Vonage Warning

I like that if a company tries to screw YOU, that you have your bully pulpit here at lockergnome.com to warn the rest or us. Let's hope Vonage wises up before they lose business.
Keep stickin' it to the man, Chris.

I guess I dont have to worry about that.. Despite actively advertizing Vonage on local TV and snail mail here in Fresno, they dont have my Area Code so thats that.
My lingo VoIP service is great. But the only VoIP router they support (D-Link DVG-1402S) is total crap. I will be looking into that Comcast thing Andru Edwards commented about in your other post.

Hey – Comcast Digital Voice is probably Comcast's smartest move to date. I have had it for about six days now, and it's great. I love that it runs on its own pipe, never interfering with my 8.0/768 internet line. Vonage is bullcrap. I was with them for about 11 months. I paid the $39 cancellation fee, even though I only had 30 days left, because their service is horrible. When I saw Comcast swapped out the standard modem for one with a 4 hour backup battery, I switched instantly.
The only thing Comcast needs to change is their Workplace plan. There is no benefit right now to paying the extra cash. I have the same upload and download speeds that Workplace customers have, but at a much cheaper price. The only thing I dont get is the guaranteed Static IP. HOWEVER – my Comcast IP hasn't changed in 13 months.

I just commented on your other post, but I'll do it again here. For VoIP try Lightyear XStream. Best VoIP quality, customer service in America no cancellation fee, and the box is portable unlike Comcasts which has to be installed on location, so with Lightyear, you can take the box anywhere in the world with broadband and have your local phone making local calls. $24.95 gets you ublimited local & LD in US, Canada & Mexico with all the calling features. It even has a new feature that will allow a way to make VoIP calls even if it isn't plugged in to Broadband! You can log into the control screen and enter a phone number you're at (cell, landline, etc) then the number you want to call. The server will call you then connect your call to the other party. Too cool! http://www.voippaysu.mylightyear.com

I agree with everything you said about Lightyear's service…However, if you cancel your service within the first 12 months..you are changed 24.99 as a cancellation fee. Over 12 months service..no fee. Awesome Service..Excellent Price and Features.

Vonage sold me a service that doesn't work and now want to charge me for cancelling it. When ordering the service I told them it would be used in Poland. It will not connect to the internet in the Polish location where it now is, but since more than the first month passed in getting to that location, Vonage insists on the cancellation penalty. When it was suggested that they can't penalize me for cancelling a service that dosen't work, their response was that the service does work (just not for me) and it is not guaranteed outside the US. I don't mind that it's not guaranteed, but when sold to be used in Poland and when it doesn't work there, it seems unreasonable for them to charge me for not continuing that unusable service.

Vonage does really screw you. I signed up with them in late January after they told me, via phone and internet, that my line could be transferred. It ends up I have a foreign exchaneg on my line and Vonage cannot get it transferred with that on it. I called Verizon and told them to take it off at that point they told me I would have to get a new number. So in essence, I cannot transfer my number.
When I tried to cancel, I was told I would have to pay the cancellation fee and the router fee, almost $140 in total! I argued with them over false advertising and telling me false things but to no avail.
I guess the whole thing of don't believe what you are told is really true with Vonage!!

VOnage is a horrible company. You can only speak withsomeone when you are placing an order for new or added services. If you need tech support, and I guarantee you will need it often especially if you try and use there service to Fax, you will be on hold forever and when you get through, it's someone in India you cannot understand. THere tech support is very weak.
I'm finnally had enough and are returning to Verizon, a little more money but at least it works. Vonage has created so much aggravation.
THey are simple a horrible service and I cannot understand how they were ever able to get off the grounf.
Bryan B.

I will have to disagree with the last comment. Fax service worked out of the box and tech support has been quick and easy the two times my non-technical wife has called them. We have been using Vonage for over two years now and have three separate accounts (one home voice, one business voice + fax, one business voice). The service is highly recommended.

I HAVE NEVER DEALT WITH SUCH AN UNFRIENDLY COMPANY AS VONAGE. WARN EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO READ THEIR TERMS OF SERVICE, OR MAYBE A LAWYER. THEY CHARGE YOU FOR EVERYTHING WHEN YOU ARE TRYING TO DISCONNECT. THE SERVICE MIGHT BE OK IF YOU HAVE EXTREME HIGH SPEED CAPABILITES – IF YOU ARE DSL WITH A 256K, FIND SOMETHING ELSE. AGAIN, THIS IS THE WORST COMPANY TO DEAL WITH.

Vonage will screw you ver big time.
Here’s the fine print they dont tell you, if you have there service 2 months or less, they will charge you a cancelation fee along with a fee of 79 bucks for a modem they dont want back, and you can do a thing with, it’s garbage, so, if you want to bew screwed and no lube to help, go for vonage, they screw you in every way they can!!! Trust me.

