Ben of Freehold NJ

I made the unfortunate mistake of signing up for Vonage about a year ago. From day one of the switch over from Verizon I couldn't receive or make out going calls. I had to use my cell phone to call support, after 30 minutes of waiting for someone to pickup I finally spoke with Stanley. I didn't know they had any Stanley's in India. Stanley had me rebooting my cable modem and my phone adapter, without success. He has me checking connections, all is good. I get put on hold for 10 minutes. Now I'm connected with Paul, we go through the same steps, no success. Paul is going to send me another phone adapter overnight and he gives me a ticket number for future reference.

Nothing comes by the end of the next day. I call Vonage with my cell phone and they pickup after 20 minutes. I give the rep my ticket number and they have no record of it in their system. We go through the troubleshooting again. The rep suggests that I call my internet service provider and have my equipment checked out. I tell him there is nothing wrong with my internet service, it works fine. I tell him to send me another phone adapter and he comply's after checking with his supervisor. I get another ticket number.

The next day a Vonage phone adapter shows up. I hook it per the instructions and still no outgoing or incoming calls. Again I call Vonage with my cell phone, they pickup after 25 minutes. Their tech support guy as me reconnecting and rebooting, no success. He insists it must be my internet connection at fault and that I should have it checked out.

I call Cablevision with my cell phone and speak with Mike who is very helpful. He runs some tests on the line and my cable modem and everything seems to be in order. He can dispatch a service tech but there will be a charge for the visit. He said what I can do is simply take my Vonage adapter and connect it to any broadband connection to determine if it only occurs at my residence.

I take my Vonage adaptor to my brothers house who lives close by. We connect it to his broadband connection and I get the same results. I return home and call Vonage with my cell phone. It has now been almost a week and I don't have home phone service. If you call my home phone number it says it is out of service. The Vonage tech answers after 35 minutes , I explain what I did to determine that this is a Vonage problem and not a Cablevision problem. He wants me to reboot everything again, I comply, no success. They are referring my problem to advanced support. 20 minutes on hold I'm talking to another tech. He runs all kinds of tests and says that it must be a problem with my internet service provider.

Now I have had it. I tell him either they get this going or refund my money and cancel my service. He transfers me to customer service. They offer me 3 months of free service if I agree not to cancel. I have no phone service and they are throwing free service at me? No I'm done with these fools. The customer service rep says I will be charged a $49.99 disconnect fee. I have never been connected. I hang up and call Cablevision with my cell phone. They can add Optimum Voice to my account and transfer my existing number. The rep says it will take about a week and half due to the fact that it is not an easy process transferring numbers from Vonage.

As promised a week and half goes by and I have phone service through Cablevision. The following month I notice connection fees and a monthly charge for Vonage on my bank statement. There is also a charge for the 2nd modem they sent me. I call Vonage and speak with a customer service rep to dispute the charges. She says that I need to call them up to cancel the service and mentions the disconnection fee. She agrees to refund the fee for the 2nd modem. She offers me 3 months of free service if I won't cancel, I told her to cancel my account and to refund every cent they charged me. She says they can't do that. I demand to speak with a supervisor who tells me the same thing. She finally agrees to cancel my service and says I will be billed a $49.99 cancellation fee.

I went to my bank and explained what was going on with Vonage. They agreed to put a hold on all payments to Vonage.

Two months later I get a bill from Vonage with 2 months of service on it. I call customer service to dispute the bill. They apologize for the inconvenience and offer me 3 months of free service. I told them I had already cancelled my service, they had no record of this. I demanded they cancel my service and again was informed that I would be charged a disconnection fee. I told them CANCEL MY SERVICE AND YOU AREN'T GETTING A DIME!!!

Well this week I received a notice from a collection agency that Vonage was seeking payment for the the disconnet and 2 months of service I never used, my number had already been transferred to my new phone company. I can't believe a corporation is allowed to get away with nonsence like this.

All in all they charged me for the initial connection and 2nd Vonage adapter which didn't fix the problem, 4 months of service (2 of which they can go whistle for) and a disconnection fee, they can whistle for that to.

Vonage is a total rip off, don't be suckered!!!

Karen of Jacksonville FL

I signed up for Vonage phone service on the internet but for some reason my credit card couldn't be processed so the order was never final. Two days later a Vonage sales person called me to ask if I wanted phone service and I said yes but the order couldn't go through. He took the order over the phone and told me I would get a box in the mail to install the phone. Two days later I noticed I was charged for TWICE on my credit card online statement for Vonage service.

I called the company and it took me three days to speak to someone. Each time I called I was on hold for over 30 minutes and one time up to an hour and still didn't get anyone. Finally on Saturday after on hold over an hour I got someone who told me I had to call back on Monday for the department that handles credits. I called back that Monday and asked to cancel both orders they charged for. I was already frustrated that they messed up the order and that it took me that long to get someone.

Two days later I noticed two more charges to my account for $41.19 each. That was over $160.00 this company has charged me for phone service I never even received. I canceled as soon as I realized they were unorganized and within their 14 day return policy but still I had to call again and do the hold and got disconnected and switched around to finally someone who said they charge a cancellation fee until they get their boxes back.

NO ONE TOLD ME THIS AT THE TIME OF CANCELLATION. The customer rep said "mam" it's in the fine print. We always charge an early termination fee. But I didn't even start service to terminate it....I"m still in that 14 day window. I had bounce checks and return check fees with the charges coming out without permission. I did not authorize them taking more money but they did it automatically. IF they had said we are going to deduct this money I could have waited a couple more days to make sure I had the money in the bank. I can't afford to throw money away that's why I went to a cheaper phone company and they have cost me more than any phone company I've ever had.

