Review of Vonage VOIP Phone Service
It’s been a year since I signed up for Vonage’s service. And I have to say that I am very happy about it. Before I signed up, I did tons of research on the web and compared them with other services. Back then, I felt that Vonage offered the most value for the money. It was cheaper than Verizon VoiceWing. Comast did not have their phone service yet (it is still more expensive) and a couple of other VOIP services that were much cheaper were not so well known, hence I did not take the risk with them.
The package I got was the standard unlimited calls (including long distance) within the US. The international rates were low and competitive compared to other VOIP players. The monthly fee was and still is $24.95 (without taxes). With taxes, it came up about $27 or so. If I do make lots of oversears call during the month, the bill comes up to about $30.
The service came with most features which are common in VOIP providers and which you have to pay extra with traditional land lines. Call waiting, voice messages, 3-way conferences, free fax line are included. Once I subsribed to the service, I had to get a new phone which can receive wireless signals. I got the Vtech 5.8GHZ cordless model.
I applied for the service over the phone and had to give my credit card number. With this service, you have to pay by your credit card (which was fine by me). By the way, I charged it to my Blue Cash to earn cash rebates. The service also came with a free Linksys wireless router. You get to keep this if you stay with Vonage for one year.
So how is the service. Well, firstly, the voice quality is very good. That may be a function of the Vtech phone that I bought, but the reception is always clear. One of the things that bothered me in the beginning was that my calls were dropped occasionally (like how it is in the Cingular advertisement). I was very frustrated but still kept the service because I was too lazy to change providers and also because traditional phone lines still cost more. Then one day, a Verizon salesperson came knocking on my door and sold me on their FIOS fiber optic internet connection. I signed up for it and immediately, my dropped call problem stopped. Previously, I was using Comcast as my internet service provider. But I always had problems with it in the sense that if I leave my computer for too long, my internet connection also drops. I suspect that had to do with my dropped calls on Vonage.
After switching to verizon FIOS, my Vonage has been working like a charm. I have not had to make a single customer service call. Every month, my bills comes through my email and my credit card gets billed. I would highly recommed Vonage to anyone who is looking to save money on their phone bills.
Recently, it has come to my attention that another provider SunRocket Internet Phone Service is offering an even better deal than Vonage at $199 a year or about $17 a month with essentially identical features. I do not use this service, but it is something that you should also consider.
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:41 am
Dear Users, $$$$ STAY AWAY FROM VONAGE $$$$$$$$$$$I have been a happy Sunrocket customer so far, till I got a Cinco De Mayo promotion which said that I can have two years of unlimited package for $199. I quickly signed up for that on May5th, 2006. I also requested them to take over the phone number which is presently with Vonage. May 10th, I received an email that my gizmo has been shipped. When I received it, I followed the install instructions and still there was no dial tone on the phone1 port. I contacted support on May17, 2006 and the lady asked me to perform several things and finally said that she is going to escalate this to a network engineer and he will call me between 3 to 6 days. I was pretty pissed off with this as with Sunrocket I had to deal with exactly 0 problems. SO, I waited ..and waited ..then I called again after 3-4 working days in the evening and found a gentleman on the phone. I spent not less than an hour with him doing several things, including hard reset by inserting the PIN into the Gizmo and nothing worked. VPIP light is solid on, I can browse the Internet by connecting my PC to the LAN port of Gizmo but still there is no dial tone on phone port1. This is May26th, 2006 , and I did not yet receive any support call from Vonage. There is no status on my phone number change yet. I had to pay one more month of fees because of the delays of these incompetent persons on Vonage. Just my 2 cents, that stay away from SunRocket as they are not just cheap , they are cheap and BAD. I am also thinking of contacting some consumer forums to make them aware about these false promises on Vonage and how they are milking money from consumers like me,,,,upfront $200. In Nut Shell….$$$$ STAY AWAY FROM Vonage $$$$$$$
April 16th, 2007 at 4:23 am
[...] Mr Credit Card presents Review of Vonage VOIP Phone Service posted at Ask Mr Credit Card’s Blog. According to the writer, Vonage offers the most value for the money. It was cheaper than Verizon VoiceWing. Comast does not have their phone service yet (it is still more expensive) and a couple of other VOIP services that are much cheaper are not so well known. [...]
June 13th, 2007 at 7:29 am
From what I’ve read, SunRocket is getting close to bankruptcy, so you may want to wait and see what happens with their financial situation. There are a plenty of VoIP companies, but you’ll want to make sure they’ll still be around before you sign up for a long contract.
