Review by blizzak 
UPDATED: 65 days ago
member for 4.1 years, 178 visits, last login: 8 days ago
 Mississauga,ON
 $92 per month (2 month contract)
 about 1 days
 "The service works well if you know it will work well and plan to keep it for a while"
 "They are pretty much the worst of the worst crooks and can't help but lie to you, management must be putting them up to it"
 "There are plenty of better POTS or other VOIP solutions out there, Vonage is not worth your time."
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I have had quite the varying experience with Vonage Canada (or Vonage India, is it?). I had their service a long time ago at my university house and also at home. I bought two linksys pap2's for those purposes.
At my home, it was not the greatest so I canceled after having it for about 10 months. The main reason it wasn't so great was because of the quality of my local internet service, so I parted with them on good terms, even with having to pay the $49.99 disconnect fee since I hadn't been with them for quite a year. That disconnect fee was still less than I would have paid for the last 2 months, and at that point, their service still cost considerably less than equivalent POTS service. I stayed with them for the length of time I needed the service at school, and I got some free months because I didn't want the service for the summer and wanted to cancel, so they helped me out. I did enjoy that service though for the time that I had it.
Fast forward to today, and look how times have changed. First off, I never remember the customer service people being this bad....they never were particularly great, but the accounts management department is outsourced to India now too. Their lack of empathy and inability to do anything past what system they have access to is really disheartening. Allow me to explain:
On February 11th, I signed up with Vonage for the third time in my life. I am living at home now and my internet has become considerably better. (5 meg/800 kbps, about 11 ms over first hop, between 15-20ms ping to google). The CSR was very nice, since I was a past customer she waived the activation fee and I got a free month as all new activations get. I also explained that I already had two devices which I could use so there was no need for them to send out a new device. She explained to me that i would see a shipping charge which was auto-generated by the system, but I would then be given a credit on my account for that amount, and the device would not be shipped out. Then I talked to a CSR for about 45 mins who configured one of my pap2's to work with the service. While this was a little longer that I expected for that order, it was okay, because my service was working properly right then and there.
2 days later, I had a delivery notice on the door. I went to pickup the package, and noticed it was from Vonage. So they sent the device in error. I also noticed that they never refunded my money so I called them a few days later. The lady apologized for the device being sent in error and put a credit on my account. She also said that if I needed to pay anything for shipping, then they would reimburse me for that as well. I was able to get shipping for free and Vonage did confirm it returned in good order; I actually never opened the package when I got in and I never went back to Vonage for reimbursement since I had no cost for shipping.
The day before my free month was to expire, I called Vonage. The service was working fairly well, although with all VOIP, there is always a small delay between speaking and your voice being received by the other person. There were also small artifacts here and there, and I don't always find that with VOIP it is truly full duplex. Keep in mind I had done a whole lot of troubleshooting and have one of the best QOS routers on the market. The main reason I was calling them was to cancel because of Bell starting to throttle third party ISPs and many people complaining about VOIP not working so well for them. The CSR worked a deal with me though where they extended the money back guarantee (so I could cancel within the next month and test to see if the service would still work well despite the throttling) and I would get my third month free if I decided to stay with them. Also, she was going to give me a rate of $24.95 a month for the unlimited plan FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE TIME THAT I WAS A VONAGE CUSTOMER! I really did think this was a great deal, so I decided I would at least try them for another month, and I could always cancel within the month without having to pay the disconnect fee since they extended the money back guarantee.
I decided on April 8th that I had to cancel my service since my mom could not stand the very small delays between people speaking. They tried to convince me to stay but I told them that I needed to cancel. The lady told me I would be charged the disconnect fee automatically by the system but that they would put it back on my credit card, since I did have the money back guarantee still active. I looked at my credit card statement 2 weeks later, and noticed that there was a charge of almost $160 on there. Charges were $49.99 disconnect fee and $89.99 "Motorola VT2142 Rebate Recovery", plus GST and PST. Keep in mind that I never wanted and they were never supposed to send me the Motorola device AND I was supposed to have an extension on the money back guarantee. I called customer service and they pretty much told me there was nothing they could do, they didn't have access to my account anymore since it was deactivated and gave me some BS about the device and all, how because they sent it to me I was liable for paying for it even though I never requested it, remember I returned it UNOPENED. I guess I should have never accepted it in the first place, and should have let the post office return to sender; I will definitely remember that the next time. But they probably still would have stuck me with that. And they claim they had no record of my money back guarantee being extended. I said I would wait to talk to a manager and was put on hold until they hung up on me. I had enough of their BS so I let my credit card deal with it and they took back my money for me, so I am now a satisfied non-customer now, flipping the bird to vonage. I doubt Vonage will be coming back after me for that money because they have no case. I was gonna file with the BBB, but I am happy having my money back so there is no need anymore.
I am probably downplaying my last conversation with Vonage, it was truly the worst customer service I have ever been faced with. Sufficient to say it is going to take a lot for me to trust them in the future. I don't think I can ever give my credit card to a company for a monthly service again after this garbage.
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