could not dial an emergeny # on vonage tonight.

Posts: 109 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jun 21, 2005 Posts: 109

we had a slight emergency with out 2 year old daughter and needed to call the poison control hotline number 1-800-222-1222 but Vonage did not connect we just got a message that said "number unavailable"

we tried 3 times after checking the phone book and the web we were calling the right number but Vonage failed to let the call go thru.

we switched to cell phone and it went right thru.

i see this as something that the techs need to fix right away!

our daughter is fine she just grabbed some cherry flavored gavascons (ant-acid) pills they advised just to give her a meal and she would be fine.

Posts: 25 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Jul 19, 2005 Posts: 25

Keep in mind also, you can dial your local hospital emergency room also. But that is curious about the Poison Control Help line. Did you try both with and without the 1 before 800??? This will give you the Admin numbers http://www.aapcc.org/director2.htm Since 800-222-1222 routes to the state Poison Center, most likely Vonage may have a glitch in their system.

Posts: 409

a-dhold wrote:

i see this as something that the techs need to fix right away!

Scary situation!
In addition to this post I do hope you contacted Customer Care to let them know this happened.

Posts: 57 · Full Forum Member Joined: Dec 16, 2005 Posts: 57

I live in Oklahoma and just dialed the number you gave, and got "welcome to the oklahoma poison control center". So I'm not sure what's going on where you live.

Posts: 57 · Full Forum Member Joined: Sep 02, 2005 Posts: 57

Having an 18 mo old, I hope something can be done about this.

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:00 am Post subject:

Just to back up the testing...

I called the number from my Vonage line (registered in Maine, and I'm currently in Maine). I got the New Jersey Poison Control Center.

So, the good news is that I DID get to a poison control center, with an announcement that if I felt this was life-threatening to press any key during the announcement. However, I'm not sure why it ended up routing to New Jersey (Vonage HQ?) or if that is in any way significant.

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:08 am Post subject:

addweb wrote:

Having an 18 mo old, I hope something can be done about this.

The best thing to do about it, from your own perspective, is to call the number and test it. If it doesn't work, hang up and call Vonage Customer Service immediately. and inform them of the problem.

Also consider looking up the number for your state poison control center and writing it down on a sticker on your phone, right next to the phone number for your local police station and fire department in case 911 does not work for you at some point.

Never hurts to have a backup plan.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:55 am Post subject:

NateHoy wrote:

Also consider looking up the number for your state poison control center and writing it down on a sticker on your phone, right next to the phone number for your local police station and fire department in case 911 does not work for you at some point.

This is a good idea even for your land line. The 911 routing doesn't always work properly with land lines either. Additionally, many times the "911" number can only handle so many simultaneous connections whereas the local numbers will keep rolling over.

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:12 am Post subject:

VonageTPA wrote:

This is a good idea even for your land line. The 911 routing doesn't always work properly with land lines either. Additionally, many times the "911" number can only handle so many simultaneous connections whereas the local numbers will keep rolling over.

Agreed. "911" "should" work all the time, for cell, landline, and Vonage. That's little consolation when it doesn't, and you don't want to take the time to look up phone numbers in an emergency.

I haven't looked in a phone book in a while (grin), but they used to have a handy page at the front where they listed the local emergency numbers for various things. Might be worth verifying each of them work and copying them onto a cheap sticky label and sticking it to a few key phones in the house, or on the wall near some phones.

Posts: 4777 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4777

We've had reports in the past of 800 numbers rejecting calls from Vonage because they appeared to be out of state calls. Some 800 numbers only accept calls from a specific area. Vonage calls all seem to come from New Jersey to some phone systems. It's possible that this is another case like that.