Remember my problems with Vonage? Well it just keeps getting better and better.

Let’s recap.

Vonage has really sucky service. I work from home. On many conference calls people would say, “Christine I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up.” And I was on my home phone. That’s something I would expect occasionally from a cell phone as I was driving down the road and maybe going through a long, dark tunnel. But it’s not something I would expect to have happen from the comfort of my desk chair in my office. The only place my desk chair moves is in circles.

There were some other issues as well, such as the times when we could call out, but nobody could call us. When they called us they would go directly to voicemail even though we were sitting right here and nobody was on the phone. Customer Service couldn’t help us out. They had no clue why it would go directly go to voicemail. Everything looked fine on their end.

After the flooding last month we lost our internet for several days. With no internet we also had no phone. Now that wasn’t Vonage’s fault, but it was the what finally made us realize that VoIP service is not for us. It’s just not reliable enough when you work from home or, you know, want to actually use your phone.

So we decided to switch our telephone service back to a stable landline. We had our service installed on July 7th. Our phone was already switched that day. Early that morning a friend called me and couldn’t get through. It went to voicemail, but it said my voicemail wasn’t set up. So she called me on my cell phone to ask what was up. That’s when I realized they had already ported our number and I needed to set up our new voicemail.

On July 8th I received an email from Vonage stating they were taking my monthly payment out of my checking account. (They can do that because Vonage does not allow you to pay by check each month. No they force you to either give them a credit card or your checking account information which they keep on file.) My bill that day was $30.57. It was a little bit higher than usual because they charged me an additional $0.25 for Visual Voicemail. Now I never asked for Visual Voicemail. It was just something they gave me as a “free trial” even though I never asked for a free trial. And apparently it wasn’t actually free. Apparently it was $0.25. Nice.

So I called customer service on July 8th to say, “Dude, I switched to a different company so why are you billing me?” That customer service rep kept me on the phone for at least 20 minutes as she tried to hard sell the Vonage service big time. I was getting pissed. All I wanted to do was make sure my service was cancelled so I wasn’t paying double for my phone. Finally she gave up on the hard sell and told me she would have to charge me a disconnect fee and equipment fee because I was cancelling before my one year contract was up.

Now I’m not going to lie. I was pissed that I would be forced to pay for the stupid fucking router that gave me crackly phone calls and a disconnect fee, but I signed a contract. I deal with contracts every single day of my life. It’s what I do for a living. So I knew I had to honor it. But what really pissed me off is the fact that this rep had just wasted pressure moments of my life when she could have told me 20 minutes earlier that I was responsible for a disconnect and equipment fee. She was trying to be sneaky and underhanded and that’s just wrong.

I decided to just keep my service and I would cancel when my year was up on 9/7/2008. Apparently they can’t just set up a disco date like any other normal company. No they require you to call back to disconnect presumably so you may forget and they can continue to get more money out of you. And all was good (well not good, but as good as it was going to get).

Today I got another email from Vonage. This time it was telling me they were taking $127.18 out of my checking account for the $79.99 equipment fee, the $39.99 disconnect fee plus taxes. Woah! What?!? I thought we had already discussed this and come to an agreement. I was livid.

I called customer service. Again. This chick put me on hold so she could read the notes from the 7/8 call. She recapped the call for me to either make sure she had it or else to refresh my mind because she clearly thought I was an idiot. She said, “You ported your number to a new company so that automatically disconnected your service.” I said, “Yes, I did that before I talked to the last rep on the 8th and she told me I could just continue my service, pay my monthly fee and go on with my life.” New rep said, “but you ported your number…” and then she went on to explain to me what it means to port your number.

I stopped her right there. I said, “I know what it means to port a number. I work for a telecommunications company. But nothing has changed between today’s call and my call on 7/8. On 7/8 my number had already been ported too. It was ported on 7/7, but the last rep said I could still continue my service.”

This new rep clearly could not get past the ported number and could not grasp the fact that the number was ported before my initial call two weeks ago. The issue was not the ported number. The issue was that the number has always been ported, but I was told I could just keep paying my monthly fee until 9/7. I’m really crappy since I’ve hardly slept due to my medication and I just couldn’t be my usual calm self. I lost it. Told her to “fuck it” and hung up on her.

Then I sent an email to customer service. Actually many, many emails now. We keep going back and forth.

The first email response from them was that they had to disco because the number was ported to a new company. Yes, people get over yourself. Nobody is disputing the fact that the number was ported. Let’s try again.

The second email response said “I know you are upset about the disconnect fee.” What?!? Who said anything about the disconnect fee? It’s a $39.99 that I’m required to pay per the contract I agreed to. Nobody’s disputing that. Perhaps you should actually read my emails next time. You know the part where I say you charged me $30.57 even though my number was already ported. You know since you are so hung up on the number being ported and all.

The third email response came in and they are saying my number was disconnected on July 22nd and according to their terms of service they do not pro-rate. Really? I haven’t actually read their terms of service yet, but I’m guessing it really does say they don’t pro-rate. I’ll have to comb through it tomorrow when I have some free time to be sure. However, that’s pretty shady that they don’t pro-rate. Who doesn’t pro-rate? That’s just ridiculous. But in any rate, I disconnected my service at the start of my billing period…the 7th of the month. So there is no pro-rate. There is just Vonage stealing my money.

I wrote them back and told them my number was ported on the 7th. Just because it took their “automated” billing system TWO FULL WEEKS to bill a disconnect does not mean I had not switched service until the 22nd. I can, in fact, prove that my service was ported on the 7th because I have a different telephone company that can show the day my service started with them. It’s funny how that works.

I have not heard back from Vonage on that last email yet. I’m sure they will tell me their records show I disconnected on the 22nd and we will be right where we are right now. And that right now has me vomiting their name all over my blog as a nice word of mouth advertisement that says:

And Vonage got that advertising for the low, low price of $30.57.

I believe this is my karma. This is the price I pay for using a telephone service that in fact stole the technology they use from the company I work for. Alright karma. I get it. Lesson learned.

Update: I fought Vonage and I won.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 12:12 am and is filed under A day in our life. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.