We have 3 lines with Vonage and every couple months we're unable to receive incoming phone calls. I call there technical support which is located in India and I'm lucky if I can even
get through and understand the person on the other end. Once I'm finally able to talk to someone after waiting a minimum of 30 minutes they can't tell me anything. I finally manage to get through to 2nd level tech support which is in the USA and they tell me... Our circuits are down in your area and our engineers are working on the problem. After an hour or four we're finally able to start receiving phone calls again. This happens at LEAST every 2-3 months. I CAN'T STAND THIS COMPANY but we're stuck using them because it takes at least 6 months to transfer a phone number if Vonage will even release it...
I knew that I had a 1 year contract with Vonage so I called them 2 days prior to the end of my contract to tell them I did not wish to renew, they said that they could not do it for me then, that I would have to wait until my
1 year was up. This was Friday, 1-year up was Sunday...Only open Monday thru Friday to deactivate. If I was to do it on Friday I would have a $39.99 deactivation charge, so call back on Monday and we will cancel then and waive the service you will not be using. I called first thing on Monday, 5 Min after they were open, talked with no less than 5 people. Long story short, No refund for just billed month, poorest customer service I have ever experienced. Vonage admitted that there was no way to avoid 13 month charge (Now it is 24 month or $40). Save yourself the headache, AVOID Vonage. Since I have changed to a new provider (SunRocket) I have less echo, and less delay when the landline answers. This could have been caused by many factors that were out of Vonage's control, but I will never put myself through dealing with them again.
Vonage is the very worst company I have ever dealt with.
Their sound quality is terrible, although it's not nearly as bad as their customer service. Sam (customer account manager) in Toronto was completely useless and was truly uninterested in providing any semblance of customer service. It’s not worth saving a few dollars if people can’t hear you. Be very afraid. If you care about those you talk to DON'T use Vonage.
I have had Vonage for over 3 years now. I LOVED it. We had a voice line and a fax line. I
recommended it to friends... all of which had problems. I didn't understand why they were
having so many problems, things were working great for me. Then our vonage modem started
having problems. Calls were very garbled. Calls were dropped. Our internet access was
blocked and we had to reboot the vonage modem for it to work again. (When we took the
vonage modem out completely, things were great... except no phone. :) ) So I called tech
support and he said that the modem we had actually lasted longer than expected. It usually
only lasts 18 months. If it fails in the first 12 months, they'll replace it but since
I've had it 3 years, we're out of luck. The only way to get a replacement from them is to
order a new line of service. Then the tech guy said that if we went to a local store and
purchased a replacement, we'd get a full credit for the price. Ok, that works. So we did.
We called back and spoke to the customer care person and she said that they don't give a
credit but since the tech guy had DOCUMENTED that he told us we would, they'd submit the
request. We got a response that the credit was denied by management. However, they DID
give us a credit for something else which no one could tell us what it was specifically
for... but it was less than HALF the cost of the modem. The new modem is still garbled
periodically and echo's frequently. I gave up and went on. I cancelled the fax line
because we didn't think we used it. Then a couple months later, we realized we needed it
back so I called to setup another one. The lady went through the setting it up, took about
10 minutes. She was summing things up at the end of the call when the call dropped. I
called back and spoke to another representative in the same department who was a bit
garbled but she verified information and then said she had to transfer me. So she did....
at which point the guy who answered didn't know why I was sent to him. I explained why
I'd called and he verified my account information. Then he asked to speak to my husband as
his name is listed on the account. Well he's at work but I can verify all of his
information and my name is the name on the credit card listed with the account. (I mean I
set the thing up in the first place and have made EVERY other phone call to them in the 3+
years we've had it)... it went on for several minutes where he REFUSED to speak to me about
anything saying it was for the protection of the account holders. Um, I AM the account
holder... my husband and myself. He wouldn't even check to see if the lady had processed
the order from the first call and say yes or no. I hung up. He CALLED ME BACK and said
that I must not understand the situation. I informed him that I did and would find another
company that WOULD give me customer service. He then stated that this problem wasn't major
enough to warrant switching carriers. Um, I beg to differ. He kept saying that as if I
would suddenly agree that I didn't need to switch carriers... but he still refused to speak
to me (even tho he did state that I was able to verify all the information he asked AND I
answered the line that we purchase from them). He stated he'd call back that evening to
speak to my husband. I responded that the only time my husband or I will need to speak to
any representative from Vonage again is to cancel our service and I hung up. We are now
looking at SunRocket. Oh, and I've tried accessing the billing or the call history on the
website for the past several days and it's STILL down. Evidently they're having trouble
keeping up with the growing market... STEER CLEAR!!