! ! ! ! DON’T DO IT ! ! ! !

You guys are very one sided. A buddy of mine from New York has been using Vonage for over 2 years on a very common ADSL 1.5 and has nothing but good things to say about the server and the company. Basically no problems, the quality is little worse than a regular phone, but when you buy it, you know about it.
ala

Vonage blows. Service sucks and they make it impossible to cancel. For over three months I’ve been trying to cancel….

A head’s up.

Even though there are many devices available for Vonage, there are a plethora of service problems associated with these devices that Vonage has yet to address.

1. Only one device per account. That’s not active devices, but any vonage device. While it is reasonable to have only one MAC ID active at any particular time, Vonage will not let their customers switch between devices on their web site. The dream of a hard wired Voip device for home and an F1000 for the road, both available on the same phone number, is still a nice dream, but not a reality.

Also, If you buy your Vonage device from anyone other than Vonage (regardless of the verifiability of previous ownership) Vonage will not activate it – period.

These are a few problems they need to work out.

Just got off the phone the 4th time to try and get a credit for a line that I was trying to get my cell phone number transferred to. Apparently their web site shows that the numbe can be transferred, but they are unable to transfer Sprint numbers. So after talking to their “international” phone center, and their account management folks, I told them I was done, and wanted out. After having been on the line for at least an hour with these folks, I told them to call me back, which of course has not happened. They are “researching” the problem, I am sure. I just sold my Vonage stock for a year end tax write off and hope to stop the financial bleeding with these people. It is not a businees that I want to be associated with.

I feel your pain. I just had to place a stop pay on my account for 6 mons to stop Vonage from taking any more money out of my account. It seems like they are unstoppable. The salesman over the phone told me nothing about the 2 yr agreement and the disconnect fee. They were going to charge me an activation fee as well. They did not ship this to me in 2 days. I paid for 2 days. They drummed up an excuse of telling me it takes two days to process. They would not refund my money at all. When I asked to speak to a manager, all of a sudden they were one. I was very discouraged to be on hold for 40 mins just to cancel. It left a VERY bad taste in my mouth that NO ONE I spoke with was outside the country of India. Nothing about this company is good business.

My Horrific Experience with this Ripoff Company

I got Vonnage to save money but it was important to me to keep my current phone number. Vonage “promised” this but they don’t make it clear (it’s in the small print, of course) that it’s only if you keep the number ACTIVATED . So you have to pay two bills until your number is assigned to your Vonnage line. This is expensive, esp. if you are moving. I had that number for six years but I ultimately lost it.

No one called my Vonnage line. I had it for three months because the first month I was waiting for my old number to be assigned so the phone just sat there and never rang. I was attempting to contact customer service to disconnect for the last eight weeks. When I called CS I got a voice mail stating “this service is temporarily down, please try again later.” So I did that – not every day but often – until I finally get my request for D/C honored after complaining through e-mail. They had a money back guarantee but charged me $85 D/C fee instead because I didn’t request it within the first 30 days. I was still trying to get the phone to work for the first 30 days, when I had it and wanted to stop the service, they were the ones who were not there. I was very upset. But you have to pay it as they deduct it out of your checking account. So there was zero service and it ended up costing me about $200.

Their $25 a month unlimited fee is BS, too. By the time all is said and done, it will cost you about double that amt. Their hardware didn’t work PLUS was an extra cost PLUS they require you return it when you D/C even though I purchased (not borrowed) mine at Target! it went. on and on, ad nauseum…

I complained to the AG of my State and they contacted Vonnage.. who refused any amount of refund. To dispute this, i have to sue Vonnage .. IN NEW JERSEY! I literally live about as far away from there as you can and still reside in the mainland US.

I am still sore about all this and wish we could class action these jerks!!
We need updated consumer protection laws specific to on-line services. Thanks for this chance to blow off steam. plt

I signed up with Vonage to save money on home office calls. It was for a new number, so I didn’t have all the hassle of waiting for the switch, but I ordered a phone from them that didn’t come and didn’t come and eventually I had to call back to get another one sent. FInally, I get another one, and despite my high-speed DSL connection, the phone quality was terrible. My boss could not hear me properly and my calls kept getting dropped. So my boss told me to disconnect the service and since they were paying for it, I tried. Vonage Customer Abuse line told me that I could not disconnect without being charged a $50 rebate recovery fee before 6 months of service. I said that was ridiculous and that their service was the problem. They offered me 2 months free service to make it up to me, which would take me to 6 months. I figured, fine, I can remember to call back in 2 months. No mention of the disconnect charge at this point, and I even confirmed with the rep that there would be NO FEE to disconnect. She agreed.

