This story comes to me from a prior Vonage customer who in my opinion has had s terrible customer service experience.
Todd
I’ve been a listener for over a year, and I don’t recall hearing you
discuss Vonage’s horrible consumer record.
After looking around the web (just Google Vonage problems) it seems
I’m not alone in this, and it needs your attention. First, I want to
say that I was a happy Vonage customer for 4 years. The only reason I
chose to leave them was I got a better deal. Leaving is the rub.
In late September 2005 I ordered VOIP service from another carrier and
canceled Vonage. Several calls to Vonage sent me through a succession
of people, many who had poor command of English, and eventually led me
to wait on hold for the person authorized to end my account. The wait
was too long, and I finally believed I closed the account on a
Saturday after spending more than 2 hours on the phone with them. When
I had allegedly discontinued service, I had been using my new carrier
for several weeks and had disconnected the Vonage ATA box. They billed
my American Express charge for the entire month, and I paid the entire
bill. All was well until the next American Express bill arrived and
the usual charge from Vonage was again on the bill again. I had now
not used the service for 2 months. Long waits finally got assurances
form a Vonage employee that the service was discontinued, although no
one would agree to credit me for the illegitimate charges. I paid the
bill and moved on to more productive endeavors rather than fight over
$30. The next month, you guessed it. Vonage billed my American Express
again. I phoned American Express, and they contested the charges and
since Vonage did not bother to try to prove they were legitimate, the
charge was reversed. Every Month following that time, I had a new
charge from Vonage that was contested and reversed. I repeated called
Vonage and emailed them to no avail. As a rule no one could find my
account when I phoned them or I was told it was an error. This
continued for more than 2 years until I finally closed the American
Express account. Finally all was quiet after 2 years of trying to get
rid of the Vonage beast.
Today I received two collection notices from an agency writing on
Vonages’ behalf. They say I owe more than $250 for Vonage service
including charges from last year – more than 2 years after I canceled
service. A quick call to Vonage customer service reveals the
reactivated and closed the account for non payment. I never saw a
bill, got a call, an email or anything prior the collection agency
letters.
Anyone considering VoIP service should know about this, and those who
leave Vonage, should be ever wary. Maybe it’s worth mentioning this on
your show..
To the listener of my show as you know I read this in the listener comment segment last night. But I think it is worthy of trying to get the attention of someone at Vonage Corporate. We have had good luck in the past in getting issues resolved and companies have actually changes policies after we have aired issues on the show like this. We will see if the folks over at Vonage are willing to review you account and get this settled so you do not have to incur a hit on your credit rating and have the collection agency stop its collection action.
Wow! Hope that doesn’t become my tale too. I cancelled sevice today. Took only 5 minutes, and only was on hold for a minute before a rep talked to me.
hi, i was working at the vonage customer service (if its possible to call it that way) in chile, southamerica, it has been the worst job experience of my life, not only for me, but for my ex coworkers as well, they just do it because they need the money, but anyway, i just want to share my horrible experience with you, VONAGE is a terrible company, and im guessing that if you read this you will agree with me, first of all, lets start with the activations… activations are done in india, alright, i must admit that they have some great customer service representatives, and theire very nice, but… they have a lot of people that dont even partially speak acceptable english, and they activate accounts that people didnt even ask for, i heard of cases in which they told the customers to give them the credit card to “check if the service is available in their area” and the custumers call customer service 3 months later saying that they never subscribed with vonage, and we tried to keep them from canceling service, because if we transferred them we would lose our bonus, and would get paid less, if they got transferred to “account management dept” which supposedly is in new jersey, you would get another person with an indian accent, but, thats not the point, in their cases on the RETENTION dept which is their real function, they simply have to make it hard for the customers to cancel, otherwise they lose their incentives too, they place them on hold forever hoping they just hang up, that way they dont have to cancel the account, they offer a million things for the person to keep the service, and if they do, they just lose the money back guarantee, and if they get to cancel they have to pey for disconnection fees and rebate recovery fees, so in short… theire just screwed one way or the other. well, now let me talk a little bit about my job at the general billing customer service dept. well, its just a terrible job, we had an awful 1 month and a half training, in which we got poor customer service and program info and we ended up watching stupid youtube videos, they told us that they would pay us one thing, and at the end we gor paid almost half and they figured out nonsense speach to convince us that what they paid us was right and that on the second month we gould get paid better, once we were on the floor, without having a clue about what we were doing, we got yelled at all the time for screwups made by other agents or simply by vonage, well, its no wonder when you have an outsourced customer service dept. in a country in which english isnt the native language, i must admit that there are a lot of great agents and lots of people that speak a decent english, but thats simply not enough, we had call after call, of pissed off customers, we had to work even on sundays, for less than 3 dollars an hour, ok, i admit it, were taking american jobs (that they dont want in the first place) but a job is a job. well not only do we get paid shit, but they screwed us around with our money.for us to make that crappy salary we need to get bonuses, which not only are hard to get, but theire very easy to lose, we get the calls taped, and for every single thing that we dont do THE WAY THEY WANT US TO, we get points of for quality, if we get bad quality scores that means less money, we also have to send surveys to the callers, in which they can see that our real names arent john, or christine, but juan, cristina, and so on…but anyway, the thing is that in those surveys, pissed off customers dont care if you helped them, they just want to give bad feedback to vonage, and of course the poor agents get bad surveys, even when they gave a good service, and bad surveys mean LESS bonuses, less money, its the biggest fraud ever, and lets not even get started on the vonage service itself…it totally sucks, ok, i admit it, its a good idea, and the price isnt that bad, but wow, ive never seen that many problems with a telephone service, the sound quality is awful, it lowers up your internet speed, you cant hear people, people cant hear you, and technichal support is TERRIBLE! its in the phillipines, and, nothing against them, theire very nice people, and there are some great reps also, but in general theire REALLY hard to understand, and i imagine that the service is that bad because they get trainings as bad as ours, and about billing… dont even get me started!!! oh my god, ive never seen so many hidden charges, its just amazing. i will tell you only one good thing about vonage, and if youre a customer and you want to get at least one advantage from their terrible service you should know this, vonage gives credits very easily, you just have to call and say that the service sucks, or that you want to cancel, and they can offer cheaper plans, or a couple of months for free, so… give it a try, i guarantee that you can ripp them off the same way the that they ripp off you. i just dont get tired of speaking terribly about this terrible company, it was such a frustrating experience, not only for me but for the poor customers, if youre still not a customer, get away from this awfull service, i hope this helps you out.
EX General Billing Customer Service Representative