in every way. It would have been nice to have been able to keep my old number, but in the end it wasn't as big a hassle to change it as I thought.
Vonage is quite simply the best technology product I've ever encountered.
The kit arrived the next day, and the installation went without a hitch - good clear instructions were provided, and although I suspect a complete tech novice might struggle a little (as it involves plugging in cables etc) the diagrams and troubleshooting guides were very comprehensive.
The system worked straight out of the box and instantly I noticed how clear calls are with Vonage. I'm on a 2MB cable broadband connection and even whilst surfing the net or using a webcam simultaneously with an international call it's very rare that there's any noticeable effect on sound quality.
Vonage has already saved me an absolute fortune since I subscribed - and all this for a better service than I received with NTL. Extra features such as Caller Display, Call Waiting, Ring Back, Call Divert and even the ability to record your own voicmail greeting - all of which cost significantly more on NTL / BT - are completely free with Vonage.
Plus there's features which you simply don't get anywhere else. Like the level of online control over your account which means you can change your settings or even set up an additional phone number in seconds. This extra number, by the way, can be anywhere in the world - so for just £2.99 a month my girlfriend in Boston can call me at local rates - and because her US plan includes free calls to local numbers, she doesn't pay a cent.
All in all the only issues I've had have been due to my NTL broadband connection, which has dropped out once or twice leaving me without phone service. The contrasts between NTL, with their extortionate prices, horrendous customer service and poor reliability, and Vonage, who fall over themselves to help - could not be more obvious. Even fluctuations in broadband service, however, aren't a huge problem - Vonage allows you to specify another landline or mobile number to which your calls will automatically divert in the event of service failure, so you never miss an incoming call, and again this is completely free.
People are always quite curious about the little flashing box on top of my TV set, and when I tell them what it is they genuinely can't believe how little I pay for calls. "What's the catch" is a common response. I haven't found it yet. It's a very good feeling to know I'm not contributing to the obscene profits of BT and the rest of the telecoms dinosaurs.
All I would say is that you need a reasonably reliable broadband connection - if you suffer a lot of downtime you won't have the same dependable service as a fixed line. Otherwise it's better than a landline in every way. It would have been nice to have been able to keep my old number, but in the end it wasn't as big a hassle to change it as I thought.
Vonage is quite simply the best technology product I've ever encountered.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Worst customer service ever!!
Pros: None whatsoever
Cons: Customer Service = 0
Review: I ordered Vonage on 12/16/07. They could not transfer my land line phone number so I ordered ATT Callvantage on 12/17/06 because they could. When my telephone number was officially transferred on 1/5/07 with ATT, I called Vonage and cancelled. I never activated my Vonage telephone adapter. I never made or received one phone call with Vonage. I was told that they had a 30-day money back guarantee and that I would be getting a complete refund. On 1/22/07, I looked at my bank account and found that Vonage charged me for a second month. I called them back to say I cancelled and they said that I didn't, which was complete BS. I talked to two supervisors who refused to believe me, even though I had written down the address that was given to me to return my Vonage hardware. They cancelled my account and charged me an 89 dollar cancellation fee. I paid $160 for absolutely no service whatsoever. I have no option but to dispute the charges with my bank. Absolutely the worst customer service I have ever heard of...ever! I'm one of those people who never complain, even when I do get bad service. But I had to write to warn people. Avoid Vonage at all costs!!!
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Less than abysmal
Pros: Good ideal
Cons: Poor execution
Review: I quickly found out that vonage wasn't for me despite the price.
The hour and a half conference with their tech department at setup basically confirmed what I already knew - I had a bad adapter.
Instead of getting a new one, I chose to cancel the service. Vonage said that could be done (after several more pitches for me to stay) immediately BUT I would LOSE MY PHONE NUMBER. I asked not to cancel yet and contacted my provider Verizon. They said that service shouldn't have been interrupted but to port the number safely back to them (I never cancelled Verizon in the first place) I'd have to wait.
I called Vonage about this problem and after confirming the complete lack of activity on my account they gave me another month for free. Meanwhile, my phone was completely inactive for Christmas.
After getting my service restored, I called Vonage to officially cancel the account that had no activity. Despite being familiar with my situation, I was stuck with a $40 deactivation fee. While my phone number was being held hostage by their process, I had crossed the 30 day threshold for the waiving of the deactivation fee.
VONAGE IS TERRIBLE! STAY AWAY!
The hour and a half conference with their tech department at setup basically confirmed what I already knew - I had a bad adapter.
Instead of getting a new one, I chose to cancel the service. Vonage said that could be done (after several more pitches for me to stay) immediately BUT I would LOSE MY PHONE NUMBER. I asked not to cancel yet and contacted my provider Verizon. They said that service shouldn't have been interrupted but to port the number safely back to them (I never cancelled Verizon in the first place) I'd have to wait.
I called Vonage about this problem and after confirming the complete lack of activity on my account they gave me another month for free. Meanwhile, my phone was completely inactive for Christmas.
After getting my service restored, I called Vonage to officially cancel the account that had no activity. Despite being familiar with my situation, I was stuck with a $40 deactivation fee. While my phone number was being held hostage by their process, I had crossed the 30 day threshold for the waiving of the deactivation fee.
VONAGE IS TERRIBLE! STAY AWAY!
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Not worth the aggravation
Pros: couldnt think of any
Cons: customer service + service itself
Review: Not worth saving $10 on-terrible customer service,had technical problems during usage and even after I requested to switch back to my old service it took 14 days of having no incoming calls-not recommended
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Businesses Stay Away
Pros: good for home
Cons: This is not a business level service
Review: Their support is an issue, we all know that.
The main problem for a business using this service is reliability.
I have clients calling my main number getting a recording it is no longer in service.
Cheers,
John
The main problem for a business using this service is reliability.
I have clients calling my main number getting a recording it is no longer in service.
Cheers,
John
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
totalgarbage
Pros: absolutely none
Cons: stay away from this piece of crap
Review: there are more people who hate this service than the ones who love it, and im noticing the only way vonage is making any money is by holding peoples accounts hostage and charging for over six months. I say its about time they get sued or something, great big class action lawsuit. ive got a feeling that the positive ratings are from actual vonage employees or the president of vonage himself , do yourself a favor, in the long run that measly $10 you save on the service isnt worth it , because you end up paying and paying and paying.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
STAY AWAY! WARNING! WORST CUSTOMER CARE IN HISTORY
Pros: none that I can think of
Cons: waste of time, money, mental well-being
Review: Vonage: a NIGHTMARE from the word go. It took 3 months to finally disconnect from this horrible service with garbled speech and 4 second delays.
After hours and hours on the phone with these idiots, they have CONTINUED TO CHARGE ME for 6 months! I cannot get a refund, they have no record of my account!
STAY AWAY, IT'S NOT WORTH IT!
shockingly bad service, they will not last.
After hours and hours on the phone with these idiots, they have CONTINUED TO CHARGE ME for 6 months! I cannot get a refund, they have no record of my account!
STAY AWAY, IT'S NOT WORTH IT!
shockingly bad service, they will not last.
Updated
I have been trying to get Vonage to stop charging me for six months now. I cancelled in June, and have been charged ever since! Hours and hours of time on hold, transferred SIX TIMES in one phone call, INFURIATING!!!
I guess my only option now is legal action!
Please save yourself the trouble, horrible audio quality, and the worst customer service since AT&T Wireless, and that's saying a lot!
I have been trying to get Vonage to stop charging me for six months now. I cancelled in June, and have been charged ever since! Hours and hours of time on hold, transferred SIX TIMES in one phone call, INFURIATING!!!
I guess my only option now is legal action!
Please save yourself the trouble, horrible audio quality, and the worst customer service since AT&T Wireless, and that's saying a lot!
Updated
I bought Vonage, it sounded HORRIBLE, with huge delays and stuttering cutouts. I canceled my service with them, and they promptly threw my phone number of 5 years out. It took 5 calls and almost 3 hours of time to get the number back, but I had to SIGN UP AGAIN FOR VONAGE. They assured me that they would immediately disconnect my serice and that there would be no charges. That was ALMOST A YEAR AGO, and I've been charged every month since!!!! I am currently on hold to Vonage "Customer Service" (what a joke), which is telling me that my wait time will be at least 20 minutes.
Folks, PLEASE appreciate the sound quality of a land line, and please know that these Vonage IDIOTS make AT&T's customer service seem like Apple or Mercedes-Benz!
THE WORST EXPERIENCE EVER! I'm going to PAY to get disconnected, I'm not even going to try to argue with these people. Their customer support must be overseas, and they use Vonage, so you can hardly understand the agent because of cutouts! SHHHEEEEEESSSSHHHH!
I bought Vonage, it sounded HORRIBLE, with huge delays and stuttering cutouts. I canceled my service with them, and they promptly threw my phone number of 5 years out. It took 5 calls and almost 3 hours of time to get the number back, but I had to SIGN UP AGAIN FOR VONAGE. They assured me that they would immediately disconnect my serice and that there would be no charges. That was ALMOST A YEAR AGO, and I've been charged every month since!!!! I am currently on hold to Vonage "Customer Service" (what a joke), which is telling me that my wait time will be at least 20 minutes.
Folks, PLEASE appreciate the sound quality of a land line, and please know that these Vonage IDIOTS make AT&T's customer service seem like Apple or Mercedes-Benz!
THE WORST EXPERIENCE EVER! I'm going to PAY to get disconnected, I'm not even going to try to argue with these people. Their customer support must be overseas, and they use Vonage, so you can hardly understand the agent because of cutouts! SHHHEEEEEESSSSHHHH!
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Customer service.....whats that
Pros: I can not thing of any
Cons: Tons do not get vonage
Review: I have been with Vonage for 3 months now and still no number transfer. The first virtual number they gave me is no long working. Customer service is no longer helpful they just pass me off to another service rep and put me on hold or drop the call completely. I wish I would have never signed up with them
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Crystal Clear...STATIC
Pros: Easy to set-up, many plans to choose from
Cons: Terrible sound quality
Review: People I called said they could hear me fine, however there was this constant hum of static in my ear on every call. I canceled my service within the 30 day window. I like the idea behind the service and the voicemail features are very cool (you get an email with the vm as an sound clip attached), so are the call forwarding, etc. I think Vonage is on the right track but the sound quality just isn't there.
User Rating:
5.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Great Product/Service
Pros: Easy to set up and maintain
Cons: Tech support experience... not so good
Review: For me personally I have had a great experience with this product. It relies on your internet access so assuming you have a good broadband connection you should also have good quality phone service. If your modem or network experiences packet loss then your conversations will appear choppy like a cell phone. Power outages may also be an issue but if you invest in a good backup battery for your equipment that shouldn't be a problem (also try solar power!) All in all I say Vonage is a great product and service, it saves me a ton of money not to mention the unlimited calling plan for staying in touch with people far away is excellent.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Lies, Theft, Misrepresentation!!!!!!
Pros: Absolutely None
Cons: Lied about Free Local Prefix, Charged Months After Stoppage
Review: Signed up and paid over $100.00. We were told that our city of over 300,000 had a number of free prefix. We were given a prefix more than 100 miles from our home. We phoned in and tried to get help; "help" came from a foreign country. We telephoned and wrote in our dissatisfaction/closing of account. They continued to charge our charge card for more than fours months. We finally had to close the account of our credit card company. We received no help from the F.C.C.
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
If you want to die get VoIP
Pros: Cheap phone service, unlimited long distance
Cons: No E911, You will die in an emergency
Review: I like to save money, most of us do. That being said most of us like to stay alive as well. I am a 911 operator and I can tell you from first hand experience that you may die if you use VoIP as your primary phone service. They will tell you there is a slight delay in 911 service, that for the most part is a lie. there can be a delay from 2 min up to 10 min. when you are bleeding 10 min is a long time. If you have children, you have a medical condition, you are elderly, or you just dont want to have a face to face with the grimreaper. Wait on VoIP.
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
a perfect example of "you get what you pay for"
Pros: it's cheap!!!!
Cons: it's crap!!!!
