Ahead of IPO, Vonage Faces User Complaints

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Internet phone-service provider Vonage (whose planned IPO was mentioned on Slashdot last week) is confronting complaints of poor sound quality, dropped calls and other glitches, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Customers who try to leave are complaining of bureaucratic hassles and snafus, particularly when they seek to switch services and take their numbers with them. Ironically, Vonage has long complained that local phone giants drag their feet in releasing the phone numbers of customers who want to leave.'"

Re:Left Vonage after a short trial

Same deal here. The simple fact was my ISP didn't give me good enough connection for consistent phone quality - and I wasn't on a lite plan or anything. Good product, good support, but trying to leave or even downgrade my plan was an expensive hassle. There was also a massive problem with getting the unit delivered in the first place because of difficulties with DHL. Their technical people are great, but everybody else that I talked to there drove me nuts.

Re:Did you plug your fax into the right port?

You sure can fax over the main vonage line! I do this all the time via my winmodem, and I don't have a second vonage line, just the primary. Just set the baud rate to 9600, and fax away....never had a issue

It's Horrible Leaving

I signed up for the Vonage service, tried it, didn't like it, tried to leave. I went through a bit of a nightmare trying to cancel the service and ended up needing to resort to the BBB. I wrote up the experience here: http://david.weekly.org/writings/vonage.php3 [weekly.org] - apparently from the comments others have had similar experiences.

no complaints here..

..except that they can't get local numbers everywhere yet, but that's the fault of the smaller telco's who aren't under the fed's microscope.. and don't let 3rd parties in the door.

did have a call quality problem initially, but that ended up being the connection it was using; 128k upstream was too slow, even though it's only supposed to need ~90k or less. upgraded the dsl to 256k upload and everything is perfect (aside the fact from our telephone number being based in a city on the other side of the state).

Several problems with Vonage

I had a few problems with Vonage that I think are probably endemic to VOIP systems:

• Any time I wanted to download a big file on my computer while on the phone, I had to accept that I'd have dropped packets and delay on the call. The truth is that DSL/Cable Modem providers need to provide some kind of guaranteed-bandwidth service for VOIP to work. That or the modems need to somehow set aside a bit of bandwidth for that. Actually, that could be a good idea... something based on Linux shaper stuff, maybe?
• The service wasn't actually that cheap. I now have AT&T local and unlimited long distance services and I'm paying about $15 more per month than I was with Vonage.
• I had lingering concerns about 911. I've actually had to call 911 once because I was being burglarized (the cops actually came in time and caught them!). So, I'm extremely sensitive to the question of 911 not getting routed properly.

Of the 3 problems, the first was by far the biggest. The quality just wasn't professional some of the time, and it repeatedly emabarrassed me with customers (I'm a software contractor). Also, when the audio was breaking up, I could never tell. The person I was talking to had to inform me. At a minimum, Vonage should make some sound happen on the your handset to let you know something's not right.

Re:Several problems with Vonage

- How is bandwidth issues Vonage's fault, or even your ISPs? There are many, many gateway devices that are specifically designed to provide QoS for VoIP calls. Dlink makes a consumer-grade, idiot proof box [dlink.com] that works pretty good. It simply plugs in between your modem and gateway.

- Lack of e911 features also can't be pinned on Vonage. Despite FCC mandates, many LECs *still* don't allow other companies access to PSAPs [wikipedia.org]. VoIP companies have been fighting an uphill battle when it comes to this. Complain to your state representatives or public utilities commission, not Vonage.

I'm pretty happy with vonage

I have vonage, and I'm pretty happy with the service. I'd say 8 out of 10 calls are good enough. I use the service more as a 15 dollar voicemail service. As I don't like phones, this is a cheap and easy solution for me.

However I've had some odd experences. For instance a friend of mine had it, then canceled it. When he had vonage, he setup call fowarding to his parents cell phone (they all lived in the same house). Well, they canceled for a bunch of reasons (mostly quality). Now when I call their house the call gets automaticly fowarded to the cell phone, since I'm a vonage customer. They've called them about the problem several times and there's "nothing they can do".

