vonage problems - stay away from vonage

[magic848]

This is my letter to Vonage that outlines some of the thousands of dollars of damages I incurred. Perhaps there is enough evil practice that they may be open to a class action suit or an investigation by the attorney general. If anyone is aware of any such current action, or has any thoughts on the matter, please post or email.

Buyer Beware!!!
-------------------Dear Vonage,

Today, after a prior futile attempt, my account was successfully canceled with Vonage. My new phone service provider, Time Warner Cable, informed me today that on 4/17/06, they notified Vonage of my switch to their service, and cancellation of Vonage’s service on my one home phone line. Today however, I received my credit card statement and see I continue to be charged for service I do not utilize. I have been charged on 4/28/06 for $30.78 and on 5/27 for $29.67. I believe Time Warner gave me poor advice, stating they would cancel the account, and no action was necessary on my part. After some time, and 3 different calls I have been informed by them that I needed to contact Vonage to cancel. I did so via phone.

The purpose for my writing is to request credit for service charges during the period of time I did not use your service and to request credit for the $39.95 early cancellation fee.
Also, when I called and cancelled today, there was no mention of returning the equipment. Although there was no notification of a possible equipment charge on the cancellation phone call, the sign-up phone call, or on your written terms of service (that accompanied the equipment), I want to make sure. Do you want the router/equipment back? If so, please advise as to how to accomplish this.

With all due respect, the basis for my credit request is due to there being no question that Vonage did not deliver a worthy service to me. Here are just some of my experiences with Vonage:

1) I signed up with Vonage on 1/27/06. It wasn’t until 2 months to the day later that the number transfer was affected. We had many difficulties before the number transfer and in achieving the receipt of the # transfer. It was not possible for me to evaluate Vonage’s service within the 30 day “money back” free trial period.
2) Once the # transfer occurred, after an inordinate amount of time and diligent effort, we could only get one phone jack to work in my house, and quality was inconsistent and poor at best.
3) Once the # transfer occurred, we could not get a dial tone. Tremendous time and effort went into the attempt to correct this problem. Under Vonage's direction (while trying to get a dial tone when the number transfer occurred) I was standing in the freezing rain, on my cell phone, with a screwdriver in the Bell South phone electrical box on the side of my house (part of one day's 3.5 hours of phone calls and effort). I asked the tech support person if I might get electrocuted, and he said "I don't think so, but you might get shocked". As I described to him the myriad of wires, he then informed me his block of tech time "was up" and he needed to transfer me. He was getting IM’d he said. I pleaded with him not transfer me, due to my precarious position. I furthermore referenced my long-term efforts/futility/frustration with Vonage, upon which he HUNG UP on me! Next, I took digital pictures of the internal wiring of my phone box, called tech support for the umpteenth time, waited on hold for the usual 30 to 45 minutes, got transferred two more times, got an intelligent sounding person (he stated he was from New Jersey), emailed him the pictures, and went through all kinds of troubleshooting with his direction.
4) This amicable tech person guided me through various troubleshooting attempts. The phone box effort was ineffective. So he had me hook up my laptop to the router via an ethernet cable (in an extremely small, uncomfortable closet, where my routers were). We went through all kinds of computer screens. I believe it was during this process where he had me do DOS prompts (ip release/config, etc.), that my computer incurred serious damage. My 3 year old business laptop was rendered obsolete and consequently I had no reasonable choice but to buy a new one. I use my laptop at home and at my office. I own and operate 4 different businesses, and rely heavily on my PC. What happened was I was then unable to connect to my office network. I hired and paid 3 different computer tech firms, and none of them could successfully troubleshoot/fix the problem. Although my laptop had functioned excellently and met all me needs, it was within a couple years of being “out of date” and it was not beneficial to pay more money (I was quoted $500 more) to wipe it clean, reload the drives/software, etc. I also had Vonage tech support trying to assist on this network issue. Vonage tech support informed me there were notes on my account regarding this problem.
5) I encountered problems with my security system and had to disable it.
6) At some point through these efforts, we did get a dial tone, but only on one jack (I use 4 to 5).
7) For every phone contact attempt, I was constantly transferred, most every phone call, to people that were often extremely difficult, if not impossible to understand (poor English pronunciation)
Due to reason #4 above, I then turned to the Vonage web site for help. It did not provide a means (that I could find) by which to attempt to rectify any of my problems. The emails I sent were never returned, forwarded (to my knowledge) to the proper department/person, or acknowledged.
9) By mistake, early on, I was emailed that my account had been canceled.
10) My wife and I spent days and weeks, and eventually months trying to get our Vonage service working properly. It was clear Vonage could not provide phone service to more than one phone jack in my house, nor could that line be counted upon to provide clear reception/transmission. I was left with no choice, so I have since switched service successfully. However, Vonage continues to charge my credit card. I hope I will not need to dispute charges, or take further action to bring any reasonable resolution to this matter.
11) Total estimated time and expense damage are in the thousands of $'s.

