Vonage, partial redemption (but they still stink)

I still think that Vonage stinks. But I finally found someone who cared a little bit. I poked around their site and found this link about contacting the Vonage Board of Directors. The link (as of today - June 13, 2009) is http://www.vonage.com/corporate/corp_contact.php . You can fill out your grievance and send it in. I was still ticked off for being charged that one month and they refunded that charge. But they did not budge on the $40 disconnect fee. Will I still use them? No way. Why should I have to contact the board of directors in order to get a refund for something that a frontline customer service representative should be able to take care of? And why the heck should I have to pay a $40 disconnect fee? That's just lame. I'll just stick with my local phone company. At least the sound quality is decent. And at least there is the state public utility commission that stays on top of the phone companies. Vonage doesn't have that state oversite, so they can jack you over like no tomorrow.

Vonage sucks - don't ever use them

Vonage sucks. Don't use them. If you do, I'm really sorry.

I've had Vonage for little over a year now. Things were good up until a few months ago, and then the voice over IP router thing they sold me started having issues. I used their online knowledgebase to see what they had and nothing helped. I took packet captures (yeah, I'm a geek, but that's my profession) and there were definately some problems going on with the hardware.

So instead of calling their technical support line, I just call my local CLEC (phone company) and setup a second phone line.

I called Vonage after the fact and they were going to charge me $70 to disconnect. That $70 is to recoup the $70 rebate they gave me on their phone router thing since I was canceling before 1 year. They said if I waited a month, I wouldn't have to pay $70. They also gave me a month's worth of free service, which I didn't use.

So I waited. And the month went by. And I didn't cancel. So they charged me for another month's worth of service. So I called. Want to cancel. No refund of monthly charge, which is $30. And they want to charge me $40 to cancel my service (that was a part of your terms of service - if you cancel less than two years after you started with us). So I'm screwed.

Well, I'm going to dispute the charges with the credit card company. I hope that I can do something there. Dang stinking Vonage. Customer no-service. I'll be glad to get rid of them once and for all.