Vonage: The Beginning of the End?
 

Vonage Faces User Complaints
As IPO Looms
By SHAWN YOUNG and LI YUAN
May 18, 2006; Page B1

Erick Loss, a small-business owner in Chino Valley, Ariz., says he spent 11 hours, most of it on hold, trying to get someone at Vonage Holdings Corp. to cancel his Internet-based phone service and move him back to Qwest Communications International Inc. He says he wanted out because, among other problems, sometimes the phone wouldn't ring when people were calling. But the transfer of the number, which Mr. Loss had used for business for years, failed and Vonage told Mr. Loss he would have to pay to sign up again with Vonage and reclaim the number so it could be moved to Qwest.

"If you have to choose between two cans and a string and Vonage, take the cans and string. You'll be happier with the service," Mr. Loss posted on consumer online forum Consumeraffairs.com.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article..._20070517.html

I've had issues with Vonage but I'm not in any rush to switch, having my phone messages emailed to me is pretty slick.

No shit you can do that? I have Vonage too but didnt know it could do that.

that sucks.. but I know a bunch of people that use it and Im going to be switching to it next month.. so I dont think its the end for em..

I'm very impressed with Vonage thus far. I'd estimate that I'm entering my 3rd month of service with them.

I can't tell a bit of difference in the quality of the calls. Like Sultan of Smut said, I like the email feature. I also know that the forwarding in case of an outage works, because Insight was down this week, and the calls came through to my cell phone, just like they were supposed to.

I hope they do well in their public offering.

wow, pretty cool :thumbsup

I've had good luck with GizmoProject.com
They're standards compliant, so you can use your own SIP adapters, or set up an Asterisk PBX and go nuts. Great sound quality, and no lag in my experience.

I like Vonage. Only thing sometimes you need to have the techs do an online fax settings tweak to the router to get your fax line to work with it.

I've had Vonage since November of '05 and really like it. Like Sultan says, having the vm e-mailed to me when I'm not there is so convenient. When I've had any technical issues, their customer service has been quick and helpful. (It took more than 2 months for our regular phone company to finally tell us why they couldn't hook up 2 phone lines in our offices, so we went with Vonage.)

who the fuck waits on hold for 11 hours?

I like Vonage too, but it's still really buggy at times. I still think this is the wave of the future, but it's going to take a year or two before these companies iron out all the problems.

Support is always an issue with exploding companies

SplitInfinity offers VoIP services like Vonage as well.
Emails your voice mails to you and etc...

Free "IN" Calling, cheaper than Vonage Long Distance.

You can get activated within seconds here:

http://myvoice.splitinfinity.com/register.php

Here is my take:

There will always be some people who are not happy. Does anyone realize how often phone companies get sued for their shit?

This sounds like 1 guy who was trying to push their system too hard too fast and fucked it up, and then wants Vonage to pay for allowing him to try to bypass the system and fall down.

If you want to move from vonage to your local phone company again, the process is EXACTLY the same as it was to move your number to vonage to start with - ask for a new service with your phone company, tell them you have an existing number to transfer, do the paperwork, and wait.

It isn't different going either way.

Alex

I quit waiting after about 8 hours. I left it on speakerphone and after about 30 minutes they came to the phone, and asked me to hold. couple hours later same thing.

i'm done with vonage, after 4 lines with them i'm done. I had to change my credit card to cancel the service and they called me, then they said they would forward the request over to the right department. So 2 days later i get the same call and they gave me the same responce.

They are still trying to bill me after they sent me the cancelation notice.

they suck

i like vonage..

damn, that kind of reminds me of iBill :(

VoIP's been in the works for 5-10 years, and they still haven't got it, or the equipment working 100% correctly. How do I know this? I worked in telco.

VoIP's been buggy for the past decade, and if you followed the history of this, they said back in 2000 this would be the next big thing, and here we are 6 years later, and the big companies STILL have not launched it on a wide scale. There are still C.O. issues, as well as the equipment working correctly with it. Until they resolve both of these, do not expect it to be super popular.

:2 cents:

Umm I dunno what are you talking about Bright House/ Time warner is installing them everywhere. Hell that's the only damn commercials you see on TV is for the damn digital phones. I don't think you can not call that wide scale.

The Telco companies are fucked, because they have sat on their asses behind govt protection for years and years. They never update shit because they never had any competition. Now the Digital Phones are quite honestly going to kick their asses.

The telco companies already sat on their ass and let the cable companies take over the broadband internet market, now they are going to let the cable companies take over their phone market too. Still to this day in most places the telco companies offer shitty ass DSL services to try to compete with cable and it never does in most areas. It's a damn good thing the cable companies got into the internet market, because other wise if it would have been left to the telco companies we would all still be on 56k modems.

vonage ipo, i'm all over that.

Packet8 kicks Vonage's ass. http://www.packet8.net/

We've been using them for over 6 months now with no issues at all.

Packet8 had a local number for our area, and Vonage didn't.

Packet8 also offers the ability to send you an email with attached sound file when you get new voice mail. No extra money. And no extra charge for caller ID, call waiting, 3-way calling, etc.

They are cheaper than Vonage, and we can make unlimited free long distance calls to the US and Canada.

When we signed up, we took the special which includes a Uniden Whole House VOIP system which has a base unit with built-in router, and a handset. We're very happy with it: http://www.packet8.net/about/uniden.asp

who in their right mind would stay on HOLD for 11 hours? WTF

at and t roled theire voip service out a couple of years back, only reason it isnt a BIG thing with them is they are charging like $45 a month !


i have vonage, lingo and packet 8 here and love voip. have had voip for over 5 years.

true ocasionally you need to reset the voip interface but hey look at all the $$$ you save.

and check out packet8's really cool video phones, we use them and they kick ass

bump, down to $16.60 a share (VG) NYSE... just went public today

I'd rather invest in a truckload of cow shit, seriously.

I have a friend who has them, every time I call him his 'voicemail greeting', if it can even be called that, it always sounds 3 times worse than my Nextel when I have one bar. They have a nice interface, thier service sucks though. I'd much rather pay 2.1 cents a minute for long distance than I would deal with that kinda bullshit.