re:Modern

“Thank you for joining the Vonage revolution.” You’ll hear that every time you call Vonage customer care. I signed up for Vonage service almost three years ago because I believed that at the least their customer service would have to be a revolution compared to what I was used to with Bellsouth. It was. For the most part my three years of service has been incredibly trouble-free, and when I did have a few issues early on they were quickly remedied. Over the last three years I’ve replaced numerous clients’ traditional land-line service with service from Vonage. Never again.

My saga is a simple one. Since hurricane Katrina I haven’t used Vonage much. My cable modem became completely unreliable and my new fixed wireless broadband service has too high a latency to work well with Vonage. On top of that I received a fellowship to study in Indonesia for three months. I decided now would probably be a good time to port my number out to something just to keep it and finally cancel my service. I have a friend that works at Sprint and got me a basic account there just so I could keep the number that I’ve been using for the last 7 years. I was told both by Sprint and Vonage that once the port was completed my service would be cancelled. My number was successfully ported out on May 26. I left for Yogyakarta, now to do earthquake relief work, on June 1.

Vonage never cancelled my account. They are still charging me every month for service that they aren’t providing (as there isn’t a phone number associated with the account anymore). I have spent what probably is a few months worth of service fees just in calling Vonage from Indonesia (not a cheap call). I’ve been hung-up on, told that I had called too late (when I had in fact spoken with a representative more than thirty minutes before the end of their stated business hours). I have emailed repeatedly. I have been given a phone number to call by a customer service rep that is no longer in service. All I want to do is cancel my account. It is impossible to do this online, they force you to call in, but the customer service that I once told my own clients was excellent has been a complete failure. I am currently on hold with Vonage at 9:00am EST (9:00pm here) trying yet again. I have been on hold for over 31 minutes at this point.

In a hyper-competitive price market, the only thing a company like Vonage can do to compete effectively is offer something that other companies can’t. Time and time again the one thing that companies are able to offer to compete is good customer service. Vonage is failing miserably at this today. I’ve wasted over an hour of my time (and counting) doing something that I should have been able to do from the web interface, or at least through email once I explained my situation. Vonage should learn from the mistakes of the companies its revolution is supposed to be against: when you mistreat your customers and an alternative comes along, they’ll leave. The barrier of entry into Vonage’s market is too low for them to ignore this.

the names of the innocent have been changed, the names of the guilty though…

I am a college student (my second time around). Specifically, I’m studying to become a high school history teacher. I am a student with a lifelong habit though, Macintosh. I got my first Mac in 1986, a used Mac Plus with 1 megabyte of RAM a massive 40 megabyte external hardrive. Since then, I’ve always had to keep up, first it was the SE, then the IIsi, the Powerbook 140, and from there on, more Macs than you can shake a stick at (I missed the Mac TV). I usually keep my Mac for about 6 months, and then resell it and move up. I almost always buy used, so don’t get any ideas about me being rich.Since I went back to being a student again, I’ve been selling Macs more regularly, picking up good deals on used Macs locally and then reselling on eBay. I’ve been doing this for about two years now, its relatively easy, takes about an extra hour of my day, and usually pays the rent. In November when the new Powerbooks came out I decided I was going to buy one for myself, to keep, an early Christmas present that would come in handy for taking notes in class and finishing up a presentation I needed to do on the New Orleans school system. The day they were announced I ordered a nice new Powerbook G4 867 and found it on my doorstep only a few days later.