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Vonage Following is a letter just sent to the Executive Response Team recounting a disastrous
Following is a letter just sent to the Executive Response Team recounting a disastrous experience with Vonage. The purpose of the letter is to offer my help to Vonage in correcting the systemic issues that clearly plague the organization. If anyone knows who I can contact to provide my assistance as a consumer, please let me know.
Thanks,
C
Katharine,
Per your instructions, I called your Account Management again and talked to Michael, Phone ID 31742. Michael was combative until near the end and was unable to acknowledge my experience. I shared my experience with porting the number 7 days early, the device arriving broken, delays in getting a 2nd one, requring I spend my own money to send the broken one back - weeks of delay, etc. and lack of apology for any of the experience. Michael's response (which sounded like something he was required to say by Corporate, not something he wanted to say) was - "I'm sorry you feel that way." I responded "These are not feelings, these are simply facts about my experience – it is what happened.” He responded again "I'm sorry you feel this way." and I simply could not get him to acknowledge my experience. All he could say was that as long as I told him this was my experience (not feelings), that he was going to respond “I’m sorry you feel that way.” And he did so repeatedly. (Listening to a recording of this call would be very instructive for training the reps).
A very bad start.
After telling him that I had requested that this be disconnected on January 7, 10 days after starting the service, and that even though I had refused shipment of the replacement device around that same time, I did not receive acknowledgement that the device had been returned to you until January 31, after the 30 day period ended. I had sent a couple dozen emails within the first 15 days telling Vonage to cancel me out, and had my number ported back and working with my old carrier before the 30 days was up. He then told me I would have to pay the termination fee because I was calling after 30 days.
I expressed incredulity and told him I had emails from the Executive Response Team that I would not be charged. He responded "They have no authority over me" and "I will try to catch you with everything I can." I asked him 2-3 times to make sure I had heard him right. He once again later in the conversation repeated "I will try to keep you from paying, but nothing would make me happier if I could catch you with everything I can."
I told him if based on my horrible experience, the complete lack of empathy on the part of Vonage CSRs throughout the process, and the corporate policies to stick me with every charge they could (including returning a device that arrived broken in the box?), that if the only way to resolve this was to get a lawyer, could I get a communications path for that lawyer - he told me "tell your lawyer to get it". I told him I thought he had the same legal requirement to get me that communications path (address, whatever) that he would have to provide it to my lawyer. He responded "Go the corporate website." I asked him again if he would give me the address and he remained silent.
I repeated back everything we had talked about and told him that my experience with Vonage was exactly like it had been with Telocity, the front-running DSL company 4-5 years ago that went out of business because their only interest was in how fast they could grow and how big their margins could be, and that in doing so they had made no provision for customer service or actually making the customers they were accumulating happy. I told him if my experience was the same, that the outcome for Vonage was likely to be the same (Vonage's assets were purchased by Hughes Corp. as it went under). Being a bully isn't a good position for any company to take - it always comes back to bite them.
After seeing that I had captured all his "bully" comments, he relented at the end of the conversation and told me I would not be charged the termination fee.
This final experience with Vonage was exactly like every other experience I have had (and exactly like with Telocity):
1) The infrastructure is silo'd and the various pieces that should work with one another for customer satisfaction (porting, hardware shipping, email communications, accounting, customer service) were disconnected and unable to work together, making the initial experience an unintended nightmare.
2) The corporate policies clearly have only ONE objective - market share and margin as quickly as possible - with absolutely no consideration for customer experience. The policies clearly assume there will be customers who simply become "collateral damage" in the path of the Vonage tsunami and that Vonage will not look back or take responsibility for them because they will simply ride the wave of customers who did not drown in the installation process.
3) The customer service people are either not trained to empathize or are getting so many calls from people who are drowning that they have no capacity left to empathize. The corporate policies which require that they not respond appropriately makes it untenable and pointless for them to even begin to empathize (they can't do anything about the problem anyway - we're still going to charge you to send back the device the arrived broken in the box - corporate policy).
4) The revenue policies are ruthless and rely on the unwillingness of the customer to confront or the customer’s lack of attention to stay in the fight and get their money back. “Bill ‘em and make ‘em come after us for the money we owe them” is clearly the attitude. During the phone call, Michael told me billing started the day I asked for Vonage service, Dec. 27, even though I wouldn’t have had the ability to make a phone call until mid-January. When you buy a product over the internet they are not even allowed to charge your credit card until the product ships. No company should require a consumer to pay to return something that arrives broken in the box. I was billed the monthly fee even after canceling inside the 30 day window, and was told I would have to send the broken device back on my dime, no reimbursement available. Etc, etc. Very aggressive revenue policy – very wrong in the long haul.
If Vonage doesn’t fix these issues, they will go the way of Telocity. It is one thing for me to have a bad experience with one part of the installation, but for the whole thing to be completely broken, with no empathy or solution provision on the part of Vonage, tells me there are systemic problems at Vonage that require immediate attention. Let me know if I, as a consumer with the above experience, can help you fix these systemic issues. I believe I could provide valuable, objective, and most importantly, outsider input with no stake in some silo that someone might have built at Vonage that might need dismantling or reconstruction. General Motors had the most market share at one point – it’s not the only measure by which a company can declare success. Vonage needs to get a grip on this quickly or they will be the Telocity of the Voip industry.
Chuck Blakeman
(address and phone provided to Vonage, but not posted here)
Read The Full Thread: My experience with Vonage - I can help them if they want it
• Sorry to hear about your horrible experience. I myself have not had any conversations
• Having trained and consulted for several years, I can tell you this is a classic
• You know when sometimes you call a customer support or tech, before the conversation
• I literally dread the thought of having to place a call to Vonage CS. That is sad,
• If a rep actually said "I'm gonna catch you with every fee I can" or something to
• I really feel for all of you as a former employee. Here's the real deal. Vonage has
• Mr. Citron is a entrepreneur and by nature inclined to move on once he gets something
• Between ColdGin and Movado you see the internal issue w/in Customer Service.
• If you only knew the half of it! Just so you know they kindly put in place a wonderful
cblakeman posted "Following is a letter just sent to the Executive Response Team recounting a disastrous" on 02/15/2006 |
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