So, I call back 2 months later and after waiting over 20 minutes on hold, I tell them I want to disconnect, they try to give me more free months, discounted services…bla, bla, bla. I tell them nicely “no thank you, please just disconnect me.” Then the Customer Abuse Rep tells me that I have to pay a fee to disconnect. I said “what?” I was told that there would be no fee. She argues and argues with me saying that there was this other fee, but then there is this now additional fee, I tell her that the previous rep told me there would be no fee. After 10 minutes round and round, she offers to waive the fee if I sign up my friends… WHAT??? After all the hassle that this has caused, I wouldn’t sign anyone up for this abuse. Geez. I tell them I would rather pay the fee nad not subject my friends to this type of treatment. I hang up and about 15 seconds later get an email saying my service has been disconnected and my credit card has been charged $44.79… I paid almost $45 for a 10 second disconnection and a lot of hassle and abuse.

Here’s the moral – STAY AWAY FROM VONAGE – they are ridiculous to deal with and lie, cheat and steal to get customers. By the way, I told them that I would be warning everyone about their tactics online – please post on as many places as you can find too, maybe together we can stop their bad business practices.

I’ve had Vonage for more than two years and have had great service with none of the difficulties mentioned here. I have even added services like a soft phone line and then a USB phone and then changed my mind about the need for them and then discontinued service, all with no problems, except I did pay a cancellation fee, but that was no surprise, you are told this before you sign up! So, compared to my regular land line service providers, Vonage is great.

I just thought I’d add a litte “balance” to the bashing taking place on this forum.

November 29th-December 19th
I changed to Vonage and they stated that they could connect me to my computer. They sent one of thier contracted tech to our house who told us that we did not have all of the connections needed on our older computer. I told them what kind of computer I had. What they did not say was that my computer was too old. We went back and forth to a store to buy a Nik card. The Nik card did not work so we went back to buy a box from the store and that still did not work. Then they said that we needed a router. I finally said forget it. You what what is so bad is that they stated we had full service and we did not. They only phone calls I received was over my computer which you can not call back. ‘THAT IS NOT FULL SERVICE’. The last tech told us that he had to disconnect my computer service to get the telephone working and he was not allowed to work on the computer for the telephone service. Finally we connected it back and tried to cancel the service by sending the box back with the necessary letter of cancellation needed. I even sent it Fed-X with signature. They said waited past the time for cancellation and I needed to Verbally cancel them. Now they are charging us a fee of $129.00 for cancellation. They will screw you over and over again and they do not care how they do it. We had to use our cell phone for a month.
DO NOT GO TO VONAGE AT ALL.

I ordered Vonage in late Dec 07, I recieved the hardware in 2 days as promised and my phone number was transferred in 5 business days. While I was ordering the service I had second thoughts because I use it mainly for business, Vonage offered me standard $24.99 package for $14.99, and if you play a year in advance %20 off that price. I was playing close $90 for my Verizon phone line, that is significant savings.

The quality is great, I really can not tell a difference, though mainly because I have a very good ISP connection (FIOS). I’ve only had the service now about a month, had to call support once because I forgot my username and immediately was put in contact with support, they were friendly.

Pretty much any Corporation you deal with these days if you try and cancel a service with them you are going to get tac’d with a cancellation/service fee. Case in point cell phone carriers are the worse, they offer you incentatives by offering there phones at low cost..but cancel before contract period and they’ll hit your pocket book before you know it. Wife and I had a two year contract with Sprint, its debately how we got the date mixed up. But we ended up cancelling 6 days before the contract was up and they nailed us for $150 cancellation per phone, I had 3.

It certainly isn’t right, and websites such as this are very helpful.

I never thought anyone could be worse than Verizon, but Vonage has risen to the rank. We had our line with Vonage for about a week, and it interfered with our internet, we couldn’t get into our hotmail, i couldn’t send emails from my business email account, or upload files. Big problem since I work from home.

We switched back to Verizon at 2 weeks, and just as Vonage said they’d cancel our Verizon account, we anticipated our Vonage account to be cancelled since the number was no longer with them, AND i told them over the phone I was switching back to Verizon.

We called to send our device back to them, and found out they NEVER cancelled our account..despite the fact that they haven’t had our phone number in almost a month. Long story short, we’re no longer in the 30 day trial period and owe them $115. Worst customer service and business policies I’ve ever experienced. They wouldn’t cancel our account unless we paid the $$ despite the fact they said we could dispute the bill.

Why do i get the feeling that disputing the bill falls on deaf ears? Don’t do it. Also Verizon offers the same plan $25/month for unlimited calling including Canada & PR….and it’s a land line.

