Vonage arrives
Posted on:: March 5th, 2004
My Vonage phone arrive yesterday afternoon. I followed the simple instructions for plugging it into my cable modem and now I’m making calls to anywhere in the US or Canada – 500 minutes/month for $15.
So far, the sonic quality has been as good as a “real” phone. Yep, them Voice over IP bits can hold their own. And the plain ol’ telephone company, the one with the network that’s too smart for it’s own good, ought to be worried.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
David:
Make sure you activate the OPTIONAL 911 service. However, if there’s a blackout and you get a cheese doodle lodged in your trachea, your only option is the Heimlich hug, cuz the 911 won’t work.
Stern out.
The service is shaky at best. Tech support makes you wait for a half hour every time you call. After six hours with tech support, I asked, “why is this so difficult?” and they responded with, “we have never had anyone with 2 boxes before”. Huh?
Customer “Care” is great on the way in, they are all can do. Not on the way out. In fact, if you notice, on their website you can add a line with one click, but there is no cancellation button. Instead, they make you wait a half hour for billing and a half hour for Technical support. So prepared to be listening to their little jingle for about an hour and a half or so.
Ultimately, this company is rude and irresponsible and if it is any indication, guess who own http://www.vonagesucks.com? That’s right, Vonage. Why would they even think to be purchasing such a name? What a farce! Wait a year until some legitamate business people enter the market.
I think I am going to start a Verizon lovers group after this experience. I could go on, but I won’t, this company has wasted enough of my time and money.
I had a different experience with customer support, at least the people you deal with while getting installed. I had to call three times, but each time I got through quickly (5 mins) and was well-treated.
Sorry to hear about your troubles with them. I hope you were an exception or they improve. Or both.
I have been using vonage for 12 months now with no hitches, (except a day or two initially setting up the system, I got some good help from the people at vonage, even though the problems were at my end. I suppose I would be of different opinion if I’d experienced the same probs as David.
I just cancelled my Vonage service and changed over to AT&T Callvantage. End of my sufferings!!! I used to call India a lot and the call quality was absolutely worse. Vanage blamed it on poor infrastructure of Indian telephone exchanges. But with AT&T Callvantage which is also a VOIP, the quality is superp, there is no difference between a landline and their VOIP. I am really satisfied.
On the domestic front too, Vonage service was not so great. The volume would keep going up and down. Started suspecting my phone instrument. But with AT&T, it is really working great. Overall stay away from Vonage. Lower cost should not mean poor quality.
My business requires a lot of calling in the US and to Europe. I have a couple phone lines and an ok long distance service. Would any of you kind folks recommend Vonage or a similar service over standard providers?
Have you heard consistently good reception with the service? If it was your business would you use Vonage???
Just added CallVantage (still have Vonage). I will probably be getting rid of Vonage. The call quality is much better than I’ve been experiencing with Vonage and it’s always consistently the same. May have to do with the DLink ATA/router that ATT uses which gives priority to voice over data and is at the edge of your LAN (first in chain after your broadband modem).
I can tell you that Vonage has bad quality and not only that there boxes are encoded. so it you are thinking that you can buy the box use there service and if you do not like it, re0use the box that you bought with another servie think again.
Vonage has echo, delays and overal a bad quality that you are paying for. I can also tell you that MSN 6.2 as better quality and its free.
Vonage also misleads the clients as you could receive a free box from the directly, but they are not telling you this when you buy it at Best buys or Cicuit city.
So think again before becoming a customer of Vonage.
Forsaone
My goodness! This Vonage or is it VanAge. They really know how to mess you up. I am currently using them for my business and now I cannot even dial out or receive calls. All incoming calls now goes to their voicemail. This is alarming as I can no longer conduct my business with a dead phone. I am loosing money by the seconds.
I have also tried several times to call them with no luck. Their website is also on the blink. If you are thinking of using this company, please think again.
I also am having trouble this morning. My Vonage phone line is dead, and all calls are ringing fast busy… so any client that calls up may think I am out of business.
I have had Vonage for over a year, and in the beginning their quality was superb. They have steadily gone downhill over time, however.
Jay
Our phone is also out today. The site is not up for us to check status. Calls to our number all ring 4 times and then hang up. I think it tried to forward calls to my cell phone a couple of times but it is not consistent.
Overall though, we have been very pleased with Vonage. It saves a bunch of money and it is almost never down.
I have been using them for 8 months now and have had no problems. The quality is clear 99% of the time. This is the first time I have had no phone service. The web site and phone line are now up and working here.
My Vonage service has been out for 3 hours and just came back. I hope that they prove to be more reliable. I have only had the service for 1 month and it is a long wait on the customer service line.
I can’t believe that vonage can give worse service than AT&T, it’s not possible!
Well I had it with Vonage…6 months and lots of headache and poor quality. You get what you pay for !!!
I recently lost dial tone and the only way to get a human was to bitc# at the president by calling his office. They got me tech support quick.
But the truth is that I too have been losing dial-tome on and off for a few weeks and I thought it was my gear. Not now…it is vonage. They are going after the volume instead of the quality. Did I hear that Verizon is an investor in vonage? Kind of a conflict huh?
Whatever…if you don’t have it…avoid getting it. If you do…then stop whinning and move on to another service like me.
Vonage is still working well for me. I haven’t had any of the problems that Tom’s had.
I cancelled vonage yesterday after they never responded to my tech support tickets about poor connection quality. (I couldn’t hear what the other person was saying for seconds at a time, although it seemed fine the other way.)
