Vonage Sucks
Approximately four years ago, I enlisted the services of Vonage for my home phone. Since cell phone charges to my family in Canada are ridiculous, having a relatively low-cost solution for a home phone made perfect fiscal sense. At the time, it seemed like a great idea. Until we moved into our house.
Between Danny, the kids and I, we have four desktop computers, a Netbook, my iPhone, Danny's iPod Touch, and a Playstation 3 -- all hooked up to our home network. And at the time, our Internet access was via AT&T DSL. Eventually we started noticing a pattern: Anytime someone was on the Internet, downloading any kind of data, the voice quality went straight to the toilet.
I tried moving the Vonage device 4 feet away from the cordless phones, and configuring my router to tag the voice packets as high-priority. I even replaced the flaky router with better hardware. Still, there was no improvement. So we took the plunge and switched to Comcast Cable's phone, Internet and TV package.
I called Vonage to cancel the service, and ended up speaking to a very... brash lady on the phone. This woman kept repeatedly harassing me about the reasons for my disconnection, which I answered curtly with "I am not interested in fixing the technical issues, please cancel my service." She was a true bonehead, and obviously wasn't listening to a word of what I was saying.
Still this woman persisted, and she absolutely would not let me get off the phone until I agreed to a free month. I told her again and again that we had already migrated off the Vonage solution, that we were using Comcast, and that we had no intention of using Vonage anymore. Still, she persisted, so I agreed just to get her to process my cancellation.
Until two weeks ago, when I received notice of last month's charges.
What The Hell !?!
As it turns out, the bitchy woman on the phone had kept my account open, instead of cancelling it like I had repeatedly asked her to -- and lo and behold, they had started charging me again when their so-called "free month" had expired.
You have GOT to be kidding me.
I called Customer Service again, only to get another bitchy lady who kept asking question after question about the technical issues. Finally, I lost my patience, and yelled at her very strongly to just cancel my goddamned service ! What part of "CANCEL MY SERVICE" don't these idiots understand ? And to top it all off, she "could not" process a refund for the amount that they had charged me, and "could not" transfer me to the billing department to take care of that.
I hung up on her.
Luckily the next person I got in billing was able to process the credit just fine.
And the kicker ?
The idiots had the fucking nerve to call me last week, telling me about these "wonderful new promotions" that they had in effect.
I told that guy to never, ever call me again, and hung up on him, too.
Word to the wise: DO NOT USE VONAGE. They are liars, theives and harassing abusers who don't give a damn about their customers. They only care about making a buck.
They got the last buck out of me. And now I'm telling everyone I know to stay away from them at all cost.
Use Comcast instead. We've had it now for several weeks, and it works just beautifully.
To hell with Vonage. Comcast rocks.
Between Danny, the kids and I, we have four desktop computers, a Netbook, my iPhone, Danny's iPod Touch, and a Playstation 3 -- all hooked up to our home network. And at the time, our Internet access was via AT&T DSL. Eventually we started noticing a pattern: Anytime someone was on the Internet, downloading any kind of data, the voice quality went straight to the toilet.
I tried moving the Vonage device 4 feet away from the cordless phones, and configuring my router to tag the voice packets as high-priority. I even replaced the flaky router with better hardware. Still, there was no improvement. So we took the plunge and switched to Comcast Cable's phone, Internet and TV package.
I called Vonage to cancel the service, and ended up speaking to a very... brash lady on the phone. This woman kept repeatedly harassing me about the reasons for my disconnection, which I answered curtly with "I am not interested in fixing the technical issues, please cancel my service." She was a true bonehead, and obviously wasn't listening to a word of what I was saying.
Still this woman persisted, and she absolutely would not let me get off the phone until I agreed to a free month. I told her again and again that we had already migrated off the Vonage solution, that we were using Comcast, and that we had no intention of using Vonage anymore. Still, she persisted, so I agreed just to get her to process my cancellation.
Until two weeks ago, when I received notice of last month's charges.
What The Hell !?!