Vonage has been good to me, but my $14.99 has blossomed to almost $21 with taxes, fees and other charges, 25% going to other places besides my service? Crazy! The customer service is absolutely TERRIBLE, probably the worst I have ever encountered, I tried to get
credits for calls that were horrible in quality, so I tried using the website, made 2 credits and then was locked out(?) so I called to claim the credits for the 1 minute calls that were never connected, I was immediately referred back to the website to get the credits, I told her that I tried, and that I wanted her to assist in completing the others, she put me on hold and sent me to Tech Support (What?) I was looking for credits first, then Tech Support. I told her that I wasted 10 minutes with her and now you are going to transfer me, I asked how much more time will I need to wait she said 1or 2 minutes more, Tech Supports hold times were more than 5 minutes. Goodbye Vonage!
Vonage seemed to be doing pretty well for the first few months. A few outages once in a
while, but usually short and sometimes really the cable company's fault. This past month, I have had two unacceptable situations. First I was unable to receive calls for 2 days. No notice to customers, I just had to wait on hold for 30 minutes for them to tell me there was nothing they could do until the engineers fixed it. Now I have been unable to check my voicemail for 2 days. I know that I have multiple work messages, but I cannot listen to them. Same line from customer support--the engineers are working on it. This might be ok for personal calls, but NEVER get this service if you are trying to run a business or work from home.
I've had Vonage for 2 years, I've never really had a problem. I'm computer literate so setting the router up was no problem. Took about ten minutes from out of box to making
calls. I have 2 business lines 1 voice/ 1 fax, as well as my home line. All very reliable. I do get the occasional echo but not enough to knock the service over it. I'm hardwired through the house which also took about 5 min to do. I'm using the Linksys RT31P2 for my adapter. With Verizon FiOS for my ISP, but also had it running through RCN cable for a while, again not a problem. Probably the only thing I don't like is the lack of anonymous call rejection. Customer service isn't as good as it should be (sub'd to India) but I've only had to call them once or twice so not really a prob. If you ask for a supervisor they'll transfer you to the call center in NJ so that's a work around. On the 1 to 10 scale I'd give them a 8-9.
Vonage is O.K. The only thing is that you have to reboot the damn phone adapter every day. I reboot it every night before I go to sleep. If I don't reboot the adapter every night my calls are dropped, the call (sound) quality is bad, and there is a crackling noise in the
background. To reboot I just turn my adapter off for 30 seconds and turn it back on. After I reboot the adapter, the phone works fine: no dropped calls and the sound quality is good to excellent. But now in retrospect I probably would have gone with VoipYourLife or VoicePulse, solely because of the good reviews those two companies have gotten and also because they offer almost the same features as Vonage plus the (supposed) better call and sound quality. But overall, if your willing to spend 30 second of maintenance every night with the phone adapter get Vonage.
BAD BAD BAD by far the worst service and company ive ever had the misfortune of having to
deal with. horrible phone quality. conversations longer then 3 mins would be disconnected. vonage is not will to bend on any of there policys. if you cancel to later you will be charged for the cancellation fee, no matter what. Do yourself a favor and do not use vonage. it took 4 months for them to release my number, untill i gave up an got a new phone number.
When signing up, I did it on the phone and specifically asked if the person who referred me
would still get the 2 months credit as the promotion claimed. They said yes and even took the referrers information. They now refuse to give that credit. Although the process was easy enough, the language barrier is a challenge and very frustrating. No matter how the product and service is, I refuse to do business with unscrupulous people and will cancel the service immediately.
