Ok everyone. Now this isn't really a news story but I am so frustrated with the terrible weekend I had attempting to complete a VERY simple procedure with Vonage's Customer Service/Technical Service that I wanted to share and warn other users.
Jeffrey Citron-Chairman
Michael Snyder-CEO
John Rego-CFO
Louis Mamakos-CTO
Sharon O'Leary-Chief Legal Officer
Michael Tribolet-President, Vonage America
Louis Holder-EVP Product Development
Bill Rainey-President, Vonage Canada
Kerry Ritz-Managing Director, Vonage UK
All of you listed above, You Suck! I am so tired of not being able to get anything but the most simple tasks or questions answered because Vonage uses overseas outsourced call centers. Now, I work in IT so I understand the need for many companies to use these, however these aren't even "good" outsourced call centers. They are all heavily accented and all completely unempowered to work outside the given script.
I spent 6 hours Friday with another Vonage customer attempting to move a Vonage telco device from his service to mine. It wasn't until we were finally connected to the advanced support center in Holmdel, NJ that someone actually knew what the heck they were talking about and fixed the problem. The sad part was it took Mark at the US call center 5 minutes to actually do what we needed, but it took us 6 hours to get there.
If that wasn't frustrating enough there isn't even anywhere to go and complain about this problem. They have absolutely NO QUALITY CONTROL devices such as after call surveys, operator numbers or even a simple email address I can send my frustrations to. As a result, I had all the classic bad customer service experiences rolled into one:
The classic phantom disconnect after being on hold for 17 minutes.
The repeated transfers to 'other departments' which all seem to have the same phone queue--Not surprisingly none of the people we were transferred to could fix the problem either.
The, 'What you are asking for is not possible' idiotic response.
Flat refusal to be connected to a supervisor by a CSR.
Other CSRs who said they were connecting us to a supervisor, but simply rerouted us to the back of the hold queue for the same call center.
Refusal to be connected to advanced support in Holmdel, NJ.
Being told that based on the MAC address on the bottom of my device that the device did not exist.
Being told the only way to complete this would be if the other party terminated their Vonage service.
Listening to literally hours of terribly distorted hold music because they have the bandwidth dialed down so far on their customer service lines.
I am so frustrated with vonage at this point I'm looking around at other VoIP providers. I have both a home and business account with vonage and I am frankly tired of their terrible customer service. The competition for this type of business is simply too tight to do this to customers for long and Vonage seems only to be getting worse. There are many other companies out there with very similar or cheaper pricing structures. Frankly, price isn't everything to me at this point, though. Who knows, I might just call back my ILEC and order a land-line again. At least I can understand what they are saying when they answer the phone.
It's OK I guess.... I mean, if people are going to buy it then kudos to IBM. Just don't really think it was so important it should be on slashdot.... anyways, maybe it was a slow news day...
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Ok everyone. Now this isn't really a news story but I am so frustrated with the terrible weekend I had attempting to complete a VERY simple procedure with Vonage's Customer Service/Technical Service that I wanted to share and warn other users.
Jeffrey Citron-Chairman
Michael Snyder-CEO
John Rego-CFO
Louis Mamakos-CTO
Sharon O'Leary-Chief Legal Officer
Michael Tribolet-President, Vonage America
Louis Holder-EVP Product Development
Bill Rainey-President, Vonage Canada
Kerry Ritz-Managing Director, Vonage UK
All of you listed above, You Suck! I am so tired of not being able to get anything but the most simple tasks or questions answered because Vonage uses overseas outsourced call centers. Now, I work in IT so I understand the need for many companies to use these, however these aren't even "good" outsourced call centers. They are all heavily accented and all completely unempowered to work outside the given script.
I spent 6 hours Friday with another Vonage customer attempting to move a Vonage telco device from his service to mine. It wasn't until we were finally connected to the advanced support center in Holmdel, NJ that someone actually knew what the heck they were talking about and fixed the problem. The sad part was it took Mark at the US call center 5 minutes to actually do what we needed, but it took us 6 hours to get there.
If that wasn't frustrating enough there isn't even anywhere to go and complain about this problem. They have absolutely NO QUALITY CONTROL devices such as after call surveys, operator numbers or even a simple email address I can send my frustrations to. As a result, I had all the classic bad customer service experiences rolled into one:
The classic phantom disconnect after being on hold for 17 minutes.
The repeated transfers to 'other departments' which all seem to have the same phone queue--Not surprisingly none of the people we were transferred to could fix the problem either.
The, 'What you are asking for is not possible' idiotic response.
Flat refusal to be connected to a supervisor by a CSR.
Other CSRs who said they were connecting us to a supervisor, but simply rerouted us to the back of the hold queue for the same call center.
Refusal to be connected to advanced support in Holmdel, NJ.
Being told that based on the MAC address on the bottom of my device that the device did not exist.
Being told the only way to complete this would be if the other party terminated their Vonage service.
Listening to literally hours of terribly distorted hold music because they have the bandwidth dialed down so far on their customer service lines.
I am so frustrated with vonage at this point I'm looking around at other VoIP providers. I have both a home and business account with vonage and I am frankly tired of their terrible customer service. The competition for this type of business is simply too tight to do this to customers for long and Vonage seems only to be getting worse. There are many other companies out there with very similar or cheaper pricing structures. Frankly, price isn't everything to me at this point, though. Who knows, I might just call back my ILEC and order a land-line again. At least I can understand what they are saying when they answer the phone.
It's OK I guess.... I mean, if people are going to buy it then kudos to IBM. Just don't really think it was so important it should be on slashdot.... anyways, maybe it was a slow news day...