 Review by linicx 
UPDATED: 1.4 years ago
member for 6 years, 1795 visits, last login: 41 days ago
 United State
 $45 per month (12 month contract)
 about 7 days
 "Good device first 30 days"
 "Foreign employees don't understand English or products they promote.. ."
 "Caveat Emptor"
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings well below consensus)
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I ordered Vonage the same day I discovered my telco was adding services I did not order, want or need. Since I was tired of the high priced forced bundling anyway,it was a good excuse to switch,
On the plus side I can't say I have had any real connection issues with Vonage. It just works. On the minus side I can't say I am happy about the $8 tax or the fact their website is PC only. Regardless of what these Vonage foreign employees tell you, not all phone numbers can be ported. This is because not all telco will let them do it. AT&T, is a perfect example. It does not allow competition in its protected areas.
Since my area code and number could not be ported, I decided to take a Vonage number where friends and family live. I checked for availability in the town. A number could be ported, and the area code was open. I called Vonage, ordered the phone and said I wanted my number in that town. She assured me I could have the number. I should have been suspicious when I asked for a list of prefixes for the area and she couldn't provide one. On the strength of Vonage promises I ordered the phone. A week later my daughter says, "My caller ID shows you're calling from Iowa."
WHAT IS GOING ON????
This area code mess caused by poorly trained and ineffective offshore employees was not only not necessary, it cost friends and family unexpected long distance charges. THIS is NOT Vonage P.R. on their website, it is NOT what the Vonage employee PROMISED me, it is NOT what I ordered. However, the worst idea Vonage ever had is their RMA and customer charge back clause. If you don't like the service, and you don't have the ORIGINAL cardboard boxes it was mailed in plus the instructions set, it is $200, or more, to cancel this service The big question in my mind now is whether or oot I want to pay for an 800 number for family, or whether I want to switch. IF I had studied the VoIP providers, I could have made a more informed decision; sadly I did not.
July 4, 2006: Update
Since my original post I learned I can't set the password or services via the web without a PC (I own Mac). I am also greatly irked by sales calls nearly every day from Vonage. Most annoying though, is as I am networked, I have to reboot my modem - not just the Vonage router - after every fourth or fifth call - specially if the calls are over 60 minutes. Since I had no problem the first month, why is this happening now?
My gripe with Vonage isn't the quality of the phone calls, It is the foreign tech support that has no answers - and apparently no clues either. With a little work this could be an outstanding VoIP provider. Instead it is barely mediocre.
April 9.. 2007: Update
Much has happened since the last update to change my thinking. The telephony device built into the router failed some two months ago. Since then and I have not had enough phone service to call Vonage anyting except a failure. Service is a joke. Vonage "tech support" Robert and Jay are convinced the failure is a packet loss issue. They each made adjustments on the Vonage side. Each time the phone then worked for ten minutes or less. They tried in vain to convince me it is a latency issue. Except, no one in America experiences 24/7/365 packet loss - not even me, in an area where the DFW PoP has been a bottleneck iissue for 12 years. However, even DFW does not time out 24/7 -- which is exactly what my telephony device issue is all about. It just doesn't work anytime of any day or any night. The fact is, after all the router and modem provisioning, after all the $5.00 cell phone calls to Vonage, "all the King's horses and all the King's men failed "to put Humpty Dumpty together again." And I am still paying $45 a month until the contract ends for the privilege of looking at a dead telephony device. There is nothing in the Vonage supplied cardboard box that is worth $200.00 now. Vonage won the battle, but lost the war. Instead of the smoke and mirrors chatter, tech support should have sent a new device.. They didn't, and they didn't suggest it. They didn't even suggest I buy a new telephony device. Now, instead of one happy customer renewing my contract and taking Vonage with me to my new home, I see a POTS in my future.
If I had realized packet loss is an issue with Vonage telephony, I would not have ordered the service. If I had known the foreign 'help' support does not understand English and plain commands like "Stop!" I would not have ordered the service. If I had any inkling the Vonage phones are "sensitive" to minor packet loss that indirectly causes a nearly permanent 24/7 outage I would not have ordered the service. It has been an very expensive lesson on my side. I wish Vonage well, but NOT ON MY NICKLE any longer.