I have had Vonage for about a week, so to some this maybe a premature evaluation. Nonetheless, I present my experience with Voange. The ordering process was very simple and easy; it just took some following of directions and before I knew it I had placed my order. It took about 4 days for it to arrive in the mail (I used the next day shipping for $14.95).
After it had arrived, the installation process was even more simple and straightforward than the ordering process; the entire installation-from start to finish-took about 15 minutes. I made my first call to Canada within 20 minutes of installing it. So far the quality has been good. The only problematic issue I had with Vonage was that I had a few of my calls dropped. But when I called Vonage Customer Support they just advised me to unplug and re-plug my phone adapter, which I did, and it worked fine thereafter. So overall, I would strongly recommend Vonage to anybody and to everybody. I especially like their Virtual Number feature which allows me to have a phone number in another area and allows people living in that area to make calls to that Virtual Number as if they were dialing a local number. And since, I have a lot of family and friends’ living in Canada it is a very convenient and helpful feature. So bottom line: GET VONAGE!!!
I switched to
Vonage and bought the UTstarcom F1000 in October of 2006, it's now February so I've had the phone and service for about 4 months now. The idea of the WiFi phone was brilliant, just connect it to an available access point.. and Wow! you have a phone number. I work a lot from home or on the road so I was trying to find a way to stop using my cell so much. The idea was that I could give out the Vonage number and then using simulring, it would ring on my Vonage line if I was near a hotspot, or it would ring on my cell if I wasn't. And I must say, that works... great. But, if I answer the call on the Wireless phone... the person hears a loud hum, they say that I sound like I'm at the end of the tunnel or they just say "Hello" a dozen time before they finally hear my voice and it sounds like I'm talking under water. I can usually hear them, though the voice quality is about 10% that of my cell phone and the delay is so bad I might as well be talking to China. Then the line just goes dead, sometimes for just a few seconds, sometimes it doesn't come back at all. You can reboot the phone and make another call but it's usually the same. I would say that less than 10% of the calls I've made on this phone were barely acceptable. The rest... I would eventually give up and call the person from a landline or my cell.
So, I'm a technical guy, it is what I do for a living... so I started troubleshooting. The router, replaced mine three times with different brands to the highest end routers I could find. I took it to friends houses. Sometimes I would think that I was good... and then the next call I made was unusable. My home network is Comcast with the maximum speed. Tests show me with a 812 kbps upload and 8702 kbps download.
So I called customer service, 2 hours and 12 minutes later (53 minutes of that spent on hold.) They gave up and sent me a new phone, it seemed to be much better, almost 50% of the calls were good enough to use. For about a day, then the problem kicked in again and it didn't seem to work at all. Then the ringer just stopped ringing. The settings were all there, it just wouldn't ring. I even spent 1 hour 18 minutes on the line with Vonage and the did a factory reset on my phone to no avail.
A new phone is sent, that one dies completely 2 days later, no power, nothing. The next phone is lost in the mail. Vonage tells me that I'm responsible for it and I have to pay outright for a new phone. Filed a police report and a claim with DHL who refunded the money to Vonage (After 3 weeks.) Finally Vonage tells me to send back the defective phone first, on my own dime, and they'll send me a replacement. So I do, and still the problems persist. My log now shows that I have made 27 calls to Vonage customer service, for a total of 10 hours and 41 minutes. That's an average of 23.7 minutes per call. Vonage dropped me while on hold 4 times, and they never called me back. I spoke to 1 person in all of those calls that was remotely helpful. Only 2 people spoke English well enough that I did not have to require them to repeat everything they said. And only when I don't show a single record of a call where the first person that answered the phone was able to help me.
Overall, I would rate service as a 3 out of 10 (they did answer the phone and stayed on with me most of the time, even if they didn't help.) I would rate the F1000 as a 1 out of 10 (DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY) I would rate the call quality at 3 out of 10 and I would rate my overall satisfaction as a 1. I am trying to cancel my service now but they are trying to charge me outrageous cancellation fees and they are still making me keep this piece of crap device.
I would tell anyone looking to switch to VoIP, that the technology is great! I have an inphonex phone that works flawlessly. I run a softphone on my pc, a VoIP landline at my house and I even run the SJphone software on my pocket PC and