I respectfully ask that Vonage credit my credit card for the last two charges, early termination fee and to not incur any more charges.

Respectfully submitted,

Matt

[magic848]

Vonage's "Emergency Respose Team" 888-580-4020 31628 I talked with Sultan and he provided me with a credit for one's month service.

Also, people have been successful getting credits by filing a Better Business Bureau complaint.

GOTO: http://complaint.bbb.org/ and file a complaint with the Better Business Breau of New Jersey, 1700 Whitehorse Hamilton Square, Ste. D-5, Trenton,NJ - 08690-3596.

Vonage is located at: Vonage, 23 Main Street, Holmdel, NJ 07733

Check out their BBB member page: http://www.trenton.bbb.org/nis/newsearch2.asp?ID=1&ComID=0221000011005249

They have averaged over 100 complaint filings per month over the last 12 months!

I hope this helps others get some assistance.

[basilf]

As of the issue of this @#%$%$ e-mail your carrier bell has not release my #%$#$% phone. I canceled on the 11th yet you put a transfer on the 14th. So for each day it is not connected I am loosing monies and your responsible. So a charge of $1800.00 as of Nov 30 will be this amount.

I don't care if all charges were removed however I loss my home phone and its Vonage's issue not Rogers. So I expect $1800.00 sent to me as of Nov 30 if I get my phone back earlier it will be a lessor amount.

This is a legal issue now. I expect more than a refund, I expect compensation for the lie and total BS I have been put through. The status for my phone is Rogers is STILL waiting on Bell to return my number, totally unexceptionable.

This issue will be reported to the CRTC but I still demand compensation for the loss of the phone service which is Vonages issue which you still have not resolved so I expect compensation of $300.00 a day I don't feel this is a allot for the loss of my home service.

So as of 5:00 PM today the cause of my not having my home phone is why? Bell your carrier slowness that doesn't give me my phone service now does it.

Everyday I am not able to home phone call results in personal losses, its your fault, your not resolving them so fix it,

It has not been a pleasure to deal with Vonage and have told many of my problems resulting in this mess.

Each day my phone is down gives me more time to explain why it is down and all I say is Vonage and many just go of Vonage like they all have heard problems. With just one issue not resolved to the customers satisfaction is one less sale, in my consulting Vonage will never be mentioned and I will make sure I tell clients to deal with Rogers and Telus here in BC.

After this Vonage will never be spoken in good light, too me its the cause of a problem that should never have happened period. All that has happened since shows me that Vonage is not a good business citizen and compensation of $300.00 is the least the company can do.

This a sad excuse for a telecommunication company.

[sage]

It's 2006 and Vonage still has problems. They lied to me at set up and now after service that had major problems and didn't work regularly. They were unable to help and now are charging me a cancellation fee after promising me over phone they wouldn't if service didn't work even after 30 days. The sales people are third party and lied to gain customers. I have reported them to the Better Business Bureau and Georgia Public Service Commission. This is not ok for a business to be treating customers with such deceit. PLEASE stand up and make a complaint to BBB or your states Public Service Commission. If you don't this won't stop. I would never sign up again if I knew of these problems. They won't even let me get past the Customer "Care" department I don't believe they even have workers...their so called technical support is outsourced and could not help me as they didn't even understand what I was saying.

[MrTim]

Vonage wouldn't cancel my account. Finally cancelled for non-payment as I got tired of calling to cancel and sending letters to cancel. Now they want $117.00. For service that they refused to cancel. So, now I have to spend $500 in time and money to reach someone to get it done.

OR I can start yet another blog about the bad experiences at Vonage.

Such it is.

Tim

[zopi]

Stay away from Vonage, don't support these robbers.
And if you do beware, because you will never be able to get your money back.
Don't even try to contact them, it's useless, their corporate emails all return as undeliverable.
Contact the New Jersey Attorney General's office instead and lodge your complaints there, hopefully they'll do something about Vonage.

[zhujianhua]

Hi

CAN ANYONE GIVE SOME GOOD OPINION OR REVIEWS ABOUT VONAGE.
I AM A DIE-HARD CUSTOMER ABOUT VONAGE.

VONAGE WAS GOOD, IS GOOD AND WILL BE GOOD..............