Bought 2 WRTP54G's: Both have "Invalid" MAC's

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 10, 2006 Posts: 3

I bought my second router from Best Buy today and both of the routers that I have give an Invalid MAC address error when I try to register. Someone please help, I don't want to sign up for bell south.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 6:16 pm Post subject:

you're using vonage.com/activate right?
try another one. they've probably been bought and returned.
and make sure you're inputting it right (i.e. O instead of 0 is an easy mistake)

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 10, 2006 Posts: 3

They both appear to be brand new. Trust me, I have not made any mistakes in entering in a wrong char. I have tried countless times in the last two days. And yes, I have been using vonage.com/activate. Is there no other solution?

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 6:21 pm Post subject:

you can try calling and if you get the right person they can research it and see if it's been activated before or what the problem is.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 10, 2006 Posts: 3

I refuse to call them again.. what a joke it is... Last night i spent 2 hours on the phone and got transferred 5 time between 3 departments.

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

airdrew32 wrote:

They both appear to be brand new. Trust me, I have not made any mistakes in entering in a wrong char. I have tried countless times in the last two days. And yes, I have been using vonage.com/activate. Is there no other solution?

Sometimes the boxes are marked as being intended for Vonage. You might ask about that at Best Buy.

Posts: 17 · Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 11:52 pm Post subject:

I was recently in Radio Shack, and they were dealing with the same exact problem there. They could not provision two brand new WRTP54G's. I am starting to think, there may be problems with the Vonage provisioning system.

Posts: 277 · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:21 am Post subject:

This is a side effect of Vonage's obsession with preventing anyone from selling their adapter to anyone else to use. Their system has gone WAY overboard in the direction of locking out MAC addresses if they're not absolutely certain the unit is "legitimately new." Sometimes I think Vonage must have a "Vice President in charge of pissing off customers and potential customers", because its the only way they could be SO good at it!

If you look through the postings on this board over the last several months, you'll see numerous postings from individuals who have bought new, sealed adapters of various makes and models, from authorized Vonage retailers, and been unable to activate them. All Vonage will ever do is say "take it back to the store and make them give you another one", and some have gone through that song and dance multiple times. Of course, if they WERE focused on making the customer happy, it would take all of 60 seconds or less for them to enter the MAC address into the database and activate it.

If I was one of their authorized retailers and this kept happening, I'd be screaming bloody murder to Vonage also. Inconveniences and pisses off customers, forces much additional cost and loss of good will for the retailers, and for what purpose? Grrrrr............

Posts: 2252 · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:37 am Post subject:

Hey DF: I am going to go out on a limb here, but I think this problem was a vender related issue and Vonage is very much feeling the pain also.

Posts: 17 · Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:38 am Post subject:

DallasFlier wrote:

If I was one of their authorized retailers and this kept happening, I'd be screaming bloody murder to Vonage also. Inconveniences and pisses off customers, forces much additional cost and loss of good will for the retailers, and for what purpose? Grrrrr............

The manager of my local Radio Shack was screaming bloody murder, lol. Unfortunately the person he was talking to at Vonage could barely speak english and refused to connect him to a supervisor.