Ahead of IPO, Vonage Faces User Complaints

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Internet phone-service provider Vonage (whose planned IPO was mentioned on Slashdot last week) is confronting complaints of poor sound quality, dropped calls and other glitches, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Customers who try to leave are complaining of bureaucratic hassles and snafus, particularly when they seek to switch services and take their numbers with them. Ironically, Vonage has long complained that local phone giants drag their feet in releasing the phone numbers of customers who want to leave.'"

Comments

It's Horrible Leaving

[dew]

I signed up for the Vonage service, tried it, didn't like it, tried to leave. I went through a bit of a nightmare trying to cancel the service and ended up needing to resort to the BBB. I wrote up the experience here: http://david.weekly.org/writings/vonage.php3 - apparently from the comments others have had similar experiences.

no complaints here..

[sdnoob]

..except that they can't get local numbers everywhere yet, but that's the fault of the smaller telco's who aren't under the fed's microscope.. and don't let 3rd parties in the door.

did have a call quality problem initially, but that ended up being the connection it was using; 128k upstream was too slow, even though it's only supposed to need ~90k or less. upgraded the dsl to 256k upload and everything is perfect (aside the fact from our telephone number being based in a city on the other side of the state).

Several problems with Vonage

[jimmyhat3939]

I had a few problems with Vonage that I think are probably endemic to VOIP systems:

• Any time I wanted to download a big file on my computer while on the phone, I had to accept that I'd have dropped packets and delay on the call. The truth is that DSL/Cable Modem providers need to provide some kind of guaranteed-bandwidth service for VOIP to work. That or the modems need to somehow set aside a bit of bandwidth for that. Actually, that could be a good idea... something based on Linux shaper stuff, maybe?
• The service wasn't actually that cheap. I now have AT&T local and unlimited long distance services and I'm paying about $15 more per month than I was with Vonage.
• I had lingering concerns about 911. I've actually had to call 911 once because I was being burglarized (the cops actually came in time and caught them!). So, I'm extremely sensitive to the question of 911 not getting routed properly.

Of the 3 problems, the first was by far the biggest. The quality just wasn't professional some of the time, and it repeatedly emabarrassed me with customers (I'm a software contractor). Also, when the audio was breaking up, I could never tell. The person I was talking to had to inform me. At a minimum, Vonage should make some sound happen on the your handset to let you know something's not right.

Re:Left Vonage after a short trial

[Pxtl]

Same deal here. The simple fact was my ISP didn't give me good enough connection for consistent phone quality - and I wasn't on a lite plan or anything. Good product, good support, but trying to leave or even downgrade my plan was an expensive hassle. There was also a massive problem with getting the unit delivered in the first place because of difficulties with DHL. Their technical people are great, but everybody else that I talked to there drove me nuts.

Hard to cancel, hidden fees involved

[CottonThePirate]

I had vonage, tried to cancel after 11 months of mediocre service. Refused to cancel without charging a $42 cancelation fee even though they claim month-to-month with no contract. I charged it back and luckily mastercard is sticking up for me, but an incredible hassle! Avoid Vonage like the plauge

Re:Did you plug your fax into the right port?

[phantom1584]

You sure can fax over the main vonage line! I do this all the time via my winmodem, and I don't have a second vonage line, just the primary. Just set the baud rate to 9600, and fax away....never had a issue

20 days to get a number from them

[Elminst]

I work for TimeWarner cable. We've got the digital phone product (not true voip, btw, but voip thru the cable system before it's handed off to Sprint).
We are happy to port numbers from other providers... the "normal" is 7 business days to get the number from Verizon.
It takes TWENTY business days to port a number from Vonage. That's a full calendar MONTH.
And they have the balls to bitch about telcos dragging their feet??

At least they don't do what Frontier (smaller local telco in upstate NY) does; Give/Sell your number to telemarketers before porting it! Nothing like a little "fuck you!" as you leave them...