New Fee. Woo hoo.Woo, hoo hoo.

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

Quote:

Unless you can substantiate this statement the only failure was yours for not reading the instructions.

You misunderstand my comment. I'm not blaming Vonage for anything, here. I'm just saying that if the user is to re-register their 911 location each time they move their adapter around, that in it's self is a point of failure.

How many people have neglected to read the terms and conditions for Vonage service? How many people never read the Read Me that comes with new software? How many people still have "12:00" flashing on their VCRs?

I'm just saying that if you leave this up to the end-user, it's a point of failure.

So, basically, it's a flawed system. No. I don't have a solution. But, like many things, over time a relatively straight forward system will gradually turn into a quagmire.

Posts: 168 · Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 6:48 pm Post subject:

OK...I get your point. But under your theory the whole world is working on a flawed system. How many people read the contract? Probably very few, and I'm no exception. But how many other areas of our lives do we "sign here" and take our copy without reading it?

Point is, you have to take ownership for what you sign for. It's not somebody else's problem if you don't read what you sign. It's not flawed, we as human beings are because we don't have time or interest in reading the fine print.

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

Quote:

OWNED

HAH! My sister did that to herself when she was a kid. LOL.

Seriously, though... Maybe you and I would do the re-register of our location when we take our adapter with us to another network... Then again... Maybe not. Maybe we'd decide not to take the time because we're in a hurry and we'll only be at that othe rlocation for a short time. However, the one time someone doesn't change their location is the one time they will need 911. That's Murphy's Law...

If you put the responsibilty in the hands of the user the system will fail. That was the nice thing about the original way the system worked. The user didn't need to know how or why it worked. It just did.

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

Hookbill - I agree... We need to take responsibilty for our own lives. But I felt the way the original 911 system worked was great because it didn't require any more user interaction than knowing how to dial 911. As close to perfect as you can get for an emergency response system.

911 and E911 is still a fairly good plan, and I have no doubt that it will get better as technology improves. I'm sure a better way will be devised to deal with the location problem. I just hope it doesn't take some guy having a massive coronary in Los Angeles dialing 911 and the emergency response shows up in Minneapolis at the wrong address to get it fixed.

The unavoidable truth of technology is that systems get tweaked and patched as even newer technologies force them to change. Eventually all the tweaks and patches make the system less efficient/less effective and things need to be refactored.

Posts: 85 · Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 8:15 pm Post subject:

VonageTPA wrote:

on fax lines as well? Can I now fax my 911 requests?

That'd be fun... "HELP! I'm getting robbed and there's a gun in my face."

That's what I was thinking.

Posts: 13 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Feb 02, 2006 Posts: 13

The E911 laws are regulated at the state level, and some states have more rigorous rules about "what level" a caller should be identified at (floor, phone line/address, building, etc). Where I work we were fighting trying to implement E911 according to each states laws. We finally decided that we would implement the most rigorous states rules for every state we do business in... the PBX needs to identify to the station level (where the person sits). So far it has been very expensive, the hardest part is implementing in a big call center that has literally thousands of phone stations, and rotating shifts of call personnel that implement "festival seating" (someone different sitting at a given station, and may not ever sit at the same station twice)....we use Redsky E911 with a bunch of customized software by the vendor...again, very expensive.

Posts: 83 · Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 2:14 am Post subject:

Help me out here...
Vonage didnt realize that 911 would be part of phone service?
I would think that would have all been figured into the plan..

Or is this part of the plan?
Add a few fees here and there .. a little at a time....blame someone else for it...
Take the very reason for switching to Voip away....Then we can all go back to our Landlines

Wonder if I could swap my Canada and Puerto Rico calling for just the flat rate Im paying now with NO FEES...

Im very happy with my Vonage service and have been promoting Voip for a while...Just dont like where I see all of this going....

I see that they are only doing this in a few states for now...Could it be to see how customers are going to react to this charge and see what percentage of customers they will lose...?

If this was a mandatory charge wouldnt all of us be charged at the same time...
Just sharing my thoughts on the matter....

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

Riddler, I had very much the same questions. But, it's only a .99 fee. I'll get more ticked if additional fees crop up. But for now .99 isn't so bad for implementing a service that any of us might need some day. I didn't even question the 911 fees on my old Qwest bill. It's all the other fees, like needing to pay for touch-tone service when the telco equipment doesn't even support pulse dialing. That kind of el torro kahkah is what I don't want to see on my Vonage bill.

Posts: 168 · Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:08 am Post subject:

dmesser wrote:

el torro kahkah .

Mind if I steal that one from you? Very Happy

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:09 am Post subject:

riddler wrote:

Help me out here...
Vonage didnt realize that 911 would be part of phone service?
I would think that would have all been figured into the plan..

No, actually, according to what I've read they didn't "realize" it, because Vonage has claimed all along that they are not a "telephone" company, and used that as an argument to not have to offer E911.

Vonage and the other Voip companies thought, up until last year, that might not need to implement 911. After all, the "phone lines" they sell are not tied to an address. And people have been using Voip for YEARS without needing to fiddle and fuss with 911. Heck, I've used Voip for over 15 years in one form or another, starting with Microsoft NetMeeting over a dialup connection to save toll charges to talk to my brother in Alaska and Japan.

Then, last year, the FCC ruled that Voip companies, while not subject to individual state regulations, do have to comply with E911. The law was passed sometime around the time I joined last July, so I got a double flurry of emails telling me to be sure and register an address so they could implement what they could of E911/911 ASAP.

I suspect (but don't know since I don't sit in the boardroom) that Vonage held off these fees as long as they could to build their customer base, which is their #1 goal right now. They knew these fees would be unpopular, so they funded the startup of 911/E911, but their startup reserves are burning away fast, like many startups, and they need to start raising the funds to continue the E911 initative.

Obviously, another compliance fee isn't exactly going to be popular. I know I'm not doing handstands for joy. But I've been paying 911 fees for 15 years now on all of my phone lines, in one case for FIVE years before basic 911 was implemented, and I expect the Voip companies will start tacking on all the fees, taxes, surcharges, franchise fees, reclamation fees, because-we-feel-like-it fees, etc that every other phone/cell company in the US already charges, as they get recognized as a phone company more and more.

Don't like it? Tell your congresscritter that you DO NOT WANT Voip companies treated like telephone companies. You DO NOT WANT Vonage to have to serve up 911 at all. Then Vonage can collect the fee for a few months and reclaim their lost leader money on trying to set up 911 in the first place, and cancel all their 911/E911 contracts and shut all that equipment down and sell it off, and then there's no need for the fee, because there's no expensive 911 infrastructure to build and maintain.