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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.'"
Tried Vonage; didn't like it; walked away and left my money on the table. The money lost wasn't significant enough to warrant the time.
Pull my finger for my public key.
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.
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
..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).
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.
Free Conference Call -- No Spam, High Quality
I have vonage, and I'm pretty happy with the service. I'd say 8 out of 10 calls are good enough. I use the service more as a 15 dollar voicemail service. As I don't like phones, this is a cheap and easy solution for me.
However I've had some odd experences. For instance a friend of mine had it, then canceled it. When he had vonage, he setup call fowarding to his parents cell phone (they all lived in the same house). Well, they canceled for a bunch of reasons (mostly quality). Now when I call their house the call gets automaticly fowarded to the cell phone, since I'm a vonage customer. They've called them about the problem several times and there's "nothing they can do".
Ask and ye shall receive.
http://www.vonage-forum.com/ftopic6794.html
I kind of feel sorry for Vonage on this one. I've had their service, and while I'm about to switch (to free true VoIP services), I've had no problems with their service at all. That said, I also know how to manage a stable Internet connection.
The fact of the matter is Vonage is too hard for most people. All the things that can go wrong with a regular cable/DSL Internet connection now suddenly affect their phone service.
I work for a VoIP phone company. We get people calling in because after they unplug their modems to move them downstairs, they have no phone service. They're angry and mad and just don't understand how that would cause them not to have a dial tone. This is only one example, I'm sure you can think of others. Their old Bell South phone service 'just worked', and now they are having to reset routers and make sure the MTA is plugged into a phone jack/NIU. It's really complicated for the average person.
To make it worse, some Cable/DSL ISPs throttle their own VoIP traffic above all other traffic, and it's my beleif they have a way of changing the priority of other carrier's VoIP traffic to boost the quality of their own service (in comparison). Even if they don't admit to it or not, I wouldn't put it past them.
Add all this to Vonage's off-shore support who are at times hard to understand for the average 60 year old customer and you have some very miffed people. They feel the phone service is at fault, when they actually need to reboot their modem.
I'm sure Vonage has even more problems than I do, because we happen to be both the ISP and VoIP provider. I can only imagine what unknown variables they have to deal with, which are 100% required to deliver a quality, stable service.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
I use Cox cable and I'm not having any problems with Vonage yet. I'm so happy with it I'm going to use it as the main line for my home based business.
I haven't noticed any quality issues, however this may just be because my ISP isn't a telco. I wouldn't have bothered posting to the forum except that I am interested to know how many people are unhappy with Vonage and if those people's ISP's are all telcos.
This is probably the biggest network neutrality battle that there is today and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the majority of people with complaints have all had their service screwed with by those telco based ISP's.
John the Kiwi
I had a similar experience with Cablevision/Optimum Online, and Skype, and Vonage...now I just use a pedestrian POTS line again. I resent having to pay all the BS fees and taxes, but it simply works and I don't have to take time out of my day chasing around my service provider when my incoming and/or outgoing phone service just stops for no apparent reason.
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
Your problem with faxes was probably user error - you can't use fax machines with Vonage (or any other VoIP, for that matter) voice lines. Those routers use audio compression to send your voice over the internet, and audio compression is lossy. Trying to send a fax transmission over a VoIP voice line is like trying to compress the data on your hard drive into an MP3. Audio compression isn't bit-for-bit equivalent, and fax transmissions will error when bits change.
You need a second line to send faxes, and most of the Vonage routers have a second jack labelled FAX specifically for this. The fax line doesn't use audio compression, it receives the fax transmission as data instead of audio, and forwards it over the internet as data instead of compressed audio. The fax line is not active by default though - it's an entire second line (2nd phone number, can be used simultaneously with your voice line if you have the bandwidth). I have it and it's worked flawlessly for me.
Of course, that doesn't excuse the hoops you had to jump through to cancel. Maybe they've been subcontracting their cancellation service to AOL.
*MY* big problem with Vonage is that the online voicemail retreival is SLOW AS SHIT. But it still beats trying to retreive voicemail over the phone, at least online I can just click on all the message buttons, open them in new windows, then come back and listen to them all 5 minutes later when they've finally downloaded. At least with online voicemail, even if there's a 30-120 second latency to get a message, I can easily rewind/fastforward/replay/save to computer.
paintball
I've had Vonage for over a year and now have two lines. I used to complain about the quality as did others on the other end of the call. I recently rebuilt my network (and got rid of my PoS netgear FSV318) and now the quality is absolutely flawless. I'm on a 15mbit/2mbit cable link and I can use nearly all of my bandwidth without even a hiccup on the line. Here's the trick:
I ordered a 2nd IP from my ISP and separated my data network from the voice. In other words, I stuck a switch behind the cable modem with my router (p3 866 running pfsense Freebsd 6) in one port and the motorola vonage box in the other. The difference was absolutely amazing even though there's no prioritization of the SIP and RTP packets. Since pfsense has pretty good QoS capabilities, I might eventually stick the vonage box behind the router and get rid of the 2nd - we'll see.