Review: i've been with vonage for a few months now and like the others had said, at first it was great. good clear transmissions, but after a couple weeks, it became choppy, and unreliable. it would drop calls consistantly. and i am pretty sure it was not my broadband, it's top of the line. customer service center encounters have been nightmares. passed from this guy to that guy and on hold for the majority of the time. two people have told my that everytime they call, it says my line has been disconnected. i want out.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
DO NOT USE VONAGE
Pros: Nothing is positive about Vonage
Cons: poor customer service, poor quality, no dialtone
Review: Vonage is the worst company in regards to customer service. I had the service for about 2 months and it was horrible. Constant loss of sewrvice, dropped calls, poor quality. They then charged me $44 to cancel their poor excuse for a phone service, sent me to collections when I refused to pay a disconnect fee, and did not work with me. Under no circumstances should you consider Vonage as phone provider.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Vonage is aweful
Pros: there aren't any
Cons: without question the worst of any service ever
Review: I signed up for Vonage several months ago. I was initially excited not only for what appeared to be state of the art technology but cost savings for the service. Boy was I wrong! At some point in the future some company will get it right but not Vonage. Our service was non exsistent. We tried time and time again to get support form them, Every time we called we were on the for at least 20 minutes. Our service was so bad my entire office had to use personal cell phones to conduct business. We not only had dropped calls but often times not connection at all. Don't let the low fees dupe you into their service.
User Rating:
5.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
So far I'm impressed!
Pros: Price, Ease of Setup, International Calling
Cons: Nothing yet!
Review: I have been on the Vonage fence for quite sometime. I have read the horror stories and heard a few from some friends but I took the plunge anyway. My journey began last Sunday October 8, 2006, after doing the account stuff online the install took all of 5 minutes and we had a dial tone. Now you do have to get over the having two numbers issue, which brings me to what seems to be the root of all evil, the dreaded number transfer. Well my experience went like this: I did my LOA online
October 8, 2006 Awaiting Letter of Authorization
October 8, 2006 Letter of Authorization (LOA) Received
October 8, 2006 Letter of Authorization (LOA) Accepted
October 8, 2006 Transfer Sent to Carrier
October 9, 2006 Carrier Update
October 12, 2006 Carrier Approved Transfer
October 13, 2006 Completed LNP Transfer
Not too bad, not as quickly as porting your Cell number but acceptable. As far as sound quality no difference than before, the management features are nice and the International calling is a huge bonus for people who need it. Stay tuned.
P.S The Vonage site/Forums have a wealth of information, check out the online resources before calling Customer Service.
October 8, 2006 Awaiting Letter of Authorization
October 8, 2006 Letter of Authorization (LOA) Received
October 8, 2006 Letter of Authorization (LOA) Accepted
October 8, 2006 Transfer Sent to Carrier
October 9, 2006 Carrier Update
October 12, 2006 Carrier Approved Transfer
October 13, 2006 Completed LNP Transfer
Not too bad, not as quickly as porting your Cell number but acceptable. As far as sound quality no difference than before, the management features are nice and the International calling is a huge bonus for people who need it. Stay tuned.
P.S The Vonage site/Forums have a wealth of information, check out the online resources before calling Customer Service.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Better than expected, but...
Pros: easy to set up, works well, sounds great
Cons: local number - NOT! $24.99 - NOT!
Review: I was very pleased with the ease of use, sound quality and extreme portability of this product/service.
However, Vonage promised me a "Local" number, however they gave me a local toll number - still in my area code but long distance charges apply - it is a number from a town on the other side of my county, and I live in a BIG county (1/4 of my state)
The 24.99 price tag is a little (very little) misleading. After fees, taxes, etc. my service is almost 30.00. - 5.00 is not a big deal though, still saves me 70.00 a month on my business phone.
Make NO MISTAKE though, this is an excellent product, works exactally as advertised, sound quality is great and no drops or Internet interuptions.
However, Vonage promised me a "Local" number, however they gave me a local toll number - still in my area code but long distance charges apply - it is a number from a town on the other side of my county, and I live in a BIG county (1/4 of my state)
The 24.99 price tag is a little (very little) misleading. After fees, taxes, etc. my service is almost 30.00. - 5.00 is not a big deal though, still saves me 70.00 a month on my business phone.
Make NO MISTAKE though, this is an excellent product, works exactally as advertised, sound quality is great and no drops or Internet interuptions.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Don't get this service !!
Pros: Price, Low taxes
Cons: Static, dropped calls, poor sound quality & customer service
Review: What a rip off!! They offered me a free month of service then billed my credit card after just 9 days of use. Was unable to get a refund for the difference. They acted surprised when I kept complaining to them about static but then found that this is as good as it gets until 2008 when they expect to have a fix for it. They charged me $30 to switch my number to them and now want $30 to switch it back to my previous carrier even though they promise to switch it free within 30 days. This is because they hold my phone number hostage for 5-8 weeks before switching it back and that's outside the 30 day period. They then switched it 1 day into the next billing cycle and billed me for the entire next month saying "We don't do partial months". I'll use two cans and a string before I let these people rip me off again! They should be shut down.
User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Vonage Tech Support Pathetic
Pros: Basic Features - When they work.
Cons: Many - Read on . . . .
Review: My Motorola VT-1005 (on the outside - 1000 on the inside) got hammered by the latest firmware update. I have been without service from the first minute the update went out. So the second I realized that I had no service I did due diligence as a user for the first step in troubleshooting. After that failed I called Tech Support, immediately I bypassed Level 1 (India - they have no clue, more later) support and requested Level 2 American support. I was transferred and got a really great helpful rep. But he could not help me after 1 hour, 47 minutes. He then informed me of the update that has caused a lot of the VT-1005's to fail and that it was only a matter of time before "the problem on their end" was resolved and the unit would grab the update and all would be fine. Trusting what he said, I sat back and waited. Then yesterday, after no apparent resolution, I called again (57 minutes) to see what the status was and was told that they were still down and all I could do was wait. . . Until this morning after I received an eMail from Tech Support with step by step instructions (which I had already done many times and in many different ways with the two previous techs) on how to fix my MTA since the "the problem on their end" was resolved. I tried what they suggested and it didn't work. The last step was to call Tech Support if this failed. So I did. . .
This time I got a rep that had been on vacation and hadn't heard of the outage. What company does not post this type of thing for their support personnel? Any way, 74 minutes later after not being able to get into the UI on the MTA, we both decided that is was a moot point until the unit got the up date. He then said that he had just received an update and they were still down and it was only a matter of time. So again I waited. . . Until a little while ago (9:45 pm MDT), I started to get “upset” about this and jumped in. I figured it out and afterwards I came here to this forum to see what others had or were doing, the level of success, and to see if people were getting compensation for the downtime. What I list below may have already been posted but I could not find anything and usually when you do the instructions are limited. So . . .
Here's what I did:
1. Unplugged the MTA from the network and power.
2. Plugged directly from CPU to MTA, bypassing the router.
3. Plugged back in the power adapter to the MTA. It only can blink once since it can not connect to the Internet. Once it gets to 4 blinks, it locks you out. That’s the problem.
4. Selected (on my Mac) the Vonage Direct setting that I had previously setup to access the MTA. This gave my machine a hardwire/Ethernet IP address of: 192.168.102.5.
5. In (as per TS. They said that only IE would work) Internet Explorer, I typed: http://192.168.102.1. Hit return.
6. WHAM! Got right in. And I mean instantly!
7. Navigated to the Advanced page.
8. Found the "Reboot" button at the bottom of the page. Pressed it and waited about a minute.
9. Plugged the MTA back into the network and the light went through the 1-2-3-4 blinking phase and then started flashing very fast. Vwalla! It was downloading the update.
After a couple of minutes and it does take 2-5 minutes for the download. The light went out then back to the 1-2-3-4, then ON. I HAVE SERVICE! So they were back up and no one knew. I have wasted many hours on my own and with them, when they should know what to do. I could have been up and running days ago.
Upon this wonderful occasion I called Tech Support to get a refund for the time down and to ask why none of the 4 plus people that I spoke with knew how to do this? I got a rep that treated my call as if I just had a regular outage. When I informed him that this was part of the FW update, he said that there was no such thing. I thought I was going to puke. I told him to read my TS log and then we’d talk. He did and said, "Oh I heard something about that". I asked if there was a fix yet and he said yes. So I asked what it was. He professed to know what to do, but couldn't tell me. He asked me what I did. At that point I mentioned that in fact he didn't know, there was no published (on their end) fix, and was going to learn from me. I asked why none of the techs knew. He said that I had only ever gotten to Level 1 support in India and they don't know what to do. I said why have them? No answer. I told him that I had bypassed India by asking for US Tech Support and if he would check the names of the previous reps he'd see that I was in the US Level 2 support system. I then asked for refund for the time that I was down. This was after I read in this forum of people getting refunds and new gear. He said that that would not be possible because and then mumbled something I couldn’t understand. I asked him to speak up and he did the same. I then asked to speak to a supervisor. He said he was one. Oh great. He said that I was not eligible for a refund under these circumstances. WHAT?! I told him that I had read that people were getting them and in some cases new gear. He said he’d check and be right back. Well it sounds like he went nowhere, no typing, no talking (he left his headset on), no nothing. Upon his “return” he gave me a phone number for the Account Management group and said to talk to them.
There is something seriously wrong here. Level 2 techs not knowing there is a network wide problem, and then not knowing the gear well enough to trouble shoot it. Me having to do my own troubleshooting, and having to come up with a fix on my own because it’s obvious that if I hadn’t done what I did, I’d still be waiting. So it’s not that there is a snag on there end anymore, it’s that the initial snag caused a problem on the user end that no one there knows how to handle.
I just received an eMail informing me that my problem was being escalated to Level 2 and that I should hear from them within 24 hours. Unlike the previous two, it is a “no-reply”. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry because this is so pathetic. Another sad thing is that I have referred 5 people to Vonage and they all within three months dump the service because it was nothing but trouble. I have had relatively no problems, until now, with an overall service of 7-8 on a 0-10 scale. But all these people had the new Linksys Wireless gear. Also with their failed IPO and a 2% loss of clientele per month, I’d say dark days are ahead.
So there it is. I hope this helps.
This time I got a rep that had been on vacation and hadn't heard of the outage. What company does not post this type of thing for their support personnel? Any way, 74 minutes later after not being able to get into the UI on the MTA, we both decided that is was a moot point until the unit got the up date. He then said that he had just received an update and they were still down and it was only a matter of time. So again I waited. . . Until a little while ago (9:45 pm MDT), I started to get “upset” about this and jumped in. I figured it out and afterwards I came here to this forum to see what others had or were doing, the level of success, and to see if people were getting compensation for the downtime. What I list below may have already been posted but I could not find anything and usually when you do the instructions are limited. So . . .
Here's what I did:
1. Unplugged the MTA from the network and power.
2. Plugged directly from CPU to MTA, bypassing the router.
3. Plugged back in the power adapter to the MTA. It only can blink once since it can not connect to the Internet. Once it gets to 4 blinks, it locks you out. That’s the problem.
4. Selected (on my Mac) the Vonage Direct setting that I had previously setup to access the MTA. This gave my machine a hardwire/Ethernet IP address of: 192.168.102.5.
5. In (as per TS. They said that only IE would work) Internet Explorer, I typed: http://192.168.102.1. Hit return.
6. WHAM! Got right in. And I mean instantly!
7. Navigated to the Advanced page.
8. Found the "Reboot" button at the bottom of the page. Pressed it and waited about a minute.
9. Plugged the MTA back into the network and the light went through the 1-2-3-4 blinking phase and then started flashing very fast. Vwalla! It was downloading the update.
After a couple of minutes and it does take 2-5 minutes for the download. The light went out then back to the 1-2-3-4, then ON. I HAVE SERVICE! So they were back up and no one knew. I have wasted many hours on my own and with them, when they should know what to do. I could have been up and running days ago.
Upon this wonderful occasion I called Tech Support to get a refund for the time down and to ask why none of the 4 plus people that I spoke with knew how to do this? I got a rep that treated my call as if I just had a regular outage. When I informed him that this was part of the FW update, he said that there was no such thing. I thought I was going to puke. I told him to read my TS log and then we’d talk. He did and said, "Oh I heard something about that". I asked if there was a fix yet and he said yes. So I asked what it was. He professed to know what to do, but couldn't tell me. He asked me what I did. At that point I mentioned that in fact he didn't know, there was no published (on their end) fix, and was going to learn from me. I asked why none of the techs knew. He said that I had only ever gotten to Level 1 support in India and they don't know what to do. I said why have them? No answer. I told him that I had bypassed India by asking for US Tech Support and if he would check the names of the previous reps he'd see that I was in the US Level 2 support system. I then asked for refund for the time that I was down. This was after I read in this forum of people getting refunds and new gear. He said that that would not be possible because and then mumbled something I couldn’t understand. I asked him to speak up and he did the same. I then asked to speak to a supervisor. He said he was one. Oh great. He said that I was not eligible for a refund under these circumstances. WHAT?! I told him that I had read that people were getting them and in some cases new gear. He said he’d check and be right back. Well it sounds like he went nowhere, no typing, no talking (he left his headset on), no nothing. Upon his “return” he gave me a phone number for the Account Management group and said to talk to them.