Right after I called to cancel, they finally responded to my open tickets and told me to go to http://www.brixnet.com to test voip from my connection (click the “test” graphic). I’m in sf on a comcast cable modem that measures 256k up, 3.2m down according to http://speedtest.tds.net/speedtest (the other site they told me to go to).
Anyway, brixnet gives you a score. Yesterday, I got a score of 1.0, which is “try pony express instead”. It showed nearly 50% packet discards in the details. Interesting that I got 1.0 to San Jose, 1.4 to Boston, and 2.8 to Montreal. Clearly the problem is network congestion, and it seems to be at vonage’s end, not mine. Watching network traffic from the voice terminal, I was connecting to vonage in Arizona over 15 hops.
Today i get 4.1, which is a little better than “a decent cell phone call”. Not really what I was hoping for!
BTW, Vonage charges you $39.99 to cancel, something they didn’t make clear when I signed up. If you are lucky enough to have kept all the packing materials to the voice terminal, they’ll refund that.
I just cancelled my service with vonage due to their complete lack of customer service. Now when I try to connect to the internet without the motorola phone adaptor, I can’t. I can only connect when I have the adaptor connected. Can anyone help me please? I’ve tried vonage but no luck. Thanks.
After two months with Vonage, I still cant receive incoming calls(i.e. no one can call me at home and has not been able to in over two months), the outgoing service is shakey at best. I have a constant hum in my phone which they cannot get rid of, and have had to switch to my cell phone numerous times because the line becomes unlistenable (imagine the worst cell phone line that you have ever talked on). I have been on the phone 3-4 times with customer service and technical support to try to fix my problems, and the only reason that I have not cancelled yet is because it takes customer service 1/2 an hour at a minimum to get someone to pick up the phone. Maybe some of the other VoiP companies offer a better service, but I would not even recommend Vonage to George W Bush.
Alright dude,
NAME ONE PHONE COMPANY THAT HAS AN ADEQUATE TECH SUPPORT? THEY ARE ALL CLUELESS SOMETIMES!!!!! A LOT OF THEM ARE UNKNOWLEDGABLE.
ARE YOU SO SUPRISED? GET OVER IT.
Signed up for Vonage April 17, 2005. I want to keep my phone number so I send in my transfer letter. Vonage alleges they send transfer letter to SBC. A few Emails back and forth, then all of a sudden it’s you have to wait 20 days(business). I have waited almost a month and I have paid Vonage 2 payments and SBC 2 payments, because I could only transfer my number if I kept my SBC account active. Sounds and beginning to feel like a scam to me???????
It took me 2 1/2 months and 5 phone calls to cancel my Vonage account. was laughed at, lied to, made to hold endlessly. They took 2 payments AFTER acknowledgeing I had properly returned my equipment. Will never deal with these people again and am spreading the word just how terribly bad they really are. It went from annoying to almost criminal really fast. Went so far as to complain to the BBB and the FCC. Dont know if it will do any good but people need to know this company is a scam. BTW, service over 6 months never was good enough to use.
Don’t use Vonage! I recently signed up for Vonage and I have spent 2 hours trying to set up the router they gave me to work with my PC. After 2 hours I spoke to their Customer Service and they were useless. A few issues:
1) Don’t take this the wrong way, but their Customer Service is in India and, unlike Dell’s service from India, this group was difficult to understand and noy knowledgeable at all.
2) Any issues are not logged, so you need to remind every single technician of the problem. It is a huge waste of time. In addition, one technician would say he would send me an e-mail with instructions for my router…he did not!
3) The router and system itself is a nightmare. The router Vonage used should be easy to set-up and connect , but nooooo.
Please save yourself the effort. Everything about this service as been horrible.
Best.
Thanks gang. I was going to sign on but not now
Vonage is the worst NIGHTMARE I EVER HAD…. customer service is a joke …never ever try this .. I have owned 2 isp’s and am familar with voip… this service is really a joke.. I got thier box ( start up Kit) and tried to set up per instructions on thier web site .. but thier web site says the mac address doesnt exist.. I called the customer service… she cant help me,put on hold, sent me to tech support, put on hold, they cant help .. put on hold, sent me engeneering they cant help…said they will call back within a hour never heard anything … 8 hrs later I called tech support again stating i was suppose to get a call back …put on hold…they cant help… transfered me to another tech…. put on hold for 20 mkinutes got tired of being on hold I hung up and called back to customer service 10 minutes later someone answers they said they would check call waiting times put on hold hold again.. came back on line later and said it would be at least 20 minutes more before i could talk to a tech, or they could call me back…I was disapointed to say the least .. I declined …and told the customer service rep that if this is the way they do business I didnt want any part of it and that they should seriosly consider working for a company that cares…so after wasteing 8 hrs there is one thing they have learned to do …put you on hold
oh yea it is very hard to understand anyone they speak to fast and have a real difficult/heavy accent. but they can transfer you ….oh well.. I decided that if it is that hard to give them some money and sign up with them that I didnt want anything to do with them…. just wish I could get to thier CEO and make him go through this routine when he wanted something done ..but then again he probably doesnt care either … stay away from this company … I would be happy to respond directly with anyone wishing details.. I am taking this vonage start up kit back to Sams club and lettiing them know That they are selling defective equipment and that by selling Vonage
services/equipment they are hurting thier own customers
Never…. ever… have any dealing with this company ..you will get ripped off/ frustrated and disapointed … in my opinion as I was..
Don