Black Bag Operations Network

Digg me.

And I sincerely hope they go out of business soon.

I decided to give them a shot when I canceled my Qwest DSL for unreliability and switched to Comcast (which has been SOLID). They promised that it would be easy to transfer my phone number, they sent me some paperwork and a catalog of interface boxes/routers. I selected one made by linksys, it arrived and I set it up and got a dialtone.

Two days later we had a wind storm and power outage and the linksys completely died. Bad experience, I conclude that having my phone service dependent on electricity is a bad idea and set out to cancel the phone number transfer.

This is where I learn that Vonage is the roach motel of phone companies. They have sales people working around the clock, but intentionally don’t put their customer service extension in the menu on their phone system. This is dishonest and I decide not to do further business with them.

Unfortunately, they won’t or can’t cancel the number transfer. I contact Qwest to see if they can stop it and at first they think so, but eventually they say no, but let it go through and in a week they can request it back. So we do. This leaves me without the ability to receive calls for over 3 weeks. I tell the reps at Vonage that I want my number transfer cancelled and plan to cancel service – they warn me not to cancel until the number safely returns to Qwest. Qwest gives me the same advice.
It takes 20 days for a number to transfer – so this entire fiasco is over 40 days long. Cleverly, Vonage provides a 30 day money back guarantee. Criminal.

I learn this last fact when phoning to cancel my Vonage “service” (which never worked) and am told that 1) I’m over the 30 days to I have to pay $30 in cancellation fees and 2) I am charged an additional $50 for hardware that I bought up front for $89 in the first place and that failed within days of power up and 3) am told that they won’t even replace the dead hardware (although the rather smug-bitchy rep in cancellations is pleased to tell me that “if you had stayed we’d replace it but since you’re cancelling you’re out of luck”).

There’s no option to simply not pay the bill – Vonage gets your credit card number up front. However, I have disputed all charges from them with my bank and returned the defective equipment so I’m hopeful to escape with my cash intact (while sticking them with chargeback costs as well).

So much for customer service. Avoid Vonage at all costs!