Oh God, we tried for months to get our Vonage working again after they (time warner) changed the settings on our dsl (our apartment building is wired) and went through the whole rigamarole with the outsourced call center (try powering off your modem, then on, sir?), over and over, occasionally getting connected with the higher-level techs in New Jersey who were patronizing and ultimately unhelpful. One night they put us (calling on a cell phone I might add) on hold for three hours, then disconnected without picking up. Then there was the time they pulled the same stunt in the morning when my husband was trying to get to work. Needless to say, we were mad and that was the last straw.

I called the number you see in your vonage control panel when you click on something like “cancel vonage” which is a direct line to the cancellation people. The guy asked why I wanted to cancel, listened to my story, kept muttering “wow”, and finally said, and I quote, “I can see why you want to cancel. Our customer service SUCKS.”

We did end up paying the disconnect fee, but it was worth it to be rid of them. Never, ever again.

We had the same problem. We never could find a tech rep who could tell us how to intigrate Vonage with a home wireless set-up so after four days of not having phone service we canceled. It took us six days and innumerable (cell)phone calls for us to finally cancel. Interestingly we had the exact same problems- not the right call tim, dropped calls, retention dept, etc. Vonage is the worst company I have ever dealt with in my life. I heartily discourage anybody from ever using them.

I just want to cancel my Vonage account and going through the same pain. Aren’t there any laws that mandate companies to provide appropriate level of customer support while canceling an account? They are available 24×7 for taking money. Can we sue Vonage for this? Afterall, if I spend an hour during normal business hours that directly equates to $$ out of my pay since I don’t have the liberty to use my work time for personal matters.

I’ve been using SkypeOut with mixed results. Their customer support is just terrible. The sound quality is usually good (if you don’t mind the 500ms delay) when you have a good broadband connection.

It’s really cool when it works, and I lowered my cell phone bill from $500ish/month to $150/month (I travel every week).

One nice thing about having a telephone in the computer is I can automate the call into my daily stand up.
http://scrumscreener.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/ical-applescript-skypeout-conferences-that-call-you/

–mj

Vonage has been very very pushy about all kinds of things. A few months ago, my wife and I called-in to try and get our PAP2 reset and a rep who could not speak good English asked my several times if I wanted a second line. I clearly said NO many times and on my next months statement, I was charged for a second line even though I didn’t want one. I immediately called my bank and told them an unauthorized transaction has been charged on my account and they took care of it.

Word of advise…. if you want to cancel service with Vonage, log into the control panel before it goes into grace state, and manually change the credit card number on file to an older card that is no longer in-use… or use a Pay-Pal card that is not linked to any bank account and after 2 months of no collecting funds, vonage will close your account.

You may want to check-out Sunrocket for VoIP service. Very high standards and way more features than Vonage.

Yes, Sunrocket seems like an excellent choice! *snickers*

I hate Vonage. I had been with them for a few years and decided to cancel. It took me 45 minutes of them hassling me and offering me deals which I refused. I kept telling the rep to just cancel because I didn’t need the phone. She just kept on talking, wouldn’t shut up. I screamed at her (made my entire office look at me to boot). Wouldn’t take no for an answer even after that. She finally said it was cancelled. 2 months later I’m still getting charged.

I called again and was presented with the same bull from them. I ended up raising my voice but the new rep wouldn’t listen and kept hassling me. I ended up swearing at her (something I try not to do) she goaded me into it by not listening that I just wanted to cancel the phone. Even after she told me she cancelled it she kept going on wiht the sales pitch.

I will never use vonage again. I have a cancellation number this time but have not gotten the email yet. I’m going to call my credit card company and have them reverse the last 2 charges.

Vonage can be reached at 1-VONAGEHELP (1-866-243-4357).