There is something seriously wrong here. Level 2 techs not knowing there is a network wide problem, and then not knowing the gear well enough to trouble shoot it. Me having to do my own troubleshooting, and having to come up with a fix on my own because it’s obvious that if I hadn’t done what I did, I’d still be waiting. So it’s not that there is a snag on there end anymore, it’s that the initial snag caused a problem on the user end that no one there knows how to handle.
I just received an eMail informing me that my problem was being escalated to Level 2 and that I should hear from them within 24 hours. Unlike the previous two, it is a “no-reply”. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry because this is so pathetic. Another sad thing is that I have referred 5 people to Vonage and they all within three months dump the service because it was nothing but trouble. I have had relatively no problems, until now, with an overall service of 7-8 on a 0-10 scale. But all these people had the new Linksys Wireless gear. Also with their failed IPO and a 2% loss of clientele per month, I’d say dark days are ahead.
So there it is. I hope this helps.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
AWFUL customer support
Pros: Nothing -
Cons: Shady billing practices, delays, sketchy sound quality.
Review: They have shady billing practices.
Case in point: We used them for about 2.5 years while my husband worked from home for a company that required him to be on the phone a lot. I always hated it, there seemed to be a slight delay sometimes, but it worked for him. Well last November after he got his new job he wanted to terminate the contract with them and cancel the service. He was told his account would be zeroed out and nothing was wrong with closing it with no balance. He worked with one of their idiot reps for 3 days.
This Friday we get a bill from a freaking collection agency (9 months later) saying we owe $27. Never received ANYTHING from Vonage saying there was a problem closing the account or that we owed a final payment. So last night my husband called Vonage last night, and spent an hour on the phone... starting with some rep in a foreign country that just read from a computer screen "our system says your account owes $27." Got transferred to 2 managers, and then one of them maturely put him in hold hell for over 15 minutes before he gave up and hung up. That must be their "resolution strategy" for dealing with complaints over their billing procedures. They have us between a rock and hard plance, and they know it because if we don't pay the collection agency within 30 days it will ding our credit report. We never have problems paying bills. Its 27 freaking dollars so we'll just pay it rather than mess with our credit, but the fact that their "customer support management" couldn't do anything other than read a freaking screen tells us the level of intelligence those people have.
I think that vonage probably rivals AOL in terms of trained monkey customer service reps when it comes to cancelling an account. :-p
While he was on the phone with them, he filed a BBB online complaint, and I plan to research to see if there's any other complaints we can make (i.e with the FCC or anything).
Save your money and go with one of the other internet phone companies. I have friends that use the other ones and have nothing but good experiences.
Case in point: We used them for about 2.5 years while my husband worked from home for a company that required him to be on the phone a lot. I always hated it, there seemed to be a slight delay sometimes, but it worked for him. Well last November after he got his new job he wanted to terminate the contract with them and cancel the service. He was told his account would be zeroed out and nothing was wrong with closing it with no balance. He worked with one of their idiot reps for 3 days.
This Friday we get a bill from a freaking collection agency (9 months later) saying we owe $27. Never received ANYTHING from Vonage saying there was a problem closing the account or that we owed a final payment. So last night my husband called Vonage last night, and spent an hour on the phone... starting with some rep in a foreign country that just read from a computer screen "our system says your account owes $27." Got transferred to 2 managers, and then one of them maturely put him in hold hell for over 15 minutes before he gave up and hung up. That must be their "resolution strategy" for dealing with complaints over their billing procedures. They have us between a rock and hard plance, and they know it because if we don't pay the collection agency within 30 days it will ding our credit report. We never have problems paying bills. Its 27 freaking dollars so we'll just pay it rather than mess with our credit, but the fact that their "customer support management" couldn't do anything other than read a freaking screen tells us the level of intelligence those people have.
I think that vonage probably rivals AOL in terms of trained monkey customer service reps when it comes to cancelling an account. :-p
While he was on the phone with them, he filed a BBB online complaint, and I plan to research to see if there's any other complaints we can make (i.e with the FCC or anything).
Save your money and go with one of the other internet phone companies. I have friends that use the other ones and have nothing but good experiences.
User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Be certain you have a local number
Pros: Low prices
Cons: They don't tell you that you might not have a local number
Review: I signed on with Vonage several months ago with no problems. My area code is for the area I live in. But then I noticed that people would call my long distance cell rather than the home phone. A local person told me that when they called the home line it said they have to dial 1 & the area code. When I called Vonage they said this was normal, that I can't choose the prefix (which was making it long distance). No one ever said anything about this when I signed on.
I'm currently trying to cancel my account without paying the fee, but it doesn't look promising. I'm missing calls because people think they've got the wrong number, I don't feel I should have to pay when Vonage didn't give me this information when I started.
I'm currently trying to cancel my account without paying the fee, but it doesn't look promising. I'm missing calls because people think they've got the wrong number, I don't feel I should have to pay when Vonage didn't give me this information when I started.
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Vonage charges are hidden
Pros: Simple VOIP (if you can get it set-up!)
Cons: Buyer Beware - significant costs and only 'adequate' product
Review: I would NOT recommend Vonage as it purports to be a low-price/free service, but it worked out to be more expensive than regular phone calls and more expensive than alternative 'free-call' packages that you can buy from real telephone service providers and without the complications of set-up and the operational use of IP bandwidth.
Buyer beware: Ask about all the connection/disconnection costs before you start the service - you may find (as I did) it is NOT cost effective.
Background:
There were problems in set-up and then constant obtrusive noise on the telephone line when in operation.
Much manual intervention was required by the user to get the required updates/fixes (they shipped equipment with very old microcode and could not upgrade it automatically as they were supposed to be able to - they eventually had to e-mail me the upgrade and I did it for them).
When the service finally worked it was indeed 'adequate' and I was inclined to keep it ...
But:
Numerous failures of service, inexplicable error messages, UDP flooding errors on the router, silent calls (i.e. you get dial tone - dial, but then never connect), incomprehensible voice announcements, disconnected calls and error messages - we gave up.
I could tell you an incredibly lengthy story of absolutely ABYSMAL customer service experiences, but, let me stick to the money facts:
It took me 3 days to contact them by telephone but I still cancelled well within the 30 day 'free trial' period. They told me on the phone I would get a full refund - in fact they charged my credit card an unrefundable fee of UK£78.95 (about US$140) to disconnect me.
Apparently I had gone over 250 minutes by 27 minutes and that had invalidated my 'free trial'. This was claimed to be a term & condition 'in writing in the box' but no written terms & conditions were enclosed in the box. Anyway, there was no way I knew of how to monitor the usage of Vonage to see if I was close to 250 minutes - even if I knew of the rule!
After exhaustive and exhausting efforts with customer services and no results, I finally wrote to their Chief Executive and they gave me a partial refund - because I offered to pay for all of the 277 minutes at full/maximum commercial rates as proof of my honesty in the transaction and they accepted - I wanted to get out with at least my integrity intact.
Buyer beware: Ask about all the connection/disconnection costs before you start the service - you may find (as I did) it is NOT cost effective.
Background:
There were problems in set-up and then constant obtrusive noise on the telephone line when in operation.
Much manual intervention was required by the user to get the required updates/fixes (they shipped equipment with very old microcode and could not upgrade it automatically as they were supposed to be able to - they eventually had to e-mail me the upgrade and I did it for them).
When the service finally worked it was indeed 'adequate' and I was inclined to keep it ...
But:
Numerous failures of service, inexplicable error messages, UDP flooding errors on the router, silent calls (i.e. you get dial tone - dial, but then never connect), incomprehensible voice announcements, disconnected calls and error messages - we gave up.
I could tell you an incredibly lengthy story of absolutely ABYSMAL customer service experiences, but, let me stick to the money facts:
It took me 3 days to contact them by telephone but I still cancelled well within the 30 day 'free trial' period. They told me on the phone I would get a full refund - in fact they charged my credit card an unrefundable fee of UK£78.95 (about US$140) to disconnect me.
Apparently I had gone over 250 minutes by 27 minutes and that had invalidated my 'free trial'. This was claimed to be a term & condition 'in writing in the box' but no written terms & conditions were enclosed in the box. Anyway, there was no way I knew of how to monitor the usage of Vonage to see if I was close to 250 minutes - even if I knew of the rule!
After exhaustive and exhausting efforts with customer services and no results, I finally wrote to their Chief Executive and they gave me a partial refund - because I offered to pay for all of the 277 minutes at full/maximum commercial rates as proof of my honesty in the transaction and they accepted - I wanted to get out with at least my integrity intact.
User Rating:
3.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Vonage Excellent- Linksys Adapters Bad
Pros: Love Vonage Price and Features
Cons: Long Waits (up to 1.15hrs) for Customer Service help
Review: I have been a Vonage customer for just over 4 months. I have replaced three (3) Linksys adapters Model #PAP2 purchased from BestBuy. All three have failed leaving me with power on and Ethernet LEDs on but no LEDs for the phones and no dial tones.
Numerous calls to Linksys have resulted in them telling me "not their problem" and go to Vonage. Vonage finally resolved by advising that it is a hardware defect with the adapter and sending me a bnew D-Link adapter. These have held up much better.
DO NOT BUY THE LINKSYS ADAPTER MODEL #PAP2
Numerous calls to Linksys have resulted in them telling me "not their problem" and go to Vonage. Vonage finally resolved by advising that it is a hardware defect with the adapter and sending me a bnew D-Link adapter. These have held up much better.
DO NOT BUY THE LINKSYS ADAPTER MODEL #PAP2
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Really Awful!
Pros: Sales is 24/7
Cons: Customer Service is on banker's hours
Review: Vonage is the roach motel of phone companies. They have sales people working around the clock, but intentionally don’t put their customer service extension in the menu on their phone system. This is dishonest and I decide not to do further business with them.
Unfortunately, they won’t or can’t cancel the number transfer. I contact Qwest to see if they can stop it and at first they think so, but eventually they say no, but let it go through and in a week they can request it back. So we do. This leaves me without the ability to receive calls for over 3 weeks. I tell the reps at Vonage that I want my number transfer cancelled and plan to cancel service - they warn me not to cancel until the number safely returns to Qwest.
Qwest gives me the same advice.
It takes 20 days for a number to transfer - so this entire fiasco is over 40 days long. Cleverly, Vonage provides a 30 day money back guarantee. Criminal.
I learn this last fact when phoning to cancel my Vonage “service” (which never worked) and am told that 1) I’m over the 30 days to I have to pay $30 in cancellation fees and 2) I am charged an additional $50 for hardware that I bought up front for $89 in the first place and that failed within days of power up and 3) am told that they won’t even replace the dead hardware (although the rather smug rep in cancellations is pleased to tell me that “if you had stayed we’d replace it but since you’re cancelling you’re out of luck”).
Full story here: http://www.blackbagops.net/?p=63
Unfortunately, they won’t or can’t cancel the number transfer. I contact Qwest to see if they can stop it and at first they think so, but eventually they say no, but let it go through and in a week they can request it back. So we do. This leaves me without the ability to receive calls for over 3 weeks. I tell the reps at Vonage that I want my number transfer cancelled and plan to cancel service - they warn me not to cancel until the number safely returns to Qwest.
Qwest gives me the same advice.
It takes 20 days for a number to transfer - so this entire fiasco is over 40 days long. Cleverly, Vonage provides a 30 day money back guarantee. Criminal.
I learn this last fact when phoning to cancel my Vonage “service” (which never worked) and am told that 1) I’m over the 30 days to I have to pay $30 in cancellation fees and 2) I am charged an additional $50 for hardware that I bought up front for $89 in the first place and that failed within days of power up and 3) am told that they won’t even replace the dead hardware (although the rather smug rep in cancellations is pleased to tell me that “if you had stayed we’d replace it but since you’re cancelling you’re out of luck”).
Full story here: http://www.blackbagops.net/?p=63
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Gun shot to the Head > Vonage
Pros: Made my break up with X-wife look Petty
Cons: Everything, Poor customer service, Lack of English, even if the call was taken in the US.
