Comments on: Vonage Customer Service

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 02:26:20 +0000

Horrible, unscrupulous, dishonest, without conscience. Rip-off, Scam, Thieves.

By: Andre Vrignaud

Andre Vrignaud — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:59:59 +0000

For what it’s worth, I had horrible visions of canceling Vonage after reading some of the comments here. That said, I called the (admittedly hard to find number – had to get it off my credit card statement) 866-243-4357, navigated through the “complete” option list (funny they don’t list “cancel” as a valid option, but recognize the word), and got to a CSR pretty quickly during business hours.

She did attempt to begin to spin up a spiel about my not using all my minutes, but I politely shut her down by explaining that I am traveling more (not quite true, but wanted a reason for cancellation that had nothing to do with service/performance, or that they could claim to fix), and that I wanted to cancel my account. I also added that I was not interested in retention scripts – I explained that I understand that that’s her job, but that I had no interest, and after reading horror stories on the web about canceling my next call was going to be to the BBB and to my credit card company to cancel it. She didn’t argue, politely said it would take her a couple of minutes, and then cancelled the account. No request for cancellation charge (I’d been with them for two years), nor for equipment return.

So with that I’d say my biggest complaint around cancellation is that you have to call in, and they make it really hard to find the number. Once in, I was able to cancel relatively easily.

By: Paula

Paula — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:12:28 +0000

The phone company would not relinquish ours either and this is against the law. Report them to the Federal Communications Commission and then tell them you have done so. They’ll release it within 3 days.

All the complaints about noise,etc, but you all seem to put up with more than this on cell phones that are more expensive than Vonage. What are you thinking? Vonage is a deal.

By: Gina

Gina — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:02:46 +0000

I’ve had great success with Vonage the sound is great I have no complaints so far.

By: me

me — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:20:25 +0000

When I had vonage it was great. Wonderful even. I had a fiew dropped calls, but it wasn’t at all bad, being since I was overseas and wouldhave paid almost triple for being able to call back to the states. However, when the time came for us to come back to the states, I called and cancelled vonage. Uknowingly, vonage was still charging my credit card. I called vonage once again and they finally cancelled the service right after collecting another payment from my account on a phone I hadn’t used in over 4 months! I had also had another line added to the account. So when I asked how I could get my money refunded the service represntative told me that I would have to go through vonage billing disputes… but get this – they dont have a freakin phone! So I sent a letter to them about 5 weeks ago. Needless to say I still haven’t heard anything from them.

By: kt

kt — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:15:17 +0000

To Customer Service Rep – I wish I’d read your post BEFORE signing up for this awful service. I signed up based on a recommendation from a friend who has two (yep, not one, but TWO) Vonage lines. I got the service primarily to make long distance calls to the U.K. as the calls are supposedly included in the monthly charge and I have cousins who live there.

Getting the service operational was the first nightmare, and it should have given me a hint as to what would follow, but I was due to leave for London within a week and thought I’d keep it to test it out first. I could barely hear my husband on the other end of the line when he called me and after constantly asking him to repeat himself, I finally got so frustrated, we ended the call. Domestic calls were no better – people kept asking me to repeat myself and I’d end up using my other provider’s land line.

Today I called to terminate the service and was given the same sales tactics that you mentioned. Very firmly I insisted that I did NOT want to continue with Vonage, did NOT need to speak to technical support again as they were useless, and on and on the rep went. When I finally raised my voice and INSISTED that I wanted to be disconnected immediately, he then advised me that there would be a disconnection fee of $97.40. I told him that I had asked about this when I enrolled and was told by the sales rep that Vonage bills on a month by month basis, that there was no sales contract , and that I could disconnect whenever I chose to.

He informed me that the sales reps are throughly trained to advise customers of their rights, and that the charge would be billed. I immediately called my bank to notify them of stopping this charge and was told that it was already pending (less than 10 minutes)…amazing how quickly billing stuff is pushed through.

