X
Home & Office

This site lists more than 400 Vonage complaints and rising!!

Reading colleague CNET colleague Matt Asey's piece (picked up by Andy) this morning about how he ditched Vonage for Skype, I came across a linked logo to a site I had never heard of before entitled WeHateVonage.com.
Written by Russell Shaw, Contributor

Reading colleague CNET colleague Matt Asey's piece (picked up by Andy) this morning about how he ditched Vonage for Skype, I came across a linked logo to a site I had never heard of before entitled WeHateVonage.com.

First, let me relate to you what I consider to be the flashpoint of Matt Asey's essay:

In 2007, however, the Vonage "service" has been atrocious. I have a Comcast 8MB-per-second connection, but you'd never guess it from the quality of service I have with Vonage. (To be fair, I rarely get anywhere near that, with upload speeds hovering around 300 kilobytes per second and download speeds at 1.5 megabytes per second.) Several times each day, my Vonage service completely dies, usually in the middle of a call, and then emerges again to goad me.

OK but I am guessing you really came here to get the word on WeHateVonage.

If you ever wanted to read 400 or so horror stories from (mostly former) Vonage users, the Feel Other's Pain section might be where you'd want to go. And some of these postings were made in recent days.

There seems to be a somewhat common theme: Vonage calls cut out too often, I tried to get replacement equipment, that didn't work, so I am (have) attempting/have tried toleave, and they are making it difficult.  Sometimes still getting billed.

Site contributors are able to grade their experiences on a 1-10, "Final Level of Frustration" scale.

The most recent "10" comes from "Jerry," who writes:

Here's an update: I called Vonage "customer service" and asked for a credit since I've had no phone service due to their sent faulty router, technical problems and inability to ship me a new router for almost two weeks. I was told that I must have "working phone service" to have an issued credit!! Talk about Kafkanesque. Call us back when you have working phone service and we'll credit you! Astonishing!

My take: it is easy to say that 400 or so complaints is miniscule compared to 2.3 million users. I mean, we are talking about more than a 500 to 1 ratio between those Vonage subscribers who stick around vs. those who bail and who complain about their experiences.

But even among loyal Vonage users who sometimes must switch for other reasons, I have heard that leaving just isn't that easy a technical or financial process.  I know that Vonage needs every customer they can get, but still, Vonage should have an easier opt-out.

Editorial standards