Priscilla of Eden GA

Vonage called me up and begged me to reconnect with there service. This has been over 3 month since we have had them. Then they said we had 2 months of free service so they sent out the device. Before the device even got to our address we refused the device and sent it back to Vonage. They received it according to DHL and now Vonage is saying they don't know where it is.

They would not let us cancel the order then when I canceled they decided to charge us a disconnection fee even though we don't have service! Now I get an email they tried to debit our account and because they can't they are going to tarnish our credit.

Helena of Briarwood NY

I signed up for this internet based phone company in Oct. 2006 because the company promised to save me money and provide excellent phone landline service. My phone never worked from the start- friends and family members couldn't reach me at my home so we had to use our cells phones all the time.

My husband and I were on the phone with tech support guys numerous times where we were given different kind of explanations for service interruption, echoes (if they phone did work) and audio static. Keep in mind that in order to reach customer care/accnt manager or tech support, we had to use out cell phone after long day at work, stay on hold for hours and then learn the excuses that our internet speed is slow.

Account managers do not take notes or give out confirmation numbers of the complaints or discussions with the customers. We had to repeat ourselves again and again...Being naive, we've changed the internet providers twice in hopes that the phone will finally start working smoothly again. Finally, after 8 months of hell we realized that it's not internet that's causing the problems but simply Vonage service.

On June 20th 2007, I have called Verizon and asked them to switch me. At the same time, I've read reviews of other upset Vonage customers that kept receiving bills even after their phone service was terminated. I decided to call customer care and inform them in advance that I'm switching to Verizon and that I do not want to be Vonage customer ever again! I had to learn that for terminating Vonage service I have to pay $40 + tax as a penalty. This is something that was never discussed by a sales rep when I initially signed up. Nor did I receive any paperwork with a clear statement about rules and regulations of service fee disconnection.

To make matters worse, the account manager discontinued my service AND shut down my phone # completely that I've had for nearly 8 yrs. When Verizon agent called me and informed me that my old ph # is not available anymore, I was in tears and could not believe how stupid the employees at Vonage are.

Bill of Gloucester City NJ

I ordered Vonage phone service for my business. They didn't tell the full story that with my phone system they couldn't accomodate it. So the system arrived on 9/26/07 and was hooked up and never worked. Our previous service (Verizon) was disconnected and the new service kept saying that the # was not in service, and you are supposed to be able to keep your same phone #. It is now a week later. Vonage didn't want to release the phone line so I could go back to Verizon and now they are saying that this can't be accomplished till 10/9/07 which is another 2 weeks. I need to have this corrected sooner. Vonage didn't want to release the line even though they couldn't provide service from the beginning even though I paid in full plus. I have customer accounts they are having a hard time reaching me, and any street customers which I have no way of knowing about aren't reaching me. The main # is 856-456-4297. The secondary # 856-456-4352 and at times there are problems getting in on that. Vonage claims that they wouldn't release the main line due to being owed $39.00. They were sent a check for $101 and say they lost it. Then I had to pay them an additional $39and change because they said they hadn't got their equipment back and so therefore wouldn't release the line. I sent their equipment back last Thursday since none of it worked. They haven't received it as of yet. Lied about the whole service. Vonage told us we only needed the one line charge for the two line systems, and then said we needed to be charged for another line and didn't tell me that these phone lines could only be generated through a computer which wiped out my phones in my shop beside the office phones.

I am losing anywhere from $1000-$1500 or more a day. I have no idea the amount of business I am losing. I put an ad in the paper to give a discount and the ad started running the same time I started with the phone problem. So the ad's a waste of dollars since no one can call in and all they get is a number that isn't in service.

Mark Delehant of Morganton NC

I have been a customer of Vonage since Dec. 2006. For some reason, beginning in Feb. 2007 they began charging me for a second phone line which doubled my bill. I have lived in my house for over 15 years and have only had one line and one phone number. My efforts to resolve this matter only resulted in a major run around. I plan to get the tape-recorded conversations of my calls to vonage and pursue this to the end. As I see it, I trusted them with my checking account information and they stole from me, and once caught, refuse to give it back.

Over billed $250.00 and spent 5 hours on the phone in an effort to resolve the matter only to be offered an option of paying an additional $40.00 to cancel. Enormous amounts on mental and emotional torture while trying to resolve the matter peacefully. And in reading the other comments on this site it appears I am not the first. Can you say Class Action Lawsuit !!

Dick of Hortonville WI

When I signed up for Vonage, I had lots of problems getting it to work. No one at the customer service spoke English very well. I have had lots of problems involving billing, calls not going through, voicemail not working. The voicemail signal quit working within a month. I placed about 30 calls trying to fix this, and 2 years later it still doesn't work. In the last two weeks I have not been able to get an online bill, and this is the only way to get a Vonage bill since everything is done via the internet. I have placed 20 calls trying to get this fixed. They act like I am the problem.

I finally received a call from their Executive Response Team saying their engineers were working day and night to fix the problem. A week later, they said no one using the $14.95 (500 minutes) plan was able to get their bills. They said it would be fixed the next day. Two days later, they said it would be fixed by November 1. No one seems to care when you call this company because they know that they have you where they want you. I thought this experience would be so much better than the regular phone companies, but now I wonder.