I plan to use the e-mail info provided for the CEO and his admin to protest this as I will not take this lying down…almost $100 GIVEN to Vonage for the privilege of providing me with sloppy service…I don’t think so!!!

Again, I wish I’d read this blog site PRIOR to enrolling…it would have saved me a LOT of trouble! But I will tell friends NOT TO EVER ENROLL in this rip-off provider…I cannot even call them a “service” provider as service is not a hallmark of this company.

By: customer service rep

customer service rep — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:12:20 +0000

hi, i was working at the vonage customer service (if its possible to call it that way) in chile, southamerica, it has been the worst job experience of my life, not only for me, but for my ex coworkers as well, they just do it because they need the money, but anyway, i just want to share my horrible experience with you, VONAGE is a terrible company, and im guessing that if you read this you will agree with me, first of all, lets start with the activations… activations are done in india, alright, i must admit that they have some great customer service representatives, and theire very nice, but… they have a lot of people that dont even partially speak acceptable english, and they activate accounts that people didnt even ask for, i heard of cases in which they told the customers to give them the credit card to “check if the service is available in their area” and the custumers call customer service 3 months later saying that they never subscribed with vonage, and we tried to keep them from canceling service, because if we transferred them we would lose our bonus, and would get paid less, if they got transferred to “account management dept” which supposedly is in new jersey, you would get another person with an indian accent, but, thats not the point, in their cases on the RETENTION dept which is their real function, they simply have to make it hard for the customers to cancel, otherwise they lose their incentives too, they place them on hold forever hoping they just hang up, that way they dont have to cancel the account, they offer a million things for the person to keep the service, and if they do, they just lose the money back guarantee, and if they get to cancel they have to pey for disconnection fees and rebate recovery fees, so in short… theire just screwed one way or the other. well, now let me talk a little bit about my job at the general billing customer service dept. well, its just a terrible job, we had an awful 1 month and a half training, in which we got poor customer service and program info and we ended up watching stupid youtube videos, they told us that they would pay us one thing, and at the end we gor paid almost half and they figured out nonsense speach to convince us that what they paid us was right and that on the second month we gould get paid better, once we were on the floor, without having a clue about what we were doing, we got yelled at all the time for screwups made by other agents or simply by vonage, well, its no wonder when you have an outsourced customer service dept. in a country in which english isnt the native language, i must admit that there are a lot of great agents and lots of people that speak a decent english, but thats simply not enough, we had call after call, of pissed off customers, we had to work even on sundays, for less than 3 dollars an hour, ok, i admit it, were taking american jobs (that they dont want in the first place) but a job is a job. well not only do we get paid shit, but they screwed us around with our money.for us to make that crappy salary we need to get bonuses, which not only are hard to get, but theire very easy to lose, we get the calls taped, and for every single thing that we dont do THE WAY THEY WANT US TO, we get points of for quality, if we get bad quality scores that means less money, we also have to send surveys to the callers, in which they can see that our real names arent john, or christine, but juan, cristina, and so on…but anyway, the thing is that in those surveys, pissed off customers dont care if you helped them, they just want to give bad feedback to vonage, and of course the poor agents get bad surveys, even when they gave a good service, and bad surveys mean LESS bonuses, less money, its the biggest fraud ever, and lets not even get started on the vonage service itself…it totally sucks, ok, i admit it, its a good idea, and the price isnt that bad, but wow, ive never seen that many problems with a telephone service, the sound quality is awful, it lowers up your internet speed, you cant hear people, people cant hear you, and technichal support is TERRIBLE! its in the phillipines, and, nothing against them, theire very nice people, and there are some great reps also, but in general theire REALLY hard to understand, and i imagine that the service is that bad because they get trainings as bad as ours, and about billing… dont even get me started!!! oh my god, ive never seen so many hidden charges, its just amazing. i will tell you only one good thing about vonage, and if youre a customer and you want to get at least one advantage from their terrible service you should know this, vonage gives credits very easily, you just have to call and say that the service sucks, or that you want to cancel, and they can offer cheaper plans, or a couple of months for free, so… give it a try, i guarantee that you can ripp them off the same way the that they ripp off you. i just dont get tired of speaking terribly about this terrible company, it was such a frustrating experience, not only for me but for the poor customers, if youre still not a customer, get away from this awfull service, i hope this helps you out.