Vonage sucks is an understatement. We cancelled our service and Vonage still charged our account. When we called they offered us additional FREE service. We again cancelled our account for them to charge our account again. After speaking with our bank we changed accounts to recieve an e-mail stating that we owed them more money. I’m contacting the Better Business Burea and would seriously like to file a law suit. This is the worst rip off I have ever seen!

I have used Vonage for quite some time. Installation was simple and I had have no issues what so ever. I have contacted Vonage a few times and every time I do I have experienced nothing but polite Vonage reps.

My phone quality is excellent. In fact, the sound quality is better than what AT&T was providing for me. (dallas texas area)

I agree with Mark, pretty much any company these days are going to charge you fees for cancellation. Is it fair? Not really but that is how it goes these days.

If you want to try Vonage, give it a try. Dont be scared off by horror postings. You will see just as many great postings on other sights as well. Just like buying anything, your friend may buy a certain PC and it works great. You buy the identical one and it turns out to be the batch’s lemon. It happens.

Come on folks…. get real.

I bet each and every one of you who has had previous phone service (before Vonage) ended up on the phone …on hold forever….and you just needed something ’simple’ but the phone company could not would not due no matter how reasonable your request!

My sister had her phone number for 40+ years… She switched to Vonage…and moe than a year later…the phone company said..hey.. you cannot have that number and took it away. She actually had NO phone service for days.

The Phone company supervisor first denied taking the number..than a supervisor said she was not entitled to take the number and should not have been able to and yet a third supervisor said she should be able to take the number and they would get it straightened out for her. Vonage gave her a ‘temporary’ number until (I believe it was Sprint) straightend it all out.

PS…it is 2 + years later…and now… Sprint has still not assigned the number to anyone else, but will not oops… CANNOT release the number.

It is to their benefit to not let Vonage take the number. They do not want Vonage to get business and they know Vonage will get the heat for the problem..not the company hoarding the number for no good rational reason..other than….’because they can’!

Vonage service is as good as your cable connection. I have great service but ocassionally it is not good sound quality. I would say that happens for a hour or so every couple of months.

I have a cell phone..so if I have an emergency, I still have a phone..

I LOVE getting my voice mail messages in emails. I can play over and over…”I love you Grandma Hugs & Kisses” and feel great…. Plus…I can prove what someone said to me in an offer they left on my voice mail as I have a copy of it on my hard drive.

You are paying at least half of what you would pay anywhere else…for lots more features….

Nothing in life is free…. quit looking for it. Have a plan B. Be Prepared.
Expect from others what you are willing to give.
How many of you whinning here GIVE anything they don’t HAVE to?

Yes I am a grandmother and older than most of you. I have reasonabe expectations. I have found their customer support ot be EXCELLENT!
I have recommended them to my family and friends.

They are happy too. Sometimes it helps to be nice to customer service instead of short tempered and angry. You are a blank slate when they pick up the phone…. paint a good picture of yourself… maybe they will go that extra mile for you too… and find a way to make your situation good for you.

The old Golden Rule works wonders… Treat others as you would like to be treated. It may not work all the time..but it does MOST of the time… and even when it does not work… in your heart you know you did the right thing.
Rose
Las Vegas

There are many people here complaining about Vonage. I am a very satisfied Vonage customer since July ‘06. The service has been excellent, voice messages sent to my email address, etc.. On very rare occasions I have had a bad connection, that could be attributable to my ISP. My cost did go up $4.00/mo when they started passing connection fees on to me; but $30/ mo with unlimited long distance in the U.S. beats the heck out of the AT&T POTS charges I paid for years. For you Verizon users, read your contract. I paid them $77 per month for a year and then more then $300 to cancel the service.

oooohhhhh vonage ….. they wouldn’t let me go…. took me 3 months to “break up” with Vonage! good luck!

I am please with vonage,the rate is very nice for myself to be able to call my Familly in France,I whish I could get a probleme free Internet services as good is my phone carrier his,I have being with Vonage for about a year now;
No matter what the subject,it will always be soemone not satisfy,however,let people make theire own choice,do not trash Vonage because you are hard to satisfy.Sinserely

If the truth appears to be trashing Vonage then so be it. I was also told by a customer rep that there is no cancellation fee only to be told today, upon cancellation, that a $40 fee applies. Avoid them and their unscrupulous practices and lies.

I just cancelled service with them after only three, months. Why, never used it, but was paying for it (silly me). I got them to waive the disconnection fee and am sending them their equipment back to waive that fee. I was told to put in charge dispute for all of the charges I ‘ve paid thus far. I’m not very confident any of this would work being the account was closed 2 weeks ago and I am still being billed and now have to jump through hoops to stop it; not to mention the hour I just spent on the phone with two different representives both of which were waaaaaay too pleasant as they told me pretty much “Oh well”.