Vonage - Poor Peformance, Poor Service

For a little over a year I was using Vonage for my phone and fax service at my home office. At first things went pretty well but it wasn’t long before I got the calls of people who couldn’t fax me. Time and time again I would get calls from people trying to fax me something and it wouldn’t go through. Then time and time again I would try to fax something to someone else only to get a “poor signal” error from the fax machine. Clearly Vonage wasn’t cutting it for the fax.

Couple this with the regular website outages making me unable to visit my call history, my voicemail online, my phone features, etc and I had a pretty miserable experience with them. They would take the cake when it was time to cancel though.

I did my order with the local phone company, went through the process to get my numbers switched and FCC regulations require a 3rd party administrator even to verify I did, in fact, wish to have my phone numbers switched to the local phone company. So they processed all of that and then my local phone company called a few weeks stating Vonage was claiming I had more lines than that so they were denying the transfer. I told them these were the only two numbers I had with Vonage and have ever had with them, they managed to get it straightened out.

So I have been happily back with my local phone company for a month when I get a charge for Vonage still. Strange since my phone numbers are no longer attached to my Vonage device and obviously I have no way to make or receive calls without a Vonage phone number. Apparently they are happy to keep charging me though. Despite all their online features they make you call in to cancel.

So I call and up front the announced wait is 15-20 minutes so I waited the 20 minutes until my call was taken. They cancel my account and say I should have called them to cancel. I advised them the 3rd party administrator had contacted them to switch my numbers and advise I was canceling my service, that was sufficient notice. I was told I would need to speak to someone in the “credits” department.

I speak to the person in the credits department who asks to call me by my first name and is very polite. I tell her I would like a credit for the month of service they charged me for the single phone call that was on the statement. She said she was unable to do that as their rules require the customer call in to cancel. I said they had been contacted and told the number was switching and they said their policy is that only the customer can cancel to protect my privacy. I told her I had been amply protected by federal regulations and that charging me for service I didn’t use was in violation of that regulation. Apparently that response wasn’t on her script, she said she understood my frustration but she had no authority to give me the credit. I told her I would like to speak to someone who does then. She said she is a supervisor. I reminded her she said she didn’t have authority so I wanted to speak to her manager. She said she didn’t have one. I told her I didn’t think she is the president of the company so I do believe she has a manager and I would like to speak to him. She said he was busy and that he doesn’t have voicemail. I told her that was fine, I can see why Vonage has a wait for 20 minutes to cancel your account.

So, you have been warned, keep my experience in mind when considering your options for phone service.