EX General Billing Customer Service Representative 9164056409

By: Lynn Hickman

Lynn Hickman — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:24:14 +0000

I tried Vonage. I asked questions before signing up and got the answers I needed. They were all lies! My “local” number was for a suburb of a city 50 miles away and long distance for everyone I know. Their poor quality equipment failed and they refused to replace it unless I paid for new equipment (supposedly they would refund the money at an unspecified later date). They threatened to sue me for not paying for the service which I couldn’t use. They billed me for months of service after I closed my account. (and at an address where I didn’t live yet!).

I switched to Packet8 where I get service for slightly less $. It works very well. When I needed to call customer service (questions and assistance with something I wanted to do, nothing that was their fault) I got a human being in less than 60 seconds.

There are good VOIP companies out there. Vonage is NOT one of them.

By: john

john — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:43:21 +0000

All those people who keep whining about vonage, the only reason your connection sucks is because your internet is slow and ghetto. Stop blaming vonage and get faster internet you losers. Vonage is awesome and best of all much cheaper then all the other major phone companies. BOO YAAA LOSERSSSS

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:30:48 +0000

I work for a mojor cable communications company in the porting department. I can, attest first hand, that porting from Vonage can be easy and, at times almost, impossible.

It’s just like any company; if you find someone who actually knows what they’re doing you’ll be okay.

By: sherry converse

sherry converse — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:53:47 +0000

called vonage one day to order. make a long story short, by the time i was almost done i cancelled it and said never mind. to much crap and got different answers, they really didnt know what they were talking about so i canceled in the middle of ordering. week later i get the box. called back. said had to pay the 16.00 dollars shipping fee again besides them putting it on my charge the first time,where they had no buisness doing.then 2 months later its on my charge again was on the phone for over an hour.told me i cant cancel cause my name wasnt matching my account.would not let me talk to a supervisor,said there is no one to talk to but him.there’s so much more if i had time. called better buisness bureau.

By: Nicolina

Nicolina — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:15:27 +0000

Wow, I’m surprised to see all of this. I just got off the phone with a very helpful CSR who got my system up and running for me after I had taken it down and failed to set it back up correctly.
Customer service has been very helpful for me. They also ask for my number right away so they can call back if we get disconnected, which I appreciate because the cell I call them from has issues with dropping calls.
I hope I don’t end up with any of these crazy problems people are reporting here, but so far, so good.
…In contrast, don’t get me started on the problems I’ve had with Comcast, Verizon, or UPS!!

By: Vance Marco

Vance Marco — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:16:47 +0000

Vonage took $117 out of my bank account for a router that I did not order, and it took me a week and numerous calls to finally get the money put back into my bank account. Then I cancelled my service in Feb and now one month later they have hit my account for two months worth of service. Are the lawsuits causing so much of a problem that they need to steel $65 from me. I sure could use a telephone number to someone who could help in this situation.

By: Karen Mills

Karen Mills — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:36:15 +0000

I cancelled my Vonage service before even using it due to problems with them turning off my ATT and not sending my adaptor for the usage. I was told I would get a FULL REFUND when the adaptor was returned, which it was, and still no refund. I would never recommend this company to anyone. I am very happy to get my ATT back.

By: Gaurav

Gaurav — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:36:02 +0000

I have to agree with what others are saying. Their customer service sucks. I have a pending oder with them and after reading such hoor stories I deciced to cancel my account even befoe my order is shipped,so Igave them call and waited for 45minutes for a CSR to come online and he told me he can not cancel the account. They will ship the order and then I have to give him a call back to cancel account. What I do not understand is my order is not yet shipped and will be shipped tomorrnow than why he is not able to cancel my order.