Review: Stay away from this scam. Nothing but pure head ach's from start to finish. Lost 2 months of Business do to not having my home or business phone line working at all, and to top it off, I get charged for a servise that was never provided, and a cancellation fee on top of that. They are promising to reimburse the money once the unit is sent back, after reading other reviews, Im getting a tracking # This company needs to be laid to rest.
User Rating:
5.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Excellent VoIP product without the strings ISPs attach
Pros: It works, it's portable and Vonage is device agnostic
Cons: ISPs are less reliable than phone lines
Review: Hi - I've been a Vonage customer for about two years and I swear by my Vonage! I don't own the stock and I didn't buy shares on the IPO.
I'm a writer for a trade journal and I travel a lot in Europe and the U.S. Originally I signed up for Vonage because I wanted a way to make cheaper calls from Europe. The service has worked flawlessly and has saved my employer thousands. In addition, the fact that I have the same phone number no matter where I go has turned out to be much more valuable than I thought it would be.
I have used the product in hotels, private residences and at conference centers in multiple countries in Europe as well as in several states in the U.S. The thing simply works.
Call quality is close to using a land line and better than a cell phone (plus, the fact that there are no roaming charges is one of they key values for me). The only times I've had problems have been because the local Internet Service Provider (ISP) was experiencing difficulties. In fact, anyone who blames Vonage for lousy call quality is more than likely pointing their finger at the wrong party. ISPs (e.g. Cablevision, Road Runner, Comcast, etc.) are responsible for providing the bandwidth they promise. All too often they are still unable to do so.
I find Vonage superior to VoIP offerings from ISPs because of it's portability. None of the ISP providers that bundle VoIP in the U.S. or in Europe can give you the same portability and freedom. Plus the range of devices you can use with Vonage is constantly growing.
Recently Vonage made calls to several European countries free and offered European virtual phone nubmers. I've been gleefully taking advantage of both offerings. The service is just getting better and better!
Lastly, compared to Skype, I find Vonage more convenient because it doesn't depend on my computer in any way and it's more dependable (probably because it doesn't depend on my computer). I don't want to have to worry about where my computer is and what it's doing when I make or receive a phone call. Granted, Skype is free. But Vonage is relatively cheap and to me Skype's just a nice toy that I use while in front of my computer to chat with friends. I don't find Skype's call quality as reliable - I think this is because the software is on my computer which sometimes does other things that are pretty memory and bandwidth intensive, like send and receive emails with big attachements. So, basically, I've stuck with Vonage for my work and for talking to friends & family.
I'm a writer for a trade journal and I travel a lot in Europe and the U.S. Originally I signed up for Vonage because I wanted a way to make cheaper calls from Europe. The service has worked flawlessly and has saved my employer thousands. In addition, the fact that I have the same phone number no matter where I go has turned out to be much more valuable than I thought it would be.
I have used the product in hotels, private residences and at conference centers in multiple countries in Europe as well as in several states in the U.S. The thing simply works.
Call quality is close to using a land line and better than a cell phone (plus, the fact that there are no roaming charges is one of they key values for me). The only times I've had problems have been because the local Internet Service Provider (ISP) was experiencing difficulties. In fact, anyone who blames Vonage for lousy call quality is more than likely pointing their finger at the wrong party. ISPs (e.g. Cablevision, Road Runner, Comcast, etc.) are responsible for providing the bandwidth they promise. All too often they are still unable to do so.
I find Vonage superior to VoIP offerings from ISPs because of it's portability. None of the ISP providers that bundle VoIP in the U.S. or in Europe can give you the same portability and freedom. Plus the range of devices you can use with Vonage is constantly growing.
Recently Vonage made calls to several European countries free and offered European virtual phone nubmers. I've been gleefully taking advantage of both offerings. The service is just getting better and better!
Lastly, compared to Skype, I find Vonage more convenient because it doesn't depend on my computer in any way and it's more dependable (probably because it doesn't depend on my computer). I don't want to have to worry about where my computer is and what it's doing when I make or receive a phone call. Granted, Skype is free. But Vonage is relatively cheap and to me Skype's just a nice toy that I use while in front of my computer to chat with friends. I don't find Skype's call quality as reliable - I think this is because the software is on my computer which sometimes does other things that are pretty memory and bandwidth intensive, like send and receive emails with big attachements. So, basically, I've stuck with Vonage for my work and for talking to friends & family.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
DON"T get Vonage!
Pros: There are none!
Cons: It is a poor company with very poor service!
Review: It was a nightmare from beginning to end, actually it has not ended yet. We are moving and they won't accept my cancellation for early next month, I have to call back on the actual day I want to discontinue their miserable service. We have 2 lines and tried to activate both lines, after 5 months one still does not work, but we have been billed for both. The voice quality of the service is often poor. I have to re-boot everything at least once a day, especially if the kids spend a considerable amount of time on the PC, because the phoneline goes dead.
One also has to pay $39.99 per line for disconnecting, which I wasn't told upfront. Customer service, although friendly, does not seem to know what goes on.
In short, if you like stress and trouble, go ahead, order Vonage, otherwise don't get it!
One also has to pay $39.99 per line for disconnecting, which I wasn't told upfront. Customer service, although friendly, does not seem to know what goes on.
In short, if you like stress and trouble, go ahead, order Vonage, otherwise don't get it!
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Vonage has become synonymous with frustration and inconvenience, and customer service is horrible.
Pros: Can't think of any.
Cons: Dropped calls, couldn't understand or be understood by callers, couldn't get messages even with tech support help.
Review: Signing up with Vonage was a huge mistake. People stopped calling our house because it was so frustrating to try to reach us. Countless calls were dropped and nobody could understand us. It was like being on a cell with no service. Messages were usually irretrievable.
We tried new and different phones, we called their tech support, nothing helped. Finally when we went to a new provider in order to have a working phone at home, Vonage customer service was rude and indifferent. Then they charged us $40 to cancel!
We can think of no redeeming qualities!
We tried new and different phones, we called their tech support, nothing helped. Finally when we went to a new provider in order to have a working phone at home, Vonage customer service was rude and indifferent. Then they charged us $40 to cancel!
We can think of no redeeming qualities!
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
No problems at all - very pleased
Pros: My phone number transfer was completed before the date they gave me.
Cons: Wish they would add the 212 area code to their virtual numbers.
Review: Everything worked out of the box. I used my existing phone and the sound quality is great both on my end and on the recipient of my call's end.
Other than wishing it were a bit cheaper, this has been a good move for me.
There were no hidden costs as I talked with cusomter support before signing up and found them to be very helpful.
-EW
Other than wishing it were a bit cheaper, this has been a good move for me.
There were no hidden costs as I talked with cusomter support before signing up and found them to be very helpful.
-EW
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Poor service, refused to cancel account, unauthorized charges for over a year!!
Pros: There are no Pros to this service; AVOID IT!!!
Cons: Poor service, refused to cancel account, unauthorized charges for over a year!!
Review: We ordered Vonage service; couldn't get it to work. Their technical support department was difficult to get ahold of and couldn't help us. We cancelled the service via phone within 30 days of ordering. Vonage continued charging our credit card for well over a year. We have attempted to cancel via email, website, and phone multiple times. Finally, after calling our bank to dispute the charges on our credit card, Vonage cancelled the account but refuses to give a refund for the past 16 months of unauthorized charges. We have never been able to use the service - there are no outbound or inbound calls on the account.
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
People can't hear me...
Pros: The cost is the only pro
Cons: Quality, Customer Service,
Review: I lived in GA and had Comcast phone service and I never had any problems. I moved to Philadelphia, switched to Vonage and have had problems since the beginning. First I could not get a dial tone. I could not understand the reps from India and I called several times. And I don't think they understand what I was saying. I finally got someone in the US and was transferred to a technician in NJ and after several attempts I got a dial tone. The service worked fine for a week or so, but now my voice goes in and out and people cannot hear me.
I plan to cancel, but I am dismayed at the problems I read on this site about people trying to cancel.
I cannot recommend Vongage to anyone.
I plan to cancel, but I am dismayed at the problems I read on this site about people trying to cancel.
I cannot recommend Vongage to anyone.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
VONAGE IS HORRIBLE ( -1 ) below abysmal
Pros: They take your money quickly!
Cons: They take you through hoops, long hold times, before they possibly give it back!
Review: Vonage has the worst customer service ever, I tried speaking to someone in there customer care department and they are like freaking robots! Technical support is nothing more than what the instruction guide has printed on it... and by the way, try cancelling the service... good luck! You'll be waiting on hold for an eternity... they give you an estimated hold time of 20 mins which is a joke because I waited for about 15 minutes before they picked up the line and promptly hung up on me. My advice, wait until a more reliable company with a half decent customer service department comes out with the service!
User Rating:
2.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
NOT IMPRESSED
Pros: Great Concept
Cons: No Good Area Code For My Area
Review: I want the Vonage service but have been waiting over a year for them to make it available in my area code. They keep sending me advertisements but they can't deliver the product unless I get it with a different area code. That would cause all my friends and family to make a long distance call to me even if they lived next door.
Vonage cannot offer any time frame in which they expect my area code to be available. They have the other three area codes in my state.
A friend of mine tried the free trial using a different area code. The product is great I just wish I could get it.
Vonage cannot offer any time frame in which they expect my area code to be available. They have the other three area codes in my state.
A friend of mine tried the free trial using a different area code. The product is great I just wish I could get it.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Excellent product
Pros: Cheap, easy to set up, WORKS!
Cons: No "cons" - no problems at all
Review: Set-up worked "out of the box" - current telephone number porting was accomplished in one week - was able to disconnect old phone company wires at the point where they entered the house and use the existing internal phone wiring to create a network using all of our existing telephones (using instructions found on Vonage website) - would totally recommend Vonage (and have done so) and have nothing negative at all to say about it; our experience has been first-class all the way!
User Rating:
5.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Over two years of very good service
Pros: Clear connection, all the features for free that other companies charge extra for. I can have my home phone and cell phone ring at the same time. Great voice mail system. It's the best!!
Cons: None that I can find
Review: I used to have Sprint for local service and I had no other choice. The operators were rude, the service sucked and it was expensive to make long distance calls plus you had to pay extra for all the features that Vonage gives you plus great service and a clear connection for $24.99 a month.. WOW! Folks you can't go wrong. Most folks on here who have had a problem probably caused it their self..
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
My nightmare with Vonage
Pros: The price is the only thing
Cons: poor quality of service both technically and personally.
Review: My phone has not worked in at least a month and a half. Vonage has no clue why and cannot help me. I am presently paying for a service I don't have and cannot switch over to another server because Vonage hasn't "released" my number. According to Vonage they seriously have no clue why my phone does not work. They sent me a new modem once that didn't help and cannot send another. That's their policy. Customer service calls can take up to 2 hours. They actually told me that they really don't provide my phone service, they outsource it to a local communications company that is different for everyone. Were they trying to get off the hook? That local communications company has also been unreachable for me. I have been with no service completely for almost 2 months and before that had on and off service since March. Don't do it. You get what you pay for, and if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is!!
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
This company is not the best out there
Pros: Cheap rate
Cons: Horrible Customer Service /Echo sounds / Your Voice Sounds fades away
Review: I listed Vonage as a reference on my credit application with another company. I spent 4 hours on the phone explaining to them that my creditor called their company to verify information. The corporate office has no directions of how to contact someone in their accounts payable dept. Their customer service change my account from residential to business without me knowing it. The phone service is horrible. Several times my phone would disconnect for no reasons. Their voicemail system is horrible... messages that are left has cracking sounds. While on the phone talking with friends, the phone would make static sounds. If you are look for a cheap company with cheap services this is the company for you. The only reason why I tried them is because of the features and keeping my phone# and no contracts or hidden fee's. Overall this company has a bad GRADE of "F".
Updated
Government Actions
On March 22, 2005 Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit against Vonage, Internet-based telephone service provider, for failing to make clear to consumers that the company's current service does not include access to traditional emergency 911 service.
The lawsuit, filed under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, requests injunctive measures to stop Vonage Holdings
Corp. a broadband phone company based in New Jersey from misrepresenting the type of emergency telephone service it offers, and the fact that then 911 dialing feature is not
automatically included when a customer signs up for telephone service. The suit seeks $20,000 per violation.
The lawsuit alleges Vonage is deceiving consumers by not revealing in its television commercials, brochures or other
marketing materials that customers must proactively sign up for 9-1-1 service. When consumers purchase the plan over the
phone, call center salespeople also fail to disclose this important information. Even after signing up, there are
limitations to the service that Vonage customers may never
know about unless they read the fine print buried on the
company's Web site.
