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Vonage Vows to Pursue Customers Who Renege on IPO

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the or-else dept.

kamikaze-Tech writes "As its shares continued to sink following its initial public offering last week, Vonage Holdings Corp. (VG) said it plans to hold Customers who promised to buy IPO shares to their pledges. In a WSJ article posted in the Vonage Forums; a Vonage spokeswoman said Wednesday the company will pursue payment from customers who renege on their agreements to pay for the botched IPO shares. Shares of Vonage, which offers Internet-based phone service, immediately plunged from the $17 IPO price, and they closed Wednesday at $12.02 in 4 p.m. "If they don't pay, we will reserve our right to pursue payment," said Brooke Schulz. She added that speculation that the company intends to buy shares back from disappointed investors are false. "They are taking a risk if they choose not to pay," she said."

3 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sued the customers, now sue the owners by gowen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Re: vonage: there's nothing weird about sueing someone who breaches a contract (even a verbal contract) with you.
    Why would it matter that the contract is about share deals, or anything else?
    Can you imagine how the prospective buyers would react if the shares had shot up, and Vonage management had said that they'd decided to sell them at the higher price?
    If you want to become a stock market speculators, you have to learn to cope with the fact your going to be wrong sometimes, and suck up the loss you take.

    --
    Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
  2. Re:Let's piss off investors and potential sharehol by Andy_R · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This isn't going to piss off investors or potential shareholders, it's good for them.

    What's better for investors, Vonage sitting on unsold shares with a paper value of $12.02 each or Vonage having $17 cash in the bank?

    The more shares Vonage sells for $17, the more money it makes, and the more valuable it is as company, which should mean the shares go up. Good for investors, good for potential shareholders.

    The only people this is bad for are the gamblers who agreed to pay $17 for something that turned out to be worth $12.02.

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    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  3. Re:What? by Stone+Pony · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "A class act would forgive the customers and offer to either release them from the agreement or offer them a chance to change the terms to something that won't cost them money"

    Alternatively, you could argue that a class act would stop bleating about how his "can't miss" money-making proposition didn't work out the way he'd hoped and pony up the cash that he'd freely agreed to pay.

    Just a thought. I don't really care one way or the other, but it would be nice to see someone standing up for the notion of personal responsibility.