For those of you who have your vonage box behind a cheap linksys router, forget it. The consumer-level devices simply can't put out the pps to support network usage and simultaneous VOIP usage.
Hope this helps.
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...
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Same here. No problems with fax over Vonage.
I currently have 2 providers, Vonage and Sunrocket.
If it wasn't for Vonage giving me some credits recently, I would already have cancelled. My bill keeps going up as they raise their fees, and now they are charging me local taxes, too. If I wanted to pay unknown taxes and fees, I would have stayed with my telco.
But anyway, Sunrocket has been great. While their Customer Service is notably lame (but I expect nothing less), they have better features than Vonage, including E911. Plus, they give you some pretty cool free phones when you signup, and there is no signup fees, or wacky charges.
What does it cost? $199 for an entire year (or $24.95/mo) with no other fees/taxes. And, since I know Slashdotters are too lazy to type in a URL, here it is for you: http://www.sunrocket.com/
However, I tried out their competitor, Packet8, for a month because Vonage couldn't get me a local number and Packet8 could. Packet8's technology is much worse. Their website is not as feature rich as Vonage's. Their phone functionality isn't as slick either. Vonage is great a figuring out what your'e doing when dialing a number. Dial a 10 digit long distance number without the "1", no problem. Dial with the "1", no problem. Dial 7 digits for a long distance number in your same area code ... and no "1", no problem. Packet8 was real simple. If you wanted to dial long distance, it was "1" plus the 10 digit number, period. If you wanted to dial a local number, dial the 7 digits only, period. Anything else was borked. Oh, and by borked I mean get a busy signal, not the "we're sorry, I couldn't connect you" message. I pissed away a whole afternoon waiting for someone's phone line to free up, only to realize they weren't on the phone .... it wasn't actually busy.
Almost all of my calls on packet8 had echo's etc. on the line during the call. I'd have to wait 30 minutes on hold to speak to a customer service rep with Packet8 as well, and while they'll happily take and email from you, they don't respond.
Packet8 also holds you to the terms and conditions, no exceptions, period. You get a 30 day grace period to return the equipment with no penalties. That 30 day grace period starts when you order the service, not when you get the device and plug it in. So, not realizing the 30 days started when I ordered the service,I called 2 days too late and got nailed a $65 cancellation fee plus I have to ship them back their equipment. "Too bad, so sad" was about all the sympathy I got from them. They know when your equipment hits the door, because you have to jump through hoops to get it hooked up and get a working dial tone etc., so they use the order date just to screw you out of a week of trial period.
Oh, and of the 4 times I called them they hung up on me/connection was dropped twice (I think accidently both times). So, it took three phone calls and over an hour on hold just to find out how bad I was going to be takin' it in the rear to cancel the service.
Is Vonage perfect? No. Are they as good/better than their competition? In my experience yes.
I've had Vonage for almost a year now and am having 0 problems with them. I can't actually believe that my situation is not the norm? Their service has been excellent. I use them along with cable service and QoS actually works, and works very well. I can literally watch myself downloading a large file, pick up the phone, and see my transfer rates drop. And I rarely get dropped calls.
I have a Vonage business account and use a fax line as well, and basically turning ECM off fixed all the problems I was having with it not wanting to talk to some fax machines.
Happy customer here. And no, I'm not buying into the IPO but I'm so happy with 'em I got my parents to switch to using them as well. VOIP is cheap now, take advantage of it while you can. And all the cool call routing features and voicemails in my Inbox are clutch.
The current state of VoIP technology is not good enough for normal telephone users to use. When PC users can't secure their wireless network and have malware clogged PCs, how can they be expected to be able to successfully use VoIP telephone service at home?
I think that mass market home VoIP service is doomed, at least in it's present form. People have been conditioned to expect to be able to pick up their home telephone handset and hear dialtone, they don't need a phone system that has to be rebooted on occasion to make it work. When the power goes out with VoIP, the entire telephone line goes down unless you have battery backup for the modem and the router. I have had to remind several family members with POTS that they need to have at least one regular non-wireless telephone in the house for when the power goes out. I understand that many VoIP routers have backup batteries and broadband providers provide battery backup for the customer prem VoIP telephone equipment that they provide. How long do those batteries last?
How long does a broadband connection last when the power goes out?
Recently there was a large storm that caused the power in my neighborhood to go out for almost two days. If I had Vonage, it would have only lasted for as long as the cable TV broadband lasted. My cable TV service and broadband connectivity lasted just a few hours after the power went out. The batteried in my UPS, which powers the cable modem and router lasted for much longer than the broadband service did. My cell phone went to analog roam after 8 to 10 hours (and that signal was essentially unusable). My wired POTS phone worked fine the whole time. I had neighbors who were surprised that my phone still worked because their (cordless) phones were dead. The same neighbors were later grateful that I could stop the beeping noise that was coming from their cordless handsets -- they also didn't know how to put the batteries back in after the power came back.