August 27th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Vonage are real scumbags. They make cancelling your account a real pain (keeping you on hold for half an hour and hitting you with a hidden cancellation fee). Avoid them.
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:01 pm
I agree….I was never told about any cancellation fee, nor did I see it in any of the paperwork. I looked pretty closely. They charged me a rediculous cancellation fee. This company is CHEEZY. Stay away…
November 18th, 2007 at 5:52 am
Vonage Complaint Cancellation problem - Internet phone
Vonage Complaint
Cancellation problem - Internet phone
Location: New York, ny
VONAGE Account Created: OCT. 25, 2007
I use the Vonage line as my primary to make international calls to Dominican Republic and Spain.
I got the $24.99/month† plan.
Unlimited local and long distance calling anywhere in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico. Now! FREE Calls to select European countries! ONE MONTH FREE!
On OCT. 25, 2007 I opened an account with Vonage. I had Vonage for over 22 days. On November 15, 2007 I wanted to cancel. SO I called Vonage and spoke to a foreign operator who appeared to be reading from some script.
I told her no for over 45 minutes, I even told her I was running late for work which she ignored and kept trying not to cancel my service with questions and other “offers”. Cancel the account. I say cancel the account, I don’t mean help me figure out how to keep it, I mean cancel the account.
The phone went mysteriously disconnected. I called back and spoke to another foreigner who actually told me he was just tring to do his job if I would just be quiet and listen he would cancel. So I listend to him for over 20 min. and still told him NO. He placed me on hold so long I hung up and called back and got another rep and this rep refused to cancel also. He was so belligerent and demanding.
But I finally got Vonage to cancel, I HOPE… To my amazement and utter shock VONAGE said that there will be a 39.99 early termination fee for each phone number, and guess what; I had two. Which I only open one account. I had already been charged $89.91 early cancellation fee and today I found a new invoice for $55.10. Let me remind you that I signed up for a 30 day free trial.
I am still fighting for my refund…
Please help me if you can.
People should be aware of the illegal, inefficient and hostile business practices of Vonage.
Vonage is the worst service I have purchased in years. The technical service and customer service is poor. They will not cancel your account. They keep charging your credit card months after your service has been disconnected. It is criminal and these people belong in jail…
Naty
ny,ny
11/17/07
December 8th, 2007 at 10:10 am
You have to wonder how Vonage manages to stay in business with so many identical complaints coming in over the years.
My telephone number was switched over BEFORE they send the “device” from the warehouse; there was no intention of sending “the device” until they had gotten my account set up.
Went to Best Buy to purchase it so I wouldn’t have to wait for the 10 days. Had to wait hours for a techie to live chat setting up “the device” I had just bought. It wasn’t compatible with my system, took it back to Best Buy today. They wanted to know what was wrong with it: Well, I guess it’s the company something’s wrong with.
My account was set up for THREE days, and it will take at least a week for it to get switched back to my former company.
This company needs to be reported to the FCC or whatever consumer group can force them to conform to reasonable business practices.
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Glad it worked for you. I had the worst of everything with this company and when I tried to change carriers, the account managers switched me to different operators 3 x and then hung up on me, ( the waits were usually 30 minutes to get back to anyone.) Then would not accept a cancellation until after I talked yet again to the worthless tech people. Charged my account for months when I didn’t have service with them.. Look out this is a sleazy slimey operation.
January 23rd, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Let me tell you my horror story with Vonage! I signed up with a sixty day free trial. I have a wireless broadband that uses a dish type antenna on my roof which receives signal from a repeater on a mountain top. I asked if this type of system was compatable with them and Vonage assured me it was. Well needless to say I could not get the Vonage device to boot up, after many,many calls to India they finally said their box must be bad and sent me another,rebuilt no less. Then instructed me to return the defective box to New Jersey at my expence. After receiving the new rebuilt box it still would not bootup. I then tried 5 different routers all to no help. Finally a friend of mine suggested we use a router as a bridge to the vonage box. Bingo , the Vonage box booted up and started working. But not without promblems, it would drop calls after a few minutes talking,or when I. answered the phone people couldn’t hear me but I could hear them, or vise versa. After spending at least 50 to 60 hours on the phone to Vonage(India) trying to fix the problem I finally gave up. I ask to be disconnected from Vonage and suddenly people got stupid, no one would do it . They just kept saying let’s try this or let me let you yalk to someone else.