Report as of: 6/23/2006
Government Actions
On March 22, 2005 Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit against Vonage, Internet-based telephone service provider, for failing to make clear to consumers that the company's current service does not include access to traditional emergency 911 service.
The lawsuit, filed under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, requests injunctive measures to stop Vonage Holdings
Corp. a broadband phone company based in New Jersey from misrepresenting the type of emergency telephone service it offers, and the fact that then 911 dialing feature is not
automatically included when a customer signs up for telephone service. The suit seeks $20,000 per violation.
The lawsuit alleges Vonage is deceiving consumers by not revealing in its television commercials, brochures or other
marketing materials that customers must proactively sign up for 9-1-1 service. When consumers purchase the plan over the
phone, call center salespeople also fail to disclose this important information. Even after signing up, there are
limitations to the service that Vonage customers may never
know about unless they read the fine print buried on the
company's Web site.
Report as of: 6/23/2006
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Run screaming
Pros: There are no pros
Cons: The whole thing is a con
Review: Unless you like being frustrated, run screaming from vonage. I have never even hooked it up and cannot get them to cancel. The customer service is a joke. You cannot save enough money to make this a good deal. You will never get the time spent on hold back. Life is way too short to spend with vonage. I want to rate it less than a 1.
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Couldn't drop Vonage quick enough. WELCOME BACK LANDLINE!
Pros: Cheap, but you get what you don't pay for.....
Cons: Long wait times, poor help support
Review: I wouldn't get rid of your land line just yet..I got Vonage May 2nd, transferred a residential line & a business line, and opened "new/other" business line. The operator transposed the first 3 number and the last 4 number of each phone line that I transferred. That took me hours (about 5) to resolve. Then they added a second line onto my residential line and charged me twice. Then I wound up getting more Vonage routers then I needed, and they wanted me to pay to send them back. I have logged almost 12 hours on the phone trying to get my services straightened out. Today, I finally had enough and cancelled all my services. To do this, they wanted to hit my credit card up for terminating services. I quickly reported my card as stolen and disputed the previous charges (while on line with Vonage).
The service had so much potential and offered a lot of neat services. But their customer service sunk them with me. I always found myself on the phone waiting, being transferred, and no one person being able to take care of it all. Thus, that led to unlimited hold times. They always siad I needed to wait for an email confirmation, and call them again. All of this while I saw "my" customers call on the other lines trying to reach me. I wouldn't dare leave the line for fear of starting back at zero. If you get lucky and don't need help/support. Then go with the service.
But for me, I won't miss the hold times waiting for them to clear up their own messes.
No love lost here.......Greg
The service had so much potential and offered a lot of neat services. But their customer service sunk them with me. I always found myself on the phone waiting, being transferred, and no one person being able to take care of it all. Thus, that led to unlimited hold times. They always siad I needed to wait for an email confirmation, and call them again. All of this while I saw "my" customers call on the other lines trying to reach me. I wouldn't dare leave the line for fear of starting back at zero. If you get lucky and don't need help/support. Then go with the service.
But for me, I won't miss the hold times waiting for them to clear up their own messes.
No love lost here.......Greg
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
poor audio, service,etc.
Pros: price is good, easy to install
Cons: terrible customer service
Review: the voice quality is bad; tech support is non-english poor communicators. Wait time for assistance with cust service is long (3 times I waited over 20 minutes. Call waiting does'nt always work; message retrieval does'nt work( My message light blinks, but voice says I have no messages) Rating: 1
User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
It was ok before there were not many options
Pros: Cheaper than traditional phone services
Cons: Horrible customer service
Review: I started using Vonage for my business as it was a cheaper alternative from traditional phone services and they have some nice features such as the ability to review your calls online and voicemail forwarded to another number. However, callers complained of the call quality coupled with Vonage experiencing technical difficultiesd and you were out of luck receiving or sending calls. The main problem I had was their customer service. If you are not signing up for a new account, the average wait for a customer service rep is at least 25 minutes to speak to someone. When I cancelled the service they told me they do not prorate your bill when cancelling, as a result you pay for service you do not have.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
HAVE USED FOR OVER A YEAR AND NOT ONE PROBLEM
Pros: I USE LOW USE PROGRAM ONLY 14.95 A MONTH
Cons: NONE I HAVE FOUND
Review:
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
It's a fraud
Pros: I couldn't find any
Cons: poor quality; hidden charges
Review: They never say they charge 40$ for activating the service and 40$ for cancelling!!! Have you heard of a fee to cancel your account? As if it was not enough it is impossible to get through to the customer service to cancel your account, they make you wait for an hour. The line quality is bad, sometimes people couldn't hear me at all. Avoid this!!!!!
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Absolutely Dreadful
Pros: Cheap, Cool Online Features
Cons: Terrible Voice Quality, Dropped Calls, Disconnections, Dead Space, Poor Service
Review: It is easy enough to set up. It's dirt cheap. And, the online interface and integration with e-mail and other phone numbers is way cool.
However, I would estimate that 50% of all my calls...people ask me if I'm on speakerphone in the car, or if there is a problem, or I'm echoing, or they can't understand me. About 20% of my calls don't go through. About 20% of people who call me don't get through.
It is terrible. Support couldn't do anything. I was trying to use it for a business line. It was embarrassing.
However, I would estimate that 50% of all my calls...people ask me if I'm on speakerphone in the car, or if there is a problem, or I'm echoing, or they can't understand me. About 20% of my calls don't go through. About 20% of people who call me don't get through.
It is terrible. Support couldn't do anything. I was trying to use it for a business line. It was embarrassing.
Updated
I kept Vonage even though I trashed it. My Vonage service is great now. I'm not sure what has happened, but over the last few months, I have not had any problems with receiving calls or voice quality. Knock on wood.
I kept Vonage even though I trashed it. My Vonage service is great now. I'm not sure what has happened, but over the last few months, I have not had any problems with receiving calls or voice quality. Knock on wood.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Lost my business number, do not be tempted as I was.
Pros: None whatsoever.
Cons: Where do I begin?
Review: Vonage is impossible to do business with. Customer servise is non-existant, they have lost my companies phone number, can't get it back. They will lie to you at every juncture. I recieved a bill today for phone service (???) and that was my last straw. Personally, I believe a Class Action movement is warrented after all I have read thus far on the web.
User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Too much aggravation!
Pros: price, online access to account and usage
Cons: call quality, customer service
Review: The price is unbeatable, and the online access is great. Setup was a breeze. However, the quality of the phone calls, especially during the day, was awful. Echos, dropped calls, drop-outs. At night, it was better. In the end, it was too much-the cons won. Went back to Verizon for their $39.99 fixed plan. Another con - when you call to add something, you get a real person right away. To cancel service, the automated voice states the expected hold time is "25 minutes or more." It's a canned message, that doesn't have a plug-in for the actual time -it's one message. I tried to be clever and go to the real person to pretend I was adding, but they couldn't help me, and referred me to the same 800 number I've now been holding more than 15 minutes on. I don't buy that it's my broadband connection. I know several people with the same issue with this product, and other VoIP vendors. The technology needs to catch up to the idea. Except for the inability to cancel online, it actually hasn't been bad. I might come back in a few years.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Modem and Vonage not helpful
Pros: hard to say - perhaps cost
Cons: not working 5 wks later
Review: I can't say enough against the modem and Vonage. The modem took 1 1/2 hrs to get going with a Vonage Rep. Then, it hasn't worked most of the time. Vonage has not enough lines for customer service and is content if a rebooting works - each day once or twice is too much.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
DON'T DO IT!!!
Pros: Non - no service
Cons: No service. Our number was not ported. 15 weeks later we cancelled service and were CHARGED $41.19
Review: Signed up wtih Vonage in Jan. as of the end of April our number has not been ported. We decided to cancel service we were CHARGED $41.19. Service is horrible. DON'T DO IT!!
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Extremely poor service
Pros: Allure of saving money
Cons: will never get your number transferred and will drive you crazy
Review: Overall experience has been extremely poor. I am surprised that regulatory agencies are still letting this company perate in US. i hope eventually consumers file a class action lawsuit.
User Rating:
3.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
The good, (no bad) and the ugly!
Pros: Value & Performance
Cons: Customer Service (if you can call it that)
Review: I've had Vonage for about 2 years now and it's pretty muched worked flawlessly for me. Transfer of my phone number, setup, ease of use, online account management are all top-notch. Recently, however, I wanted to disconnect one of my two lines with Vonage, and the only way to do this is via "customer service" (apparently, the long wait time and illiterate staff are intended as deterrents to cancelling any services). So if anyone knows of of a description worse than horrid or abysmal, please let me know. The representative I dealt with sounded like some dude who was just waking up in a crack house! Really, it was unbelievable. I had to repeat everything to him at least twice (no, he wasn't Indian...he was definitely American). The solution? Save yourself the $5.75/hr you pay your reps, Vonage, and just let your customers do EVERYTHING online, including cancellation of services, etc. Jeez, Louise!
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
HORRIBLE TELEPHONE SERVICE!!!!!!!!!!!
Pros: EASY TO GET!!!!
Cons: DOESN'T WORK!!!!
Review: Doesn't Work. When I make a call, the other party can't hear me and I am cracking up. I end up calling them back on my cell phone. I have tried 4 different phones on this system with the same bad results including a fax machine phone, a 4 line business phone and a expensive brand new Uniden phone. Great idea, but no cigar. I am cancelling today.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
This service stinks
Pros: it won't kill you
Cons: It doesn't work and tech support keeps you on hold
Review: I am a systems integrator. I work with data, phone, TV and security systems everyday. I set up systems for colleges and hotels. I tried Vonage for our new office phone system. I could not get it to ring through consistently. Calls were not completed, some were dropped. For one week I had no phones at all. Customers would write e-mail or call my cell phone to ask if we were still in business. They would get messages saying that my number was disconnected or that it was not valid.
I spent over 11 hours on-line or on hold trying to get help, most of it on hold. When I called to cancel service I told them that I needed to keep the number and it would take a few days for the phone company to connect me again. They cut me off right then. I had no phone service. Qwest could not reconnect me with that number unless it was active. I had to spend 3 hours trying to get Vonage to activate the number again. Then they gave me a temporary number for 3 days, which no one knew to call, before I got my old number and same crappy service back. When I was finally connected to a land line again they gave me a $12.50 credit for my troubles.
Vonage should be put out of business. They ruined mine for almost a month. They have a cruddy product, lousy service and tech support and terrible business practices.
If you have to choose between two cans and a string and Vonage, take the cans and string. You'll be happier with the service.
I spent over 11 hours on-line or on hold trying to get help, most of it on hold. When I called to cancel service I told them that I needed to keep the number and it would take a few days for the phone company to connect me again. They cut me off right then. I had no phone service. Qwest could not reconnect me with that number unless it was active. I had to spend 3 hours trying to get Vonage to activate the number again. Then they gave me a temporary number for 3 days, which no one knew to call, before I got my old number and same crappy service back. When I was finally connected to a land line again they gave me a $12.50 credit for my troubles.
Vonage should be put out of business. They ruined mine for almost a month. They have a cruddy product, lousy service and tech support and terrible business practices.
If you have to choose between two cans and a string and Vonage, take the cans and string. You'll be happier with the service.
User Rating:
5.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Vonage is a good choice
Pros: Very cost effective, Has abilities far beyond a standard phone, Great international rates, Compared to a standard phone there is no comparison this is the future of phone comunication and it is here.