June 6, 2007: Update
At last my eagerly awaited May Vonage anniversary date arrived! I was finally able to put an end to this painful affair, but ONLY after I listened to: 1. several pleas to continue service, 2. offers of free service, 3. offers of free replacement devices, 4. endless blather designed to wear down my resolve, and 5. serveral requests to "test" my dead disconnected phone. After 45 very long minutes I finally learned the contract was as dead as the telephony device and I hung up in the middle of one more Vonage pledge to do better.
In retrospect I am as clueless as ever as to what caused the failure. Was it a power spike, poorly manufactured equipment, or was it a national ISP that doesn't want Vonage users on its service? Or just maybe it was the regional telco giving the newest kid on the block a rough ride, as it is want to do. I don't know.
Vonage and Cebridge are both New Jersey corporations. What I learned from practical experience, system logs, standard tests like "Traceroute" and observation of my own systems is that neither company performs very well in mid-America where towns are scattered and the average population is 10,000 or less.
As much as it pains me to say this, in my mind the only winners are the companies that provide consistent service and real customer support. In my area of the mid-west it is Ma Bell and Direct-TV. Persons who live in large metropolitan areas or in other areas of the United States may not have the same experiences as mine.
Caveat Emptor! If we want telephones, cable television and Internet in the home, we are at the mercy of the companies that who provide those services.
Footnote: June 22, 2007
A couple of weeks ago Daniel Cho, a Journalist from "Smart Money" magazine contacted me about my experiences with Vonage after reading my review here. We had several conversations and today I found two email messages from someone at Vonage Customer Service who is an "Executive Response Agent". This person wants me into changing my opinion about Vonage. It ain't gonna happen. I am sure Vonage will be glad to know I sent the message and my reply to Cho.
I didn't have one bad experience with Vonage, I had a year full of unresponsive Vonage employees. Vonage corporate office even had the nerve to respond to a FCC complaint with a document that could NOT be opened in email, or on a PC, or on a Mac despite the fact. I have MS Office installed on all machines. There was no reason for Vonage to do this. . I wrote back to FCC and suggested that Vonage be introduced to the USPO; they deliver mail to me every Monday through Saturday except on holidays.
The entire Vlonage experience was a calamity of human error from start to finish. And it is one I will not forget soon. Vonage is fine when it works. The problem is not when Vonage works, the problem is.. when Vonage fails, the fault always seems to be on the customers side, And that my friends, is the oldest ruse on the Internet, and why I wasted hours, and a lot of money, at $0.10 per minute on a cell phone while the Vonage "tech support" repeated the same tests that netted the same flat results over and over and over again ad nauseum. The telephony devices are computerized; they work or they don't. In the end mine didn't.
The Vonage combo router/telephony I had worked well for about seven and half months. One day it didn't work so well and by the time six weeks passed I had to reprovision the device to make a phone call that might last a whopping thirty seconds before the phone went dead. After Vonage tech support absolutely assured me the problem was latency while, mind you, the phone was totally disconnected (I still don't know how they determined this), I knew it was a battle I was not going to win. Vonage was out of service more than 30 days before the and of my contract. I paid for every dead minute.
I opted to pay the monthly bill even though the device didn't work, even though Vonage didn't offer a replacement unit, even though Vonage didn't suggest i buy my own device, and even though Vonage didn't offer any type of compensation because it wa s cheaper to do that than it was toi pay Vonage $200 for the pleasure of returning a dead phone in its original box. Vonage won hands down,. They made an nice profit on me for zero service and they get national exposure in a financial magazine. Vonage should be very proud of their "customer care"; It's a fine lesson in corporate economics.
Maybe Smart Money will mention this too. .
Followup comments:  
CHICAD
Premium
join:2006-03-11
Oak Park, IL
| I hope... you bought an aftermarket adapter that can be used with any VOIP provider because if you purchased a device from Vonage, the adapter willnot be able to be provisioned by another VOIP company due to Vonage locking the device and not releasing the admin login and password.