Finally I called as got a New Jersey tech on the phone and explained everything to her and she agreed with me that there are systems that Vonage won’t work with. But she convinced me to stay on just alittle longer since I still was under the sixty day free trial period. And she even made a notation on my account to call me before that time was up. She must have died or quit because I never got that call. I spend all day yesterday trying to disconnect through the home office in New Jersey even after talking with one of their head techs and him telling me that my system was not going to work no matter what I did . The accounts manager
refused to disconnect me without 119.20 bill. I’ve been fighting this since mid-Oct till now Jan23. I was not told of any disconnect fee or of a two year contract when I sighed up.
Vonage in my mind is one of best rip-off schemes going. Please avoid them at all costs.
P.S. All those hours to them was on my cell phone.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:52 am
I am suprised to hear that landline phone services are not as cheap as voip services in the states. Here in UK we have many companies that offer Free international calls globally for a fixed fee that beats Vonage hands down.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I just found out about the disconnect fee. I have two accounts with Vonage. They are not real smart as I told them that one disconnect fee leads to a second account closing. My second account is well beyond the 2 years so no fee will apply. They wanted to keep me happy so they are crediting my 2nd account for the cancellation fee. Once that billing has been completed and the credit is used up I will be canceling the second account. The service itself is OK. The customer service sucks.
February 28th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Vonage has been a nightmare. I have been plagued with poor sound quality and dropped calls since day one. It required multiple calls and more than 8 hours of actual phone time to try to get a cancelation. I’m still not sure if I have one, even after talking to their Corporate Headquarters. Spite the fact that I have never been late on any payment due to them. They have threated to report my cancelation to the credit burea. I have been told that I signed a 2 year contract and am obligated accordingly.
Our only viable remedy is to ban together and file a class action suite against Vonage. Lets ban together.
April 5th, 2008 at 3:43 am
VONAGE SUCKS BIG TIME!!! YOU PAY FOR THE SERVICE WHEN YOU ARE NOT EVEN CONNECTED TO THEIR PHONE SYSTEM. I HAVE BEEN PAYING TWO PHONE COMPANIES BECAUSE THEY STATED THEY CANNOT GIVE ME MY CURRENT NUMBER BECAUSE MY CARRIER WOULD NOT TRANSFER THE INFORMATION. THEY ARE THE WORST BUNCH OF LIARS AND THIEVES I HAVE RUN INTO. NOW I AM ALSO FIGHTING ABOUT THE DISCONNECTION FEE AND MY REIMBURSEMENT. IWILL HAVE TO CLOSE UP ALL MY CHARGE ACCOUNTS, BUT I PROMISE I WILL GET THEM. I AM ALSO REPORTING THEM TO THE BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU. I AM THINKING ABOUT TAKING OUT A FULL PAGE AD IN THE PAPER LETTING PEOPLE KNOW HOW THEY OPERATE. TAKE IT FROM A SORRY CUSTOMER
April 5th, 2008 at 3:45 am
COUNT ME IN IF YOU WANT TO FILE A LAWSUIT.
July 3rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Count me in as well, I AM SICK AND TIRED OF VONAGE, THEY ARE THE WORST RATS IN THE BUSINESS! LETS FILE A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT! THESE GOOD FOR NOTHING IDIOTS!!
July 8th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Unlike most of you here, we’ve had a very positive experience with Vonage. I hesitated for quite some time before signing up, because I was concerned about sound quality more than anything. But the savings for our overseas calls is substantial. The main difference in our sign up procedure is that we bought the hardware at a retail store. We then read everything carefully, noting the cancelation policy and associated fees clearly stated in the brochure, and set it all up according to the instructions. We liked the first line so much for the home that I repeated the routine for my office. Both systems work just fine. In the home, the number transfer took exactly ten days, as Vonage explained in an email. Throughout, Vonage has kept us completely informed and up to date with email notices. We had static on our line for MONTHS when using the local phone company, and now, with Vonage, the sound quality is surprisingly good. I think the secret here is the quality of the internet connection. Our internet comes in through Charter Cable. DSL lines, which many may be using, are traditionally much less reliable, and can lead to drops in internet service, With Vonage, your internet connection is key. If it’s unstable, your Vonage service WILL suck.
Have to say that Vongage has exceeded expectations so far. Can’t relate to any of the issues mentioned above. Must be because we didn’t have to call them once. We did it all through the kit offered at any retailer (Best Buy, Staples, Circuit City).
July 9th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Today I am going to start trying to disconnect my vonage to change to charter.My charter bill is presently 157.00 and will drop to 107.00 when i add their phone system as a package I will let you guys know how it goes charter said they will port my number from vonage to them and vonage said when number is ported their service will be disconected ,,sounds too good to be true to me after reading all this.As soon as my number is changed to charter I guess I will loose my credit card and get a new one hope all this works Ill let you guys know ed self