Cons: Requires some technical knowledge for proper setup
Review: To start let me put forth my credentials BA EE Purdue University, Engineer for 5 Years. AKA you can put some stock in my opinions. To be most helpful I'm going to include some details and examples for those who want the "cliff note" version Vonage good, get a fast ip ie comcast (8mps!)even if you have a satalite as I do for tv just do your internet with comcast you won't be sorry, dsl will work but is slower and will have problems isn't the idea to stop paying the phone company? get linksys non wireless router, If not working right 9/10 it is not setup properly on your end. If you know what you are doing great if not see below. First off don't get a voip home phone. Proper Set-up is impractical and with out proper setup you will have many problems from jagged conversation to echoes accross the phone. The best solution is to go with a non-wireless router. This has several advantages the most obvious is expandability. A voip device has what is called a mac address this uniquely identifies a device your phone number is associate with it essentialy making that your phone line except that you can pick it up and go anywhere. a voip phone would would limit you to a single line and make the phones you already own useless (Yes I know there are some phones that have a seconday port on it for additional lines, but this still limits how many phones you can use) A. wireless voip router is a mistake for a couple of reasons. Like a wireless voip phone it needs to be placed 10 to 15 feet away from other wireless equipment to avoid risk of distortion on your calls. and 2 Wireless protocols are changing rapidly geting a wireless voip router lmiits you to it's wireless speed and prevents you from upgrading. Which comes to a important point you say you don't own a router thats not an issue well the fact is that technology including the livingroom and kitchen is going that direction. If you don't own one you will want to soon, and with HD content on the way related applications will make it very important to have the fastest possible wireless speeds. So we have our non-wireless router maxamize its use. take your phone line out puts and plug them directly into the wall phone jacks (both if you are wired for two lines or just line one if you only have one) then (very important) go to your phone interface outside on the user interface side use a screw driver open it up and disconnect any phone lines that our pluged in wrapp black elc tape around it and close the box. Congratulations you are now your own phone server and your entire home is ready use all of you phone lines just as have always done. It is ggod to be very neat and tidy with you connections to avoid problems. To test your system call your line on a cell phone. (important) place the cell phone on mute then put both up to your ears and read a script don't let the delay bother you that is normal but listen for any echos or distortions or cut offs. echoes and distortions are most likely a symptom of wiring keep electrical wires away from communication wires. if cutting off words youmost likely have bandwith problem if you have a fast ip check other devices such as computers downloading typicaly isn't a problem bu uploading is. If you are using a peer to peer network be sure you have limited you upload speed to a small number as well as check for viruses and spyware that could be eating up your band with. Don't bother transfering phone number unless you really need to it just complicates things, most phone companies for a very small fee will add a forwarding number to the disconnected message. Finnaly this is an incredible service that is very future oriented and has great additional features like virtual numbers imagagine not just being able to call long-distance, but them being able to call you back for free using a virtual number that is local to them. I do find it nessesary to point out because of how positive I am that I'm not a vonage employee or any other voip service employee nor do recieve any money from the sale of any voip product. I just happen to have some knowledge and experience hope it helps.
User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Not good with DSL
Pros: Easy to connect
Cons: Poor audio quality with DSL
Review: I really wanted VoiP to work. Set up two business #s with Vonage. Audio reception was always fine however, the other party we would be speaking with had garbled audio (similar to a bad cell phone call) and couldn't understand what was said. After over a dozen calls with various technicians over a month and a half, call quality still remained sporadic. One minute its fine the next is awful. I performed the following in an attempt to help call quality.
Reduced bandwith to minimum
Replaced all phone lines and ethernet patch cords.
Set QoS settings on my Linksys WRT45G router to handle the two VoiP lines as priority.
Moved VoiP adaptor 6 feet away from all RF emitting devices.
Vonage reset the port settings on both Vonage adaptors since they default to the same port.
This and a few more things were done, with no improvement. Call quality goes from 80% to 10% throughout the day when I test the upload speed which measures packet loss. My next door neighbor uses a cable modem and has similar call quality problems with Vonage, but not as often.
I hope Vonage and other VoiP providers figure out how to improve call quality consistency with DSL modems.
I called my local telephone company today and ordered two new business lines...I'm done with Vonage.
Reduced bandwith to minimum
Replaced all phone lines and ethernet patch cords.
Set QoS settings on my Linksys WRT45G router to handle the two VoiP lines as priority.
Moved VoiP adaptor 6 feet away from all RF emitting devices.
Vonage reset the port settings on both Vonage adaptors since they default to the same port.
This and a few more things were done, with no improvement. Call quality goes from 80% to 10% throughout the day when I test the upload speed which measures packet loss. My next door neighbor uses a cable modem and has similar call quality problems with Vonage, but not as often.
I hope Vonage and other VoiP providers figure out how to improve call quality consistency with DSL modems.
I called my local telephone company today and ordered two new business lines...I'm done with Vonage.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Is it possible to give a negative rating?
Pros: The negatives so out weigh any costs savings
Cons: Terrible customer service, Terrible service
Review: OK, so I bought a new home and Veriozn told me it will be 6 weeks before I get a phone line. I thought ok here is my reason to try VOIP. So off to circuit city I go and I buy the Motorola Vongage router. This was at 10AM. Get home activate account, get a phone number set it up. Could not connect to internet, box would not register. Called customer service and got a technician in India. What a terrible experience. Could not understand a word she was saying. I had to have her repeat herself like 20 times. After 51 minutes of this and changing numerous setting in the computer she advised me the Vonage box was defective. She advised me to return the device to the store.
I returned the box and got another one at circuit city. Went home changed the MAC number with vonage set it up. NOTHING. No connection no dial tone. Called technical support again. Again I get India and again I could barely understand the rep. This time I was on the phone for 47 minutes. After numerous setting changes and restarting and rebooting my cable modem, vonage device and computer (Five times total) I was told this box is also DEFECTIVE!!! I was told to return it to the store and get the Linksys device.
Go to Circuit City and get the linksys WRTP54G. Go home change MAC number and set up. NOTHING AGAIN. Cannot even connect to the internet. Called tech support again. Got another call center in India, at least this guy was a little easier to understand.
After 31 minutes we got the Linksys device to work. Finally got a dial tone and thought all was okay. Hung up with tech. Tried to make an incoming call. Went right to voice mail. I thought it needed a few minutes to set up. I waited 15 minutes and tried again. Made an incoming call and right to voice mail again. Tried to make an outgoing call and I got fast tones Could not make an outgoing call.
Called tech support AGAIN. Tech had me reboot the vonage box. Made an incoming call from my cellular phone. Went right to voice mail. Then after about twenty seconds the phone rang, AFTER I WAS DISCONNECTED FOR 20 seconds and the call had already gone to voice mail!!!!! Tech could not explain why this was happening. Advised me to reboot vonage box again. At this point I gave up. It was seven hours of wasted time.
I tried once more the following morning hoping it may have worked out some bugs overnight. No such luck. I made an incoming call and it went right to voice mail. Hung up and 20-30 seconds later the phoine rang AGAIN!!!! This time it would not stop ringning!!!!!!! this service is so bad I can not even put it in words. I have used several technologies and I must say this is by far the WORST experience I have had with any product.
Just stay away from this service it is the worst.
I returned the box and got another one at circuit city. Went home changed the MAC number with vonage set it up. NOTHING. No connection no dial tone. Called technical support again. Again I get India and again I could barely understand the rep. This time I was on the phone for 47 minutes. After numerous setting changes and restarting and rebooting my cable modem, vonage device and computer (Five times total) I was told this box is also DEFECTIVE!!! I was told to return it to the store and get the Linksys device.
Go to Circuit City and get the linksys WRTP54G. Go home change MAC number and set up. NOTHING AGAIN. Cannot even connect to the internet. Called tech support again. Got another call center in India, at least this guy was a little easier to understand.
After 31 minutes we got the Linksys device to work. Finally got a dial tone and thought all was okay. Hung up with tech. Tried to make an incoming call. Went right to voice mail. I thought it needed a few minutes to set up. I waited 15 minutes and tried again. Made an incoming call and right to voice mail again. Tried to make an outgoing call and I got fast tones Could not make an outgoing call.
Called tech support AGAIN. Tech had me reboot the vonage box. Made an incoming call from my cellular phone. Went right to voice mail. Then after about twenty seconds the phone rang, AFTER I WAS DISCONNECTED FOR 20 seconds and the call had already gone to voice mail!!!!! Tech could not explain why this was happening. Advised me to reboot vonage box again. At this point I gave up. It was seven hours of wasted time.
I tried once more the following morning hoping it may have worked out some bugs overnight. No such luck. I made an incoming call and it went right to voice mail. Hung up and 20-30 seconds later the phoine rang AGAIN!!!! This time it would not stop ringning!!!!!!! this service is so bad I can not even put it in words. I have used several technologies and I must say this is by far the WORST experience I have had with any product.
Just stay away from this service it is the worst.
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Vonage Service is Unreliable
Pros: Web page service controls, VM access online
Cons: Too many times service not avail, calling customer support too much!
Review: Vonage service was just too unreliable. So many times I went to use the phone and there was no dial tone. Over 6 times I had to call support and spend 10-20 minutes solving the problem. They were very nice and did solve the problem, but who wants to do that half the time they want to use the phone? I used my cell phone more and more. So I cancelled Vonage and am back with AT&T/SBC. Of course Vonage charged me an early cancel fee so I want to spread the word to people needing reliable service. Stick with your landline and avoid Vonage.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Very poorly run company
Pros: None. It's going on a month and I have yet to be connected!
Cons: Buzzing phone, no one able to diagnose, customer service is non-existant.
Review: I have never been the squeeky wheel, and am not accustomed to writing into forumns such as this. In this case, I must voice a caution to anyone that is looking into switching to Vonage. Do youself a favor and spend the extra money and go with another provider - it will be cheaper and cause you less stress in the long run!
The overseas call center keeps telling me that they haven't received my "Letter of Authorization", even though I recall sending it and the Vonage "Dashboard" indicates that it has been received. The field that indicates the "Activation Date" still says "N/A". I have tried two of their "800" numbers and have yet to speak with someone who is able to diagnose the problem. I have twice asked to speak with a manager and have twice been hanged up upon.
I have not come across as being aggitated and remained calm throughout. They have really not had any reason to hang up on me! Perhaps it's their internal phone serice that is dropping the connection? Surely they can't be so rude as to just hang-up on their customers? Either scenario does not bode well for the quality of their service, however.
I have made a total of five calls and written one e-mail, using their on-line Customer Care e-mail service. I have been trying to rectify this situation now for 3 weeks. The only thing that Vonage has provided me with is a buzzing phone line. I should of stuck with Verizon.
I have read the other reviews and, at this point, am considering writing to the Better Business Bureau. I would imagine that this would be a good service provided that the initial connection process went smoothly and one didn't require any input from a Customer Care representative. If your luck isn't so good, then you will be in for a long and painful experience...
The overseas call center keeps telling me that they haven't received my "Letter of Authorization", even though I recall sending it and the Vonage "Dashboard" indicates that it has been received. The field that indicates the "Activation Date" still says "N/A". I have tried two of their "800" numbers and have yet to speak with someone who is able to diagnose the problem. I have twice asked to speak with a manager and have twice been hanged up upon.
I have not come across as being aggitated and remained calm throughout. They have really not had any reason to hang up on me! Perhaps it's their internal phone serice that is dropping the connection? Surely they can't be so rude as to just hang-up on their customers? Either scenario does not bode well for the quality of their service, however.
I have made a total of five calls and written one e-mail, using their on-line Customer Care e-mail service. I have been trying to rectify this situation now for 3 weeks. The only thing that Vonage has provided me with is a buzzing phone line. I should of stuck with Verizon.
I have read the other reviews and, at this point, am considering writing to the Better Business Bureau. I would imagine that this would be a good service provided that the initial connection process went smoothly and one didn't require any input from a Customer Care representative. If your luck isn't so good, then you will be in for a long and painful experience...
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Horrible customer service
Pros: Very good quality on International Phonecalls
Cons: The worst customer service
Review: It took me 5 minutes to switch to Vonage, it´s taken me 1.5 months to recover from the mistake. Once I switched, lost my land line and DSL thus, no phone, no internet, no Phone. Clients should be warned about this. After that they will not help you on the issue. After a month I recover my old phone and DSL Vonage kept my land line as my main phone with them (glitch on system)this could not be happen (two carriers with same phone num. Currently I still do not have I phone assigned with them after hours spent with their, so called technical support, my cell phone charges were 300+ this month for the on hold minutes. No one there seems to know what their are doing. Of course incredible difficult to disconnect service once you are sucked in.
Regret the moment I switched.
FC
Houston.
Regret the moment I switched.
FC
Houston.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Great phone service, great price, great sound quality
Pros: great sound, great features, easy to use, great price, got my original phone number back in less than 2 weeks
Cons: can't think of any!
Review: This is a great service. Haven't had any problems.
User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
It works well but the TOS will bite you and cust service stinks
Pros: Exceeded my expectations for VOIP quality
Cons: You can't believe what the sales people tell you
Review: I purchased an adapter at a local retailer and hooked it up, after confirming with the Vonage sales department that they would transfer my local number. Several weeks later they sent me notification that they could not transfer my number after all; now I'm stuck with a number that's not local. I used it for several months just for cheap long distance. Now that I found a VOIP carrier in my area, I cancelled my service, but they won't refund my cost of the modem (their TOS changed - when I signed up it said they would). If you sign up, buy the modem directly from Vonage - not a retailer. You have a few more rights.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Don't do it!