As it turns out, the bitchy woman on the phone had kept my account open, instead of cancelling it like I had repeatedly asked her to -- and lo and behold, they had started charging me again when their so-called "free month" had expired.
You have GOT to be kidding me.
I called Customer Service again, only to get another bitchy lady who kept asking question after question about the technical issues. Finally, I lost my patience, and yelled at her very strongly to just cancel my goddamned service ! What part of "CANCEL MY SERVICE" don't these idiots understand ? And to top it all off, she "could not" process a refund for the amount that they had charged me, and "could not" transfer me to the billing department to take care of that.
I hung up on her.
Luckily the next person I got in billing was able to process the credit just fine.
And the kicker ?
The idiots had the fucking nerve to call me last week, telling me about these "wonderful new promotions" that they had in effect.
I told that guy to never, ever call me again, and hung up on him, too.
Word to the wise: DO NOT USE VONAGE. They are liars, theives and harassing abusers who don't give a damn about their customers. They only care about making a buck.
They got the last buck out of me. And now I'm telling everyone I know to stay away from them at all cost.
Use Comcast instead. We've had it now for several weeks, and it works just beautifully.
To hell with Vonage. Comcast rocks.
posted by Andrea at 14:58
7 Comments:
Give it enough time... Comcast will suck too
I too had terrible service, tried to cancel and was strong armed to stay. Even with all of my service issues (none of which were my fault) they still insisted on a termination charge of $110. I was so mad I yelled and then hung up - the interesting thing is not 2 seconds later the $110 hit my bank account. Snakes in the grass!!!
Problem is all the cable companies and Vonage rely on the internet to make calls. Trust me Comcast has just as many issues and are still more expensive then Vonage (btw thier support is not so great either)
I hate vonage. They have over charged me so much in this last year, I've had to call them fighting over 10 times to get my money back. Their service sucks, their bitches, and they are rude as hell. I've had them take out $140, $90, $90, $50, and many others amounts and they can almost never give me a reason why they took it out. They upgrade my account without telling me, didn't tell me for 4 months that my calls weren't free. They charged me international when I said I didn't want it, ugh I hate them. Bunch of fake bitches. I can't wait to cut their service and get something else for a home phone. They are a waste of time and money.
I was with Vonage 3 years. Try tried everything to get me to stay. I had to get VISA involved to cancel service. After 3 years and 3 device replacements to "improve" voice quality (none actually worked) they wanted $120 to cancel. After Visa basically told them that they could go ahead and charge me $120 but VISA would chargeback my last 3 months of service charges Vonage decided to cancel my service. What a pain! They are totally dishonest. In the end I caouldnt even use the phone as it would cut out every few seconds. Couldnt even get a one page fax thru the line. Vonage is terrible!
I'm glad I got rid of these scammers. I've been with this company for 2 years and recently started recieving calls 4 times a day from fake phone numbers. Vonage obviously only offers anonymous call block and not selective call block so I decide to switch to Phone Power which is cheaper and the customer service is all United States based. You also get selective call block and anonymous call block and a free cloned line and more features. After my number was ported I went to my Vonage account to change my credit card info before calling and cancelling. Then when I call to cancel they tried throwing me sales pitches like service at half price even after I told the lady my number was already ported out of Vonage and that they don't offer the selective call block that I need. After snapping at the lady and telling her that I do not give her permission to charge my card and hung up on her I recieve an email with an attempt to charge me the disconnect fee after I said you may not charge my card. To top it off they try throwing a sales tax on a disconnect fee? WTF? Why pay a sales tax if you're not getting anything in return? That's my review. Vonage is a scam. If you want VoIP go to Phone Power.
I live in scotland and was involved with vonage as a customer.They gave me so much hassle i shut my bank account down so they couldn't charge me. Two months later got a debt collection letter.I told them if i got another letter i would be taking out a claim against them in the small debt court and threatened to coutersue them for the atrocious service they gave and would be also claiming full costs.Never heard from them again!
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