Avoid Vonage Like The Plague

For those of you considering switching over from a traditional phone service to a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service AVOID Vonage like the plague! I speak from personal experience and information I’ve gathered over the web.

Vonage offers you all kinds of services for a low monthly fee. What Vonage provides is poor service, poor technical support, and poor business practices. There is virtually no communications between departments at Vonage. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Shortly after switching over to Vonage from Verizon I began to experience problems receiving calls. The phone wouldn't ring at my house and I wouldn't receive voicemails. Family and friends were telling me that they would receive messages that the number they called was out of service. Numerous calls to Vonage tech support both off-shore and here in North America failed to resolve the issue. Vonage tech support will issue a trouble ticket number for future reference and when you call back they will have no record of any previous tickets, this is a common complaint. Their primary technical support is based off-shore. One night I was on the phone for 2 hours with an Indian support representative who was having difficulty understanding english. I had to resort to spelling words phonetically, it was very painful.

After 4 months of being in phone hell I switched my phone service over to Optimum Voice. Another common complaint is that Vonage will continue to bill your credit card or do electronic withdrawals after you have cancelled their service. To add insult to injury Vonage charges a $39.99 disconnection fee to dump their poor service. NO OTHER phone company I ever dealt with had to be notified by the customer that the phone number was being switched to another phone company. NO OTHER phone company I ever dealt with had a disconnection fee.

Vonage is very good at stringing their customers along with offers of free months of service to customers who are unhappy or want to leave. The truth is, if I had to I would have gone back to Verizon and paid double if that had been my only choice for phone companies.

Vonage recently lost a patent infringement case to Verizon and currently has a stay in the courts while they appeal the decision. If Vonage is unable to win their appeal or come out with alternative technology, they could be forced out of business. I hope Verizon sues Vonage out of existence so they can't rip off other consumers or business owners.

In closing I would not recommend Vonage for residential and especially business phone service. Avoid Vonage like the plague!