I had heard of these issues and actually set up a seperate phone number with Time Warner (I love Vonage ammenities–seeing all my history, voice mail in my email inbox, but my cable service is always having outages and I wanted TimeWarner to pay for the missed phone service as well!). Since I was aware of the issues, I set up the additional number before calling to cancel. They are tough!! They gave me a free month and I gave up. I just called again (right now!) and told them I was writing a review. She cancelled my service right then. Go figure!

hi, i was working at the vonage customer service (if its possible to call it that way) in chile, southamerica, it has been the worst job experience of my life, not only for me, but for my ex coworkers as well, they just do it because they need the money, but anyway, i just want to share my horrible experience with you, VONAGE is a terrible company, and im guessing that if you read this you will agree with me, first of all, lets start with the activations… activations are done in india, alright, i must admit that they have some great customer service representatives, and theire very nice, but… they have a lot of people that dont even partially speak acceptable english, and they activate accounts that people didnt even ask for, i heard of cases in which they told the customers to give them the credit card to “check if the service is available in their area” and the custumers call customer service 3 months later saying that they never subscribed with vonage, and we tried to keep them from canceling service, because if we transferred them we would lose our bonus, and would get paid less, if they got transferred to “account management dept” which supposedly is in new jersey, you would get another person with an indian accent, but, thats not the point, in their cases on the RETENTION dept which is their real function, they simply have to make it hard for the customers to cancel, otherwise they lose their incentives too, they place them on hold forever hoping they just hang up, that way they dont have to cancel the account, they offer a million things for the person to keep the service, and if they do, they just lose the money back guarantee, and if they get to cancel they have to pey for disconnection fees and rebate recovery fees, so in short… theire just screwed one way or the other. well, now let me talk a little bit about my job at the general billing customer service dept. well, its just a terrible job, we had an awful 1 month and a half training, in which we got poor customer service and program info and we ended up watching stupid youtube videos, they told us that they would pay us one thing, and at the end we gor paid almost half and they figured out nonsense speach to convince us that what they paid us was right and that on the second month we gould get paid better, once we were on the floor, without having a clue about what we were doing, we got yelled at all the time for screwups made by other agents or simply by vonage, well, its no wonder when you have an outsourced customer service dept. in a country in which english isnt the native language, i must admit that there are a lot of great agents and lots of people that speak a decent english, but thats simply not enough, we had call after call, of pissed off customers, we had to work even on sundays, for less than 3 dollars an hour, ok, i admit it, were taking american jobs (that they dont want in the first place) but a job is a job. well not only do we get paid shit, but they screwed us around with our money.for us to make that crappy salary we need to get bonuses, which not only are hard to get, but theire very easy to lose, we get the calls taped, and for every single thing that we dont do THE WAY THEY WANT US TO, we get points of for quality, if we get bad quality scores that means less money, we also have to send surveys to the callers, in which they can see that our real names arent john, or christine, but juan, cristina, and so on…but anyway, the thing is that in those surveys, pissed off customers dont care if you helped them, they just want to give bad feedback to vonage, and of course the poor agents get bad surveys, even when they gave a good service, and bad surveys mean LESS bonuses, less money, its the biggest fraud ever, and lets not even get started on the vonage service itself…it totally sucks, ok, i admit it, its a good idea, and the price isnt that bad, but wow, ive never seen that many problems with a telephone service, the sound quality is awful, it lowers up your internet speed, you cant hear people, people cant hear you, and technichal support is TERRIBLE! its in the phillipines, and, nothing against them, theire very nice people, and there are some great reps also, but in general theire REALLY hard to understand, and i imagine that the service is that bad because they get trainings as bad as ours, and about billing… dont even get me started!!! oh my god, ive never seen so many hidden charges, its just amazing. i will tell you only one good thing about vonage, and if youre a customer and you want to get at least one advantage from their terrible service you should know this, vonage gives credits very easily, you just have to call and say that the service sucks, or that you want to cancel, and they can offer cheaper plans, or a couple of months for free, so… give it a try, i guarantee that you can ripp them off the same way the that they ripp off you. i just dont get tired of speaking terribly about this terrible company, it was such a frustrating experience, not only for me but for the poor customers, if youre still not a customer, get away from this awfull service, i hope this helps you out.

EX General Billing Customer Service Representative

Wow…it sucks to say this, but I’m glad I wasn’t alone in being treated so poorly by Vonage. Their customer service is the worst (right up there with Verizon)…and they do it with such a pleasant tone of voice, too.