Pros: None at all
Cons: Can't get help
Review: I received my Vonage equipment 1/5/06. I opened the box and followed their directions. I wasn't able to hear a dial tone so I again did the steps, each time waiting more than the 10 minutes they requested. Finally, I contacted Vonage for help - over the Internet because I didn't have a home phone. Being frustrated, I called from my cell phone and was instructed to purchase an USB to Ethernet converter. I was in the market for a new computer anyway, so I got one. I have the allotted slots on my computer and STILL it doesn't work. I have sent Vonage over 10 message and they don't respond. Yes, I've given them a reasonable amount of time to respond - over 36 hours. When I tried to cancel, I was informed the cancellation department was too busy (I wonder why?) and to call back.
Should I not receive a message back to my answer my problems, I am contacting the BBB, this will definitely get their attention since I am unable too. I understand some people are having no problems with this system, I am and am unable to get the assistance I need from the Vonage.
Should I not receive a message back to my answer my problems, I am contacting the BBB, this will definitely get their attention since I am unable too. I understand some people are having no problems with this system, I am and am unable to get the assistance I need from the Vonage.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
In a perfect world Vonage would be great
Pros: Cheap cost of flat rate monthly fee
Cons: All cal centers are in India, They are no help at all. Voice gets garbled like a cell phone.
Review: This was the worst experiance of my life. Never do anything with a telemarketer. They offered me 2 months free to try it out. So I thought what the heck. They charged me $40 up front for a activation fee and for the modem. The calls were worse than on my cell phone. Voice was choppy and garbled. When you call for service and support, you get a call center in India where you cannot understand a word that anyone says. Tech support's answer to all your problems is to reboot your modem.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Talked to six people to sign up, they never did get it right
Pros: No idea, never could get service
Cons: Customer service is a joke
Review: Ordered service with an additional fax line and next day shipping. Email confirmation did not include fax line. Called to reorder fax line, they were so sorry, they would add it and wave the first month fee for my inconveinience. Three days went by, no equipment. Called, the order had never been placed, but they would send it out right away and wave the fee. Called to confirm shipping and was told it would be delivered 8 days from the initial order. Called back to see if I could buy the unit locally and still have the setup fee waived, the answer was yes and they would credit the initial equipment charge. When I asked what the charges against my credit card were I was told I had a credit of $9.99. When I repeated the question I was transfered to accounting which informed me charges against my credit card had gone up from $54 to $75!! When I asked that my order be cancelled I was told I had to call another # During regular business hours. If you call these people, make sure you have food, water and a good book cause you're going to be on the phone for quite awhile.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
worst ever
Pros: no pros phones don't work
Cons: no service, no dial tone,
Review: This is absolutely the worst thing I have ever signed up for. I had trouble setting up the phone system (its a do-it-yourself kit). A few phone calls (to India customer service) later, the phones were working, but only for a few weeks. Soon service interuptions, no dial tone, everytime an imcoming call comes in that seems to knock the service out and the phone goes dead. The "customer service" people make you pay to return non-working equiptment. Of course no "in home service" is avialable-this means fix it yourself by calling "tech. department" and spending hours going through various steps, which needless to say never resolved any problems and have actually made the situation worse. Now I can no longer reboot the system to even get it temporarily working.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Deplorable customer care, service wouldn't work.
Pros: Monthy bill is cheap (excluding all the fees).
Cons: Customer service, fee to connect, fee to change plans, fee to disconnect, service is spotty.
Review: I regret that I ever decided to use Vonage, it has cost me an arm and a leg and the whole reson I considered it was to save money in the first place! Signing up was easy, cancelling the account was nigh impossible. There is a $30 activation fee, a $30 fee if you change service plans, a $40 fee to cancel the service. If you cancel withing 90 days they will charge you for the equipment too, I would not want to find out how much that might cost. I had some difficulty installing the service, but got it after a week or so of contacting customer service for Linksys, the router manufacturer. The service worked for the first 2 weeks or so, then calls became progressively more choppy until people could not hear me at all. I followed the troubleshooting guide on the website and tried everything and it did not work. I called my internet service provider (cable modem) who assured me that my service was fast enough. I bought and installed a new router, same problem. I paid my bill for months while not being able to use my phone AND paying for overages on my cell phone. I decided to cancel the service and the customer care was horrible to me (once I fanally got through, after being on hold for almost an hour). They slammed me with a $40 cancellation fee, then when I asked to speak to a manager, the "customer care rep" put me on hold and then hung up on me. I called back, sat on hold for about 15 minutes, then finally got to speak with a so-called manager, who said he saw no reason to waive the cancellation fee. We argued for about 20 minutes, I pointed out that he can see that I haven't even made phone calls in months and that their service is defective and I am not canceeling just for personal preference. I further stated that I've been paying them $25 plus tax monthly for a service I couldn't use and that I had even recommended people to their company. They still treated me very badly and refused to budge on anything. I was glad to pay the $40 plus whatever other silly fees they'll slap on their just to get off the phone before I had a stroke. This was one of the most stressful experiences with customer service anywhere and I highly recommend the 'buyer beware' with Vonage.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Vonage = Outstanding!
Pros: Prices are the best!
Cons: I personally have not had ANY problems with Vonage. Now how often do you hear that about a telephone service!?!? =D
Review: I bumped into this while surfing and needed to throw in my two cense.
Vonage has been nothing but an outstanding service in my eyes! I dropped my local telephone service and have absolutely no complaints.
I have specifically listened hard for this so called lack of sound quality while talking, but I have not experienced any at all.
Vonage runs me 25.00 dollars monthly. My previous phone service coasted 30.00 dollars (only local service), and that of coarse is without adding in all the taxes. When the local Sprint bill hit once a month, my grand total was about 45.00 dollars.
Vonage has unlimited long distance for the flat rate that they offer. Other calling plans are draining and extremely pricey!
I URGE anyone who is planning to keep their internet capabilities to get Vonage!
This is coming from a Military guy with a big family to support! Don't cheat yourself, save money now! =)
Respectfully,
Donald L Engelhardt
Vonage has been nothing but an outstanding service in my eyes! I dropped my local telephone service and have absolutely no complaints.
I have specifically listened hard for this so called lack of sound quality while talking, but I have not experienced any at all.
Vonage runs me 25.00 dollars monthly. My previous phone service coasted 30.00 dollars (only local service), and that of coarse is without adding in all the taxes. When the local Sprint bill hit once a month, my grand total was about 45.00 dollars.
Vonage has unlimited long distance for the flat rate that they offer. Other calling plans are draining and extremely pricey!
I URGE anyone who is planning to keep their internet capabilities to get Vonage!
This is coming from a Military guy with a big family to support! Don't cheat yourself, save money now! =)
Respectfully,
Donald L Engelhardt
User Rating:
2.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Cust. Serv. will be their undoing
Pros: Voice mail in e-mail
Cons: 6 mo. wait for rebate/Cust. Svc.
Review: To be honest, I haven't had service problems with Vonage's actual phone service. However, their customer service leaves a lot to be desired. It's not that the techs aren't knowledgeable, nor that the reps are mean to customers. In my experience, the problems stem from Vonage's executive level approach to customers. The techs aren't empowered to solve problems presented by the customers and therefore, overall, no one at Vonage owns the customer's problem. And we know what happens in that case, the customer takes it to a competitor who'll be glad to handle it.
Here's an example of what I mean. Let's look at the rebate offered by Vonage for instance. If a customer decides to try Vonage based on an advertisement, his reference will be that offer and Vonage will be judged on the details of that promise described in it. So, when a customer is taught in the ad that there's a $60 rebate after a 90-day period of service, but doesn't receive the rebate after five months of service --- and then is told only a $50 rebate will be given after six months, that raises a red flag and the customer is inclined to warn others about what he perceives as a bait-and-switch tactic that was used to trick him (and others) into using the service. Meanwhile, the reps on the phone can only give the official company answer to the customer and (pretend to) listen in silence as the customer spouts off about the incredulity of it all. This doesn't even touch on issues relating to service.
Their land-grab strategy, which is 1) raise capital from investors; 2) use 80-90% of the capital to advertise heavily so that they get to customers before AT&T, Verizon, SkypeOut, Comcast, Etc.; and then, 3) recoup the cost of acquiring each customer and realize profitability through revenues generated by customer billings in the long term. Not a bad strategy, but it all hinges on the third part of the strategy; if the customer leaves before they've paid back in the cost of customer acquisition, the strategy fails.
As word of Vonage's non-technology shortcomings proliferate, they will be severely weakened despite their current access to capital. They'll lost the potential to hold onto a customer long enough to see a per customer ROI and, with a weakened reputation in a maturing marketplace, they won't be able to raise enough capital to finance an effort to advertise publicly that they are addressing their problems surrounding treating their customers as if they are important to them.
If Vonage doesn't change their priorities with regard to their customers perception of the service in total, they won't survive past the first stages of the VOIP revolution. Microsoft is in no way sitting still and has always had voice-related aspirations for Outlook, Google is clandestinely buying dark fiber, and Skype is still (nearly) free and growing more stable every day. Lest they forget, tech waits for no one.
Here's an example of what I mean. Let's look at the rebate offered by Vonage for instance. If a customer decides to try Vonage based on an advertisement, his reference will be that offer and Vonage will be judged on the details of that promise described in it. So, when a customer is taught in the ad that there's a $60 rebate after a 90-day period of service, but doesn't receive the rebate after five months of service --- and then is told only a $50 rebate will be given after six months, that raises a red flag and the customer is inclined to warn others about what he perceives as a bait-and-switch tactic that was used to trick him (and others) into using the service. Meanwhile, the reps on the phone can only give the official company answer to the customer and (pretend to) listen in silence as the customer spouts off about the incredulity of it all. This doesn't even touch on issues relating to service.
Their land-grab strategy, which is 1) raise capital from investors; 2) use 80-90% of the capital to advertise heavily so that they get to customers before AT&T, Verizon, SkypeOut, Comcast, Etc.; and then, 3) recoup the cost of acquiring each customer and realize profitability through revenues generated by customer billings in the long term. Not a bad strategy, but it all hinges on the third part of the strategy; if the customer leaves before they've paid back in the cost of customer acquisition, the strategy fails.
As word of Vonage's non-technology shortcomings proliferate, they will be severely weakened despite their current access to capital. They'll lost the potential to hold onto a customer long enough to see a per customer ROI and, with a weakened reputation in a maturing marketplace, they won't be able to raise enough capital to finance an effort to advertise publicly that they are addressing their problems surrounding treating their customers as if they are important to them.
If Vonage doesn't change their priorities with regard to their customers perception of the service in total, they won't survive past the first stages of the VOIP revolution. Microsoft is in no way sitting still and has always had voice-related aspirations for Outlook, Google is clandestinely buying dark fiber, and Skype is still (nearly) free and growing more stable every day. Lest they forget, tech waits for no one.
User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Low outgoing volume + disallowed to switch!
Pros: great web UI, great features
Cons: fatal problem with low outgoing volume
Review: Hi there,
I'm writing about a disastrous experience i had with vonage over a good part of 2004. THe summary would be
- 8 months working with tech support trying to diagnose and fix problem with outbound volume being low (even faint and inaudible). Tried different hardware, monitored network speeds up and down, was told by tech support that that happens with a cable modem (owing to asymmetric bandwidth). But discovered that I do have enough upstream bandwidth on average after a multi-day test. Then told to change hardware, tech support changed settings at vonage etc. etc.
- gave up and attempted to switch to ATT and then MCI. Both said that they were unable to switch out of vonage, and that it can take multiple months as they cannot force vonage to move fast. Offered to set me up with a different phone number, but I wanted to keep my original phone number (that vonage refused to relinquish its hold on)
- Finally verizon, (it helped to have the local muscle, I suppose) managed to switch my phone line over.
- However, vonage didn't pay heed to my emailed requests for termination, and continue to bill me to this day, and am trying to get my money back.
It's a very bad experience, but one that seems, is at odds with other members of this forum. I wonder if anyone has perspectives on the fundamental problem, of low outgoing volumes, that lay at the root of the problem (I liked many other features of vonage, and am generally an early adopter of technologies)
- disapppointed in manhattan.
