Customer Service Unreachable

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 7

I am a Realtor, and I use Vonage for my main business number, and a fax line, and a toll-free plus number for out of town clients.. All in all I love the product, and I am generally a happy customer...

However, today I have needed to reach customer service about a billing error, I was double charged...

I tried to call customer care several times and got a busy signal

I finally got through, and I was on hold so long I had to hang up,

Now I am home watching American idol, and the whole show is over, and I am still on hold trying to get them...

Come on Vonage, you can do better than this, customer service should not be so unreachable

I am disappointed, consider this my stinging rebuke
Mad

your product is great, you need to provide better customer service

Posts: 58 · Full Forum Member Joined: Feb 04, 2006 Posts: 58

Maybe they were watching Idol too! Smile

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 7

ok, its official, i was on hold so long my fully charged cordless phone died...

Vonage reps reading this forum, please feel free to PM me a super-secret special number i can call to reach customer service..

or maybe just say your sorry I wated on hold for hours

yes hours, and still did not get through

again, i LOVE your product, and the price

but please work a bit on the customer service, if you had not double billed me this month I wouldn't even be calling

Posts: 42 · Full Forum Member Joined: Sep 27, 2005 Posts: 42

That's just odd... I just finished setting up a box in Nicaragua and needed to talk to cust. svc. about the Voice Mail indicator. I called the toll free number and was connected to someone in India in about 40 seconds. That cust. svc. agent fixed the issue by calling me back and leaving me a vm. I was impressed that the call to India sounded like a good-quality cell call in the US.

Just goes to show you the real problem with cust. svc... inconsistency. Last time before the vmi problem, I was on hold for almost 30 min.

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 7

ok, finally, i tried calling one more time, I got a rep almost instantly, and was then quickly transferred to advanced billing support and they fixed the double billing error,

so all in all, I will say again I still love the product, and a save a ton of money using Vonage for my business rather than bellsouth...

the customer service just needs to be a bit more consistent

------------------
Justin
Vonage Small Business Unlimited Plan with dedicated fax
toll-free plus add on

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 7

ok I'll quit posting about this bad experience now, but i just couldn't resist posting this from my dashboard

Feb 21, 2006 08:50 PM 1404348xxxx 18662434357 01:32:00 3443551563

waited on hold 1 hour and 32 minutes before my phone died, and while they finally made it all right in the end... I'm still a bit irked by it

but their product, as i have already said, is good for me, and this is the first time I have ever had an issue

Posts: 17 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Sep 20, 2004 Posts: 17

I called customer "support" yesterday about the incorrect name that is being sent to people with caller ID. After spending a few minutes on hold I TWICE had my call disconnected when being transferred to "second level" support. Pretty lame for a phone company.
Jim - Tucson AZ

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 11:50 am Post subject:

hmm... I have to wonder which options you guys are entering on the phone tree. I've always gotten through to a level 2 tech when I use Tech support > trouble placing and receiving calls > trouble with incoming and outgoing calls.

Posts: 185 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Dec 18, 2005 Posts: 185

Vonage doesn't display your name on outbound caller ID, so if its anything other than unknown or Vonage Holdings Corp, its because you have a second hand number on the carrier side, and the CID name was never removed from the database. This has to be corrected through a series of tickets, first to tier 3 then to the carrier that actually has the switch with your number.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 22, 2006 Posts: 2

[quote="JustinS"]I am a Realtor, and I use Vonage for my main business number, and a fax line, and a toll-free plus number for out of town clients.. All in all I love the product, and I am generally a happy customer...

This tracks pretty much with my own experience.

From a technical aspect - Vonage is fine - with one glaring exception, but their c/s is a joke and their reps have just about zero technical acumen.

I have the same setup as you - with the addition of another line. This means two routers - and they provisioned the numbers incorrectly - wrong number on the wrong router.

I was never able to resolve this as I went through a repeated pattern of calling in, explaining the situation to a couple of levels of 'techs' and then having my call drop. I assume this is because my issue wasn't listed in their script and it was just easier and better for the reps' stats to "accidently" disco my call. I went through this 3 times one day - twice on another day.

At this point, I was afraid to ask them to change anything at all lest I be without any service whatsover.

On a side note: Most people need to get a no frills landline if they do much faxing. Without boring you with all the technical details, the codecs Vonage uses (and in fairness, used by all but the most obscure carriers) do a lot of signal manipulation that makes it difficult for fax devices to communicate. You'll notice there is no "bandwidth saver" option on a fax line. What "bandwidth saver actually does is change the codec used, which in turn determines how the audio is compressed. Fax lines use the codec with the least compression that is available via Vonage, and if any of their other codecs were used, fax would be impossible.

Vonage really should either stop advertising fax lines, or actually support them - which would include doing some testing, listing compatible fax machines, and actually supporting issues with fax transmission.

This would entail training expenses, testing expenses, and lost sales as some people with incompatible hardware would stick to landlines rather than invest in new hardware.

HP fax machines seem to fair better than others in general. If you have a Lexmark as I do, you are pretty much screwed.

I have to decide whether to replace my Vonage fax line with a landline, or replace the fax machine.

Not being able to count on fax reception makes this line useless for me - and counting cell phones, we have 8 lines - so I don't need another voice line.