Lost productivity - invoicing Vonage

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 15, 2006 Posts: 4

What are your thoughts on this?

I am a MCSA and normally charge $65/hr for my computer consulting. Due to numerous ongoing and new issues with Vonage the past two days I was left without phone or fax service and then spent nearly four hours on the phone with Tier 1 and Tier 2 technical support.

My attorney advised me to send an itemized invoice to Vonage for on-site technical support since a lot of tracerts, reboots, cable switching, pings, etc has to be done.

Has any other computer professional billed Vonage for their on-site technical support, especially when it means a loss of nearly $5,000 in productivity due to being without service? These past two months I have put over 9,000 minutes on my cell phone due to my Vonage phone not being operational.

Posts: 1125 · Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 9:00 pm Post subject:

I'm almost sure you can't hold them liable for this, since there are many other variables that affect your service. One that comes to mind is your ISP. Do you know for a fact that any of your issues with Vonage were caused in part or fully by your ISP? I'd also advise reading the TOS to see if there's anything that says, "We cannot be held liable for any financial loss caused by intermittent or temporary loss of service." If you could sue them, or any service provider for that matter, we'd all be doing it for all kinds of reasons and they'd go bankrupt.

Posts: 476 · Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 9:06 pm Post subject:

You can try, but I suspect you won't get very far before they start waving the magic wand of item 4.4 on the Terms of Service: No Warranties on Service.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 15, 2006 Posts: 4

But the invoicing is not for loss of service. It is for the technical support provided to them via requested on-site testing. I think this may be the key!

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 15, 2006 Posts: 4

Due to poor QoS the router has been replaced for the third time. The latest router was installed Feb 1st and has been working until yesterday when there was no dial tone.

After over 3 hours with Tech Support on my cell phone, they finally identified the problem as being in their system. Someone at their end mistakenly deleted the MAC Address of the new router instead of the old one. And neither tier 1 or tier 2 tech support could correct this problem and it had to be escalated to tier III with a 24-48 hour turn around. Once the MAC Address was input correctly they emailed me to inform me everything was fixed. Unfortunately this did not fix the problem entirely.

After another 48 min with the idiots in India they finally agreed to put me through to tier 2 again. After another half hour they figured out that when the corrected the MAC error someone forgot to reassign the phone numbers to the router. Eventually this was resolved.

Then today I had to leave work for another problem. All calls placed to the Vonage phone from a wireless device and/or a bloced landline resulted in a busy signal. Calls from a landline that were not bocked went through Ok.

Called Tech Support and got the same idiots in India. Took 22 min to get them to put the call through to NJ only to be put on hold for 1hr and 28 min. Then called again from another number, sat on hold for 20 min then was disconnected.

Eventually after another 4 calls the problem was identified in their system and corrected.

Was not the ISP but in their system the entire time.

Posts: 61 · Full Forum Member Joined: Dec 29, 2005 Posts: 61

Personally, I think more people should bill Vonage for their time spent troubleshooting their problem. Maybe they'd get the idea that their service isn't ready for prime-time.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 9:36 pm Post subject:

Chances of winning on a case like this -- 10%. Don't count on it. If Vonage had guaranteed uptime (like my Qwest & Cogent connections), then you might have a case...but that's not the case here. Vonage is very clear that they're going to make a "best effort" to provide service, but there's too many variables for them to be able to flat-out guarantee service. Hell, Verizon won't even guarantee landline service. Cell co's most certainly won't guarantee service.

as a side-note, if you're a "computer professional" and are having THAT much trouble with Vonage, please consider a different career, one which doesn't involve TCP/IP. While you're good for MY business (cleaning up messes others make & making things work that others said won't work), I'm overworked and really could do without the hacks.

Posts: 61 · Full Forum Member Joined: Dec 29, 2005 Posts: 61

It doesn't matter what the chances of winning the case are. It's the message it sends that counts.

Posts: 61 · Full Forum Member Joined: Dec 29, 2005 Posts: 61

Quote:

While you're good for MY business

Let me guess. You're one of the Vonage techs... I can tell by the unjustified ego.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 15, 2006 Posts: 4

Sir, I am confused. What does my career choice have to do with Vonage's shortcomings? I have been working with computers and networks since the late 70s and many years with the military.

One thing I forgot to mention. Each time I called and spoke with a technical support supervisor (both tier 1 and tier 2) I informed him/her that in order to do on-site testing I would have to bill Vonage @ $65/hr for labor + cell phone usage which they agreed to. They then provided me the mailing address for accounts receivable prior to me doing any work for them.