Poor Vonage

I kind of feel sorry for Vonage on this one. I've had their service, and while I'm about to switch (to free true VoIP services), I've had no problems with their service at all. That said, I also know how to manage a stable Internet connection.
The fact of the matter is Vonage is too hard for most people. All the things that can go wrong with a regular cable/DSL Internet connection now suddenly affect their phone service.
I work for a VoIP phone company. We get people calling in because after they unplug their modems to move them downstairs, they have no phone service. They're angry and mad and just don't understand how that would cause them not to have a dial tone. This is only one example, I'm sure you can think of others. Their old Bell South phone service 'just worked', and now they are having to reset routers and make sure the MTA is plugged into a phone jack/NIU. It's really complicated for the average person.
To make it worse, some Cable/DSL ISPs throttle their own VoIP traffic above all other traffic, and it's my beleif they have a way of changing the priority of other carrier's VoIP traffic to boost the quality of their own service (in comparison). Even if they don't admit to it or not, I wouldn't put it past them.
Add all this to Vonage's off-shore support who are at times hard to understand for the average 60 year old customer and you have some very miffed people. They feel the phone service is at fault, when they actually need to reboot their modem.
I'm sure Vonage has even more problems than I do, because we happen to be both the ISP and VoIP provider. I can only imagine what unknown variables they have to deal with, which are 100% required to deliver a quality, stable service.

When was the last time you rebooted a POTS phone?

The current state of VoIP technology is not good enough for normal telephone users to use. When PC users can't secure their wireless network and have malware clogged PCs, how can they be expected to be able to successfully use VoIP telephone service at home?

I think that mass market home VoIP service is doomed, at least in it's present form. People have been conditioned to expect to be able to pick up their home telephone handset and hear dialtone, they don't need a phone system that has to be rebooted on occasion to make it work. When the power goes out with VoIP, the entire telephone line goes down unless you have battery backup for the modem and the router. I have had to remind several family members with POTS that they need to have at least one regular non-wireless telephone in the house for when the power goes out. I understand that many VoIP routers have backup batteries and broadband providers provide battery backup for the customer prem VoIP telephone equipment that they provide. How long do those batteries last?

How long does a broadband connection last when the power goes out?

Recently there was a large storm that caused the power in my neighborhood to go out for almost two days. If I had Vonage, it would have only lasted for as long as the cable TV broadband lasted. My cable TV service and broadband connectivity lasted just a few hours after the power went out. The batteried in my UPS, which powers the cable modem and router lasted for much longer than the broadband service did. My cell phone went to analog roam after 8 to 10 hours (and that signal was essentially unusable). My wired POTS phone worked fine the whole time. I had neighbors who were surprised that my phone still worked because their (cordless) phones were dead. The same neighbors were later grateful that I could stop the beeping noise that was coming from their cordless handsets -- they also didn't know how to put the batteries back in after the power came back.

Happy Vonage Customer so Far

I use Cox cable and I'm not having any problems with Vonage yet. I'm so happy with it I'm going to use it as the main line for my home based business.

I haven't noticed any quality issues, however this may just be because my ISP isn't a telco. I wouldn't have bothered posting to the forum except that I am interested to know how many people are unhappy with Vonage and if those people's ISP's are all telcos.

This is probably the biggest network neutrality battle that there is today and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the majority of people with complaints have all had their service screwed with by those telco based ISP's.

John the Kiwi

Hard to cancel, hidden fees involved

I had vonage, tried to cancel after 11 months of mediocre service. Refused to cancel without charging a $42 cancelation fee even though they claim month-to-month with no contract. I charged it back and luckily mastercard is sticking up for me, but an incredible hassle! Avoid Vonage like the plauge

20 days to get a number from them

I work for TimeWarner cable. We've got the digital phone product (not true voip, btw, but voip thru the cable system before it's handed off to Sprint).
We are happy to port numbers from other providers... the "normal" is 7 business days to get the number from Verizon.
It takes TWENTY business days to port a number from Vonage. That's a full calendar MONTH.
And they have the balls to bitch about telcos dragging their feet??

At least they don't do what Frontier (smaller local telco in upstate NY) does; Give/Sell your number to telemarketers before porting it! Nothing like a little "fuck you!" as you leave them...

Is my experience NOT the norm?!?

I've had Vonage for almost a year now and am having 0 problems with them. I can't actually believe that my situation is not the norm? Their service has been excellent. I use them along with cable service and QoS actually works, and works very well. I can literally watch myself downloading a large file, pick up the phone, and see my transfer rates drop. And I rarely get dropped calls.

I have a Vonage business account and use a fax line as well, and basically turning ECM off fixed all the problems I was having with it not wanting to talk to some fax machines.

Happy customer here. And no, I'm not buying into the IPO but I'm so happy with 'em I got my parents to switch to using them as well. VOIP is cheap now, take advantage of it while you can. And all the cool call routing features and voicemails in my Inbox are clutch.