I would advise anybody thats looking into switching to VOIP from landline phone to research and buy an adapter that is not locked to a specific provider. That way, if one decides to jump camp, they can use their device with another provider without the fear of going out to buy another adapter. | |
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CHICAD
Premium
join:2006-03-11
Oak Park, IL
| Adapter There is not a specific adapter I have in mind since I have yet to go out and buy a new adapter. Whereever you buy the adapter from (Bestbuy...Compusa...etc....), make sure that the device is not locked to s specific VOIP provider, by simply asking the salesman, or better yet....research before heading to store. | |
| madmanmn
join:2005-07-08
Barneveld, WI | Curious Just out of curiosity, why did you call to set up service instead of going online to activate? | |
| 
D
@fuse.net
| Vonage Vonage is ok if you are some sap that just wants to get VoIP. If you are looking for advanced service like # porting or 800 #s RUN RUN as fast as you can away from Vonage. I went Thur a 60 Day wait for # porting that did not happen, then when i say i am done waiting on you and i want to cancel. they want to charge me disconnect fees. All total the Vonage experience cost me over $500! I did dispute it Thur my CC and got the funds back. But the point is if you can not provide the service just admit. it and my amids. SO BUYER BE WARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! | |
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Gambit999
@comcast.net | Re: Vonage Perhaps you should try Skype!!!!!! | |
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Trinijoy
Premium
join:2005-09-12
Brick, NJ | Yeah Why do pepople insist on "driving cars" without learning about them first?
Yes I am making a metaphor. | |
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N3T_K1LLA
@rr.com
| Question about the adapter Just had one question, did you have the linksys pap2 adapter or their shitty linksys adapter which has the built in router?
Working at my previous job, I used to see almost 98% of those vonage linksys adapters which have the router built in get returned for the following issues:
The internet connection would not stay, causing packet loss, and all other messed up issues. If this is the device you have, vonage tech support wasn't entirely wrong, it has to do with the shitty wan port that linksys built into this specfic router/adapter combination, its a 10mbit wan port, for some reason it just does not process information correctly, thats why you hardly see it being sold anymore. If vonage sent you that adapter, thats messed up.
Personally I'm in the process of moving voip companies, porting my number as well... Currently going from vonage to verizon voicewing, we'll see how that goes. I'll be posting a review after my porting is done to see how hard that goes.
about ported numbers..
It IS possible to port your number with the following limitations on how hard it is.
VOIP TO VOIP = EASY
POTS TO VOIP = HARD BUT CAN BE DONE
VOIP TO POTS = DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE BUT STILL CAN BE DONE
WIRELESS TO VOIP = USUALLY CAN'T BE DONE. | |
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linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium
join:2002-12-03
United State | Re: Question about the adapter Motorola VT2442. The router is fine; the telephony device is dead.
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Mac: No windows, No gates, Apple inside | |
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PolarBear
The bear formerly known as aaron8301
join:2005-01-03
Riverside, WA
 ·CableOne
| A few flaws I found a few logical flaws in this review.
1) How is it a Mac cannot access a website? Isn't that dependent upon which browser you use? IE or Firefox should work just fine, regardless of which operating system you use. (Honest question, as I don't own a Mac.)
2) Twenty-Five dollar cell phone call? Never in my entire life have I spent $25 for a cell phone call. Sounds like this guy is getting ripped off more by his cell provider than by Vonage.
3) "Most annoying though, is as I am networked, I have to reboot my modem" Sounds like you have a problem with your modem. I don't see how a device connected to your modem would cause this to happen.
I'm not saying this review is bogus or that you're full of it; rather, I'd simply like an explanation of these things so the story as a whole will make a little more sense, and so we as consumers will know more about your problems and why you are having them. Also, if you look HERE, it will give you a list of area codes and subsequent prefixes which are available. That means no guessing for you as to what numbers are available.