I'm writing about a disastrous experience i had with vonage over a good part of 2004. THe summary would be
- 8 months working with tech support trying to diagnose and fix problem with outbound volume being low (even faint and inaudible). Tried different hardware, monitored network speeds up and down, was told by tech support that that happens with a cable modem (owing to asymmetric bandwidth). But discovered that I do have enough upstream bandwidth on average after a multi-day test. Then told to change hardware, tech support changed settings at vonage etc. etc.
- gave up and attempted to switch to ATT and then MCI. Both said that they were unable to switch out of vonage, and that it can take multiple months as they cannot force vonage to move fast. Offered to set me up with a different phone number, but I wanted to keep my original phone number (that vonage refused to relinquish its hold on)
- Finally verizon, (it helped to have the local muscle, I suppose) managed to switch my phone line over.
- However, vonage didn't pay heed to my emailed requests for termination, and continue to bill me to this day, and am trying to get my money back.
It's a very bad experience, but one that seems, is at odds with other members of this forum. I wonder if anyone has perspectives on the fundamental problem, of low outgoing volumes, that lay at the root of the problem (I liked many other features of vonage, and am generally an early adopter of technologies)
- disapppointed in manhattan.
Updated
Although they have great rates, you will get 5-10 minutes of DEAD AIR when you attempt to terminate an international call. Their tech support is quite aware of the problem, as are most users, and you should plan on getting a calling card (and reconcile to go through the hassle of not dialling directly)
Although they have great rates, you will get 5-10 minutes of DEAD AIR when you attempt to terminate an international call. Their tech support is quite aware of the problem, as are most users, and you should plan on getting a calling card (and reconcile to go through the hassle of not dialling directly)
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Customer Service Blows.. 3 Mos. for Number Transfer
Pros: Don't know... it's useless until my number is transferred
Cons: Terrible support.. Multiple missed commitments
Review: I was told it would take 20 working days for existing number transfer. It's been over 50 (2 1/2 months). They still can't tell me why it has taken so long or when it will be transferred. I've called support 5 times (figure on a 30 minute hold time) and I keep getting the same answer: "we'll escalate this with the carrier and send you an email in 3 days with a status update. I've never received the email." Escalating to Vonage mgt has had no effect.. just the same lies. Stay away from these amateurs.
User Rating:
0.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Unbelieveable
Pros: There are no pros
Cons: Customer Service doesn't exist
Review: Here is my last email I sent to someone, don't know who, hopefully I can cancel my account and get a credit.
"Hello, is anyone there?????? Would someone please contact me??? I have
been trying to call your 866 number, but is always busy??? I wonder why
that is????? No one emails me back???? Wonder why that is??????
It has been 28 business days and still counting and my phone number still
hasn't been transfered. I have been charged for two months of phone
useage by you guys, and I have yet to use the service. Should I be
charged 2 months of service if I am unable to use it? I can't use your
"virtual number" because no one would be able to get a hold of me. I only
have one phone. I cannot connect the vonage to my home phone until my
phone number is transfered.
So, what am I going to have to do, call Time Warner????? They are
turning around phone number transfer in less than two weeks?????? I would
like to be credited for that first month of service until my number is
transfered. I would also like someone to contact my carrier and to find
out when my number will be transfered.
HELLO IS ANYONE THERE???????? Does your CEO know that no one can get
through to customer service??????????? Or is he on the only phone you
have in the building??? Anyone ever hear of call waiting???????
Someone better contact me soon."
"Hello, is anyone there?????? Would someone please contact me??? I have
been trying to call your 866 number, but is always busy??? I wonder why
that is????? No one emails me back???? Wonder why that is??????
It has been 28 business days and still counting and my phone number still
hasn't been transfered. I have been charged for two months of phone
useage by you guys, and I have yet to use the service. Should I be
charged 2 months of service if I am unable to use it? I can't use your
"virtual number" because no one would be able to get a hold of me. I only
have one phone. I cannot connect the vonage to my home phone until my
phone number is transfered.
So, what am I going to have to do, call Time Warner????? They are
turning around phone number transfer in less than two weeks?????? I would
like to be credited for that first month of service until my number is
transfered. I would also like someone to contact my carrier and to find
out when my number will be transfered.
HELLO IS ANYONE THERE???????? Does your CEO know that no one can get
through to customer service??????????? Or is he on the only phone you
have in the building??? Anyone ever hear of call waiting???????
Someone better contact me soon."
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
There is a catch!-total aggravation with suupport
Pros: cheap price
Cons: service support
Review: An e-mail that I sent to Vonage:
Your customer support is absolutely horrendous! What a nightmare! I had to wait to speak to someone that literally had a 4th grade mentality to tell me to hold for another 3 hours in total. This is too long of a story to get into but to make it short...I had to spend $90 in total to re-activate my verizon line after waiting more than a month and a half to switch my telephone # that I had for the past 30 years! Your tech support told me 3 different things. They did not call me back. A fire alarm went off in the vonage office and I was forced to get off the phone with your representative. It goes on. I almost lost my # with verizon. I was subjected to a credit check and now I have to wait another month and a half to still get my origial # back to me. I am not even expecting a reply to this e-mail because I know I will not receive one- your support is so bad. I even had 2 of my friends sign up with your service but now all I have experienced with your company is aggravation. I even asked to speak with a supervisor and they denied my request!!! What the hell is wrong with your company? Do you even care about your customers? I don't think you have your priorities straight in terms of customer satisfaction. Your service stinks.
Sincerely;
Christopher Caicedo
Your customer support is absolutely horrendous! What a nightmare! I had to wait to speak to someone that literally had a 4th grade mentality to tell me to hold for another 3 hours in total. This is too long of a story to get into but to make it short...I had to spend $90 in total to re-activate my verizon line after waiting more than a month and a half to switch my telephone # that I had for the past 30 years! Your tech support told me 3 different things. They did not call me back. A fire alarm went off in the vonage office and I was forced to get off the phone with your representative. It goes on. I almost lost my # with verizon. I was subjected to a credit check and now I have to wait another month and a half to still get my origial # back to me. I am not even expecting a reply to this e-mail because I know I will not receive one- your support is so bad. I even had 2 of my friends sign up with your service but now all I have experienced with your company is aggravation. I even asked to speak with a supervisor and they denied my request!!! What the hell is wrong with your company? Do you even care about your customers? I don't think you have your priorities straight in terms of customer satisfaction. Your service stinks.
Sincerely;
Christopher Caicedo
User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Inconsistent
Pros: Features and pricing
Cons: Quality and service
Review: Initially I was impressed. No hassle activation and good quality. Then 5 days later no one could get through, obvious network problems as my broadband was fine. Calls were met with funny busy signal not routed to voicemail or backup number. Then couldn't get through to customer service, met with number not in service. Even after service was restored too much dropping like a poor cell phone signal.Maybe just teething problems but too much for me. I cancelled after 7 days.
User Rating:
1.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Absolute Garbage, Hidden Fees, No Support!
Pros: Inexpensive unlimited long distance
Cons: Company lies about services, will not response to email inquiries, does not follow through on commitments
Review: I chose Vonage because I wanted to stay ahead of the VoIP market. I have to say, they were such a huge nightmare that I would recommond to anyone that they have their eyelids pulled over their skull before using this company.
They lied to me for months about getting a local area code, which was never delivered causing all of my friends and family added long distance expense to call me. Their customer service never responded to open case numbers, and reaching anyone to discuss their excessive billing was near impossible.
Promised services and credits were never issued. Random charges were placed on my credit card of $50, $89, and $99 and were never credited.
If you want VoIP, look at a different company. Vonage, I am afraid, is not the one you want.
They lied to me for months about getting a local area code, which was never delivered causing all of my friends and family added long distance expense to call me. Their customer service never responded to open case numbers, and reaching anyone to discuss their excessive billing was near impossible.
Promised services and credits were never issued. Random charges were placed on my credit card of $50, $89, and $99 and were never credited.
If you want VoIP, look at a different company. Vonage, I am afraid, is not the one you want.
User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
no support, number transfer horror, forget it
Pros: cheap, like the web interface
Cons: zero customer service
Review: Signed up for Vonage three months ago, Sounds like a great idea. Absolutely no customer service: emails go unanswered, calling results in a busy signal half the time and a long (8-35 minute wait) the rest of the time. When I do get through to a rep, they basically have no idea as to what is going on. I've been waiting for my number to transfer for three months but I'm cancelling today and will pursue a refund. These guys blow chuncks.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Easy Setup and Painless Use
Pros: Excellent Sound Quality; Got to use my old phone w/ it
Cons: If net connection goes out, so does your phone - but that's rare, maybe once in 6 months, only for a couple minutes.
Review: This is a no brainer for sweet cheap phone service! I got the second tier 15 buck package with 500 minutes and I have not ever gone over that. So if you want to save the 10 bucks go for it. (That's 120 bucks I've saved over the year). Haven't tried the soft fone or the fax version but a friend has used 'em and said they worked great. Phone support was very good for my one call; they're also kind on billing: if your credit card "won't" go through, they won't kill your service...right away. They'll keep trying automatically a few days later. Very nice!
User Rating:
4.0 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Unlimited long distance without having to find a good cell area.
Pros: Cheap, unlimited long distance.
Cons: Call quality while surfing, proximity to modem, obviously doesn't work when power is out.
Review: I must first admit that I have not tried any other VoIP. Overall, I am happy with Vonage. I do wish I could find a land line company that would provide unlimited long distance cheaper than $50. In the meantime, I will continue to use Vonage. The call quality on Vonage is good. Unless of course you are surfing the internet. Then at times, you will find that there is a huge delay in your voice being transmitted, or it is simply not transmitted at all. Another downfall of this service, as it is with all VoIP services is the proxmity with which your phone, or cordless base unit must be to your modem. This could become troublesome depending on where you place your broadband modem. And as previously stated, don't consider this service, if you are in a location with frequent power outages. Even though it is obvious it should probably still be stated. No power, no internet service. No internet service, no phone service. Keep a cell phone charged and handy. One plus I must give that I wasn't sure about before I started the service, was whether or not it would work with a cordless phone. It does. My one suggestion; make sure that the frequency of your cordless phone is different from your wireless network, as you will have interference. Even with the problems, (which I can't say is specific to Vonage) I still recommend this service.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Fantastic - could be more pleased
Pros: price, service, price, excellent control via website
Cons: nothing so far
Review: I recommended this service to anyone. There is no distinguishable difference between Vonage and conventional long distance. The price is fantastic! Set up was simple. The price is fantastic! I like that you control all of the 'bells and whistles' yourself at the website.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
I wouldn't buy phone company stock!
Pros: Reliable, Features are cool, saving $100's!
Cons: Bad info in documentation; no connection tabs
Review: This service is great! The extra services (call forwarding, network availability, etc.) are features that would cost you quite a bit with a land line provider (at least $10/mo), or would be totally unavailable.
It may be more expensive than other VoIP's, but reliability and features outweight anything else.
The digital divide has been widened. Those that have broadband will have great phone service. Those that don't will be beholden to the Bells.
The cons are minor:
No Connection Tabs: When you disconnect from the land line at your phone box, you should make up a tag and install it on your lines so no one accidentally connects lines to your house. Other services provide little tabs for these warnings. (Minor)
Bad Install Documentation (pet peeve):
You cannot follow the directions if you use the Wizard, which directs you to hook up the router prior to first starting the wizard, but the wizard searches for your initial setup config and will not run until you disconnect the router. While nothing is damaged, it is potentially a big time waster.
It may be more expensive than other VoIP's, but reliability and features outweight anything else.
The digital divide has been widened. Those that have broadband will have great phone service. Those that don't will be beholden to the Bells.
The cons are minor:
No Connection Tabs: When you disconnect from the land line at your phone box, you should make up a tag and install it on your lines so no one accidentally connects lines to your house. Other services provide little tabs for these warnings. (Minor)
Bad Install Documentation (pet peeve):
You cannot follow the directions if you use the Wizard, which directs you to hook up the router prior to first starting the wizard, but the wizard searches for your initial setup config and will not run until you disconnect the router. While nothing is damaged, it is potentially a big time waster.
User Rating:
4.5 stars
out of 104 user reviews
Excellent value and service
Pros: Trouble free set up even without using the manual; excellent sound quality even on international calls to Europe and Asia
Cons: Can't find any fault with its service
Review: I have been using Vonage service for over 6 trouble free months. I cancelled my land line after installing Vonage IP phone for 30 days and have been enjoying big savings on local and international long distance phone ever since. recommend its service to anyone without qualification.