They do not allow you to cancel your service any way except calling them, which is a scam to begin with…seriously. So I can access my account online, make changes to my account online, view my call history online, listen to my voicemails online…BUT I CANNOT CANCEL my account online?!?! Yeah, right.

I tried for over a month to cancel my account…and every call went the same way…”we’re sorry, sir, but we cannot cancel your account right now because our systems are down and we cannot access your account”. Bvllsh!t, how can I (customer) access my account and you (Vonage) can’t…stop lying to me.

Plus, they refuse to call you back in those situations. I said, “fine, you can’t access my account now, call me back when you can…you have my number”. “Nope, sorry sir, we can only accept incoming calls in this office”. Bvllsh!t, you mean to tell me that there are no alarms making outgoing calls, no employees making outgoing calls…please stop playing me like an idiot. You are a communications company, of course you can make outgoing calls. That is all this company does is patronize the customer.

The only reason their customer service exists is to make you GIVE UP, hang up, admit that they win and continue paying $30/month with no end in site. I have an easier time canceling a cell phone contract than I do canceling my Vonage account.

Well, I finally won, if you want to call it that, granted my brain is bleeding through my ears…and I feel ten times dumber than I was earlier in the day, but I won…my account is closed…and I have the email to prove it. I feel like the kid who just won a big stuffed animal at the county fair…even though the stuffed bear is huge, you know the prize sucks…it is stuffed with newspaper that someones cat used for a litter box…but who cares, you get to walk around like a peacock with feathers in the air…”that’s right, I knocked all three milk bottles off the pedestal, and you didn’t…this is MY bear!”

Plus, this cancellation call ended up taking nearly an hour…yeah, one hour to cancel an account, that is patronizing. She kept putting me on hold and coming back and thanking me for being a valued customer and how sad they are to see me leave. After forty-five minutes of her crap I finally let her have it. “Listen, lady, I have been pleasant and patient for three quarters of an hour…I’m done. Drop your script and speak to me like a real person, not a doll with some string to pull out of your back, got it, douche. Drop the fake pleasantries. You despise your customers and simply play them. We don’t like you either, got that. What I want now is my cancellation confirmation number so I can move on in life…I’m exhausted…I’ve resigned to the fact that I wasted my eighteen months with you…I deserve better…and I know it!”

Okay, so I thought I won, but then they nail me with this $44 disconnect fee. Are you freakin’ serious? Yeah, they are. They will not tell you about it upfront, but anybody who signed up after Feb 2007 will be assessed a $44 cancel fee if you don’t stay two years. I checked my email order confirmation and the disconnect fee was never mentioned. I found the following buried on their website:

“8.7 Disconnection Fee (Does Not Apply to Business Plus Customers).
You will be charged a disconnection fee of $39.99+tax per voice line if your service is disconnected, subject to state and local laws. However, if your subscription date is on or after February 1, 2007 and is disconnected after 2 years following your subscription date, the disconnection fee is waived. If your subscription date is on or before January 31, 2007, the disconnection fee is waived if your service is disconnected 1 year following your subscription date.”

My suggestion, stay FAR AWAY from VONAGE…you will never get out.

Vonage: Sorry, You Can’t Cancel Without Speaking To The Retention Department

Mark tried to cancel his Vonage service outside of normal business hours, but Vonage would not let him cancel unless he called back to speak with the customer retention department. Mark had tried to call the previous day during business…

I have read a lot of comments and horror stories about trying to cancel Vonage. I started to fill out an application but stopped. I had decided to look into other internet phone services first. I had been paying 60 bucks plus a month and wanted to find something cheaper but didn’t want to be stuck with a contract.

My son told me about a product called Magic Jack Internet Phone. This mechanism plugs into your computer and you plug your analog phone into it and you then can call anywhere in the US for free. You get a entire year of phone service and the device for $40.00. If it didn’t work then all I am out is $40.00, but if it did goodby phone bill. I have been using the Magic Jack Internet Phone ever since and love it. So if you are worried about contracts and cancelation fees then you may want to check out Magic Jack.