I do certainly agree, however, with your view on customer service/tech support. Everyone prays they will never have to phone Vonage for this reason.
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A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequilla. -- Mitch Ratcliffe | |
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noto vonage
@covad.net
| Re: A few flaws 3) "Most annoying though, is as I am networked, I have to reboot my modem" Sounds like you have a problem with your modem. I don't see how a device connected to your modem would cause this to happen.
 I had had vonage and now they are down the drain, i lost my phone number because they will not give it back to me, who cares i will get a new number, vonage had to reset my modem for a period of 4 months straight on daily bases untill i finally changed the mac address of the vonage device (they will not know what that is, i assure you). they said i have had been a vonage customer for more than a year and my vonage device thus is not covered, i can buy another peice of crap device for half off...rip me up vonage thanks...my bill was never less than 50 bucks taken right out of my bank account....no no no no no no and a 1000 times no to vonage. | |
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linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium
join:2002-12-03
United State
 ·CenturyTel Inc.
·Cebridge Connections
 ·Vonage
| Let's see if I can explain it a little better.. Mac is built over UNIX. Not all browsers can access all websites due to the code. My Mac btowsers can usually read a website but very often has problems when trying to access certain functions such as "submit" buttons. Either they don't work, or a message is returned that the site only supports IE and Netscape which translates to PC users only. The other 4 or 5 millions Internet users who don't use a PC are rarely considered.
The $25.00 is a typo. It costs 10 cents per minute to use the cell between 7am and 7pm. My several more-than-60-minute-cell calls to Vonage were a complete waste of money for the "tech" support fixated on latency at the
D-FW node that has existed for the last 12 years. The latency does not last 24/7 and it had not been a problem for the previous 10.5 months that Vonage VOIP did work well for me. Vonage did not offer replacement or any solutions until the day I cancelled. The gesture was a little bit too little and a whole lot too late.
As to the modem.. Every time I called Vonage it was the same circus. Turn off the computer, turn off the router and turn off the modem - which of course reset the system. And Vonage would work for 5 minutes but never long enough to complete a phone call before it died, whereas before the telephony device stopped working I could talk for hours and the call was not dropped.
After the device failed I had to repeat this routine every time I wanted to use the phone. Every time. It didn't make any difference if I made one phone call or a 100, I still had to repeat the routine first before I could "get connected".
To the prefix issue. I don't care what Vonage lists on the Internet. If Ma Bell doesn't want to cooperate, you won't get the area code. I can port 309 to Vonage for instance, but I can't order 309 from Vonage. I can't port 417, and I can't order 417 from Vonage, either. How do i know? I entered a family number in the 309 code to learn it could be ported, ditto for a 417 number. The closest area code I could get from Vonage to either 309 or 417 is 100-200 miles. I should have stopped the order process when the Philipino tele-jerk lied about area codes so as to grab a new customer. I didn't learn until after I completed the sign-up process that I could not get any phone number in either of the area codes.
The list is not exactly truthful. it is a list of every prefix in an area code. What Vonage does not tell you in plain English is WHICH OF THE AREA CODES it is locked out of and WHICH AREA CODES it cannot port to; there is a difference, but not much.
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Mac: No windows, No gates, Apple inside | |
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PolarBear
The bear formerly known as aaron8301
join:2005-01-03
Riverside, WA
·CableOne
| Re: A few flaws I understand much more now. Thank you. Like I said above, Vonage is a great service.... so long as you never have a problem warranting you to call them. You couldn't PAY me to call Vonage. And I have found the only reasonably easy way to cancel is to change your CC info on the website to something bogus so they cannot charge you, and eventually disconnect you.
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A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequilla. -- Mitch Ratcliffe | |
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nhtrac
@rr.com | huh? $45 a month doesn't seem right, even with taxes?
I've had Vonage for a couple years and haven't had many problems. | |
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linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium
join:2002-12-03
United State | Re: huh? Add a 800 mumber and high taxes. It meets or exceeds the 45 bucks
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Mac: No windows, No gates, Apple inside | |
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