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SevenDegrees
Premium
join:2003-07-11
Miami Beach, FL
| Vonage tech support snickered at us
We too are looking for alternatives, particularly after Vonage total refusal to even consider the fax situation. It is not just us, it is not just fax/modem cards or just stand-alone faxes. After today's experience and sadly Vonage tech support's attitude to us and their solution was -- go buy a fax machine, we do not support faxing or fax modems. Right now the only value Vonage has to us is the use of virtual numbers. Things were fine until about a week or so back, cannot send/receive faxes, not matter what machine, what fax/modem card, or baud, etc. Nothing like sending a gazillion cover pages and the stuff keeps quiting after that. And yep we have been doing extensive trouble shoots, switching equip, even bought a new USR PCI V.92 controller base fax/modem.. Glad to see others beginning to post their fax woes, maybe someone at Vonage will a) get involved, b) either support fax or stop advertising it, and c) suggest to their tech support peeps, snickering at us and dissing us and writing us off is not the way to engender customer good-will or loyalty.
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rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
| Not sure what the trouble is with faxing over Vonage. I've never done anything special and I don't seem to have a problem. Of course, I've sent maybe a half dozen faxes in the past year that I've had Vonage. All of them have been from my Dell Inspiron laptop, using its built-in V90 faxmodem.
I have a Cisco ATA-186 and except for the out-of-band signal problem where female voices sometimes trigger dialing tones (search VOIP forum for threads), it hasn't given me much trouble with the 90Kbps codec. My experience with the 50Kbps codec wasn't good. Either I would lose the other party (able to hear me but not them) or the other party would lose me. I tried the 30Kbps codec but it sounded like a digital cell phone -- something that I only care to tolerate from a digital cell phone.
Regarding Vonage's systems, they've upgraded voice mail twice in the last year. Both times have gone OK but it's been a pain to realize that you can't get into your voice mail only to find out it's been upgraded and you have to setup your mailbox again. Vonage did send out advanced warnings but it's not something you really think to add to your calendar.
I was happy to port my Vonage number from SBC/Sage last August, even though it took almost two months to get through the paperwork. Vonage is the only phone I have in my house.
Of course, Vonage is only as good as your HSI connection and router equipment. For my entire Vonage tenure, I've had Charter Pipeline. At least in St. Louis, Charter has a good system. Low pings, no packet loss, good throughput and no "peak" periods.
Until this past Saturday I used a D-Link 614+ WiFi router. No issues with lease time problems, cable disconnects or other anomalies (see router forums for threads regarding VOIP issues that are sometimes solved with router tweaks...) Unfortunately, last week I flashed the 614+ with a new version from their Taiwan site. I had massive problems. Even after downgrading the firmware, I could not get it to stay connected to my cable modem. The switch and WiFi portions continued but after a few minutes it would quit talking to the cable modem. After verifying that a Windows XP box with two NICs and Internet Connection Sharing did not have issues, I knew the router was toast. After a brief what-to-buy quest, I tried a NetGear WGR614 802.11g router. Although the range was better than my D-Link 614+, after more reading I returned it and purchased the WGT624. I like it. Great range, quality and someday I'll upgrade my laptop card to NetGear so I can use the claimed 108Mbps wireless speeds. No issues or tweaks required for Vonage use. My wife is a stay-at-home mom and worships daytime phone conversations with other stay-at-home moms. If the phone wasn't working, I'd hear about it twice. First when she calls me from her cellphone to complain and again when I get the cell phone bill!
Although Vonage setup couldn't have been easier (plug in the box they send you and start making calls -- really, just that easy...), it probably isn't quite a technology for everyone. I would guess that an awful lot of Vonage problems are caused by the Internet and the customer's HSI connection. I'd hate to be in Vonage customer support because they have to feel somewhat helpless in situations where the problem is completely out of their control. This why I think the technology isn't quite ready for everyone. I think it takes a bit of understanding by the consumer that it there's a 50% chance that it isn't Vonage's fault when your call is disconnected, your phone doesn't work or the quality is poor.
In closing, before you try VOIP, make sure you fully understand the quality of your HSI connection and that VOIP is 100% dependent on that quality. If you have any complaints or quirks with your HSI connection, VOIP is not for you. | |
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