International Rate Increase With NO Explanation or Warning

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 13, 2006 Posts: 9

And why, praytell, did you folks at Vonage delete the entire post that compared rates...

[ADMIN EDIT - BECAUSE IT IS IN VIOLATION OF OUR RULES ]

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 13, 2006 Posts: 9

vidmaster wrote:

Phone carriers have what's called a 'completion rate'. It is the guaranteed rate of completion for a call. Meaning you call a number overseas, it may only have a 35% completion rate. Most carriers usually offer various packages you can purchase as a phone server provider and you are guarenteed x% of call completion. Now obviously, higher completion rate = higher cost. Therefore places where not many people are calling, why pay for a high completion rate? If enough people complain about completion rate, then the completion rate goes up along with the price as the service provider must buy a higher completion rate. This is pretty much how all of the international carriers that sell minutes to all phone providers work.

Ok, but who's complaining about the call completion ratio? We rarely have seen an incomplete call and never made a single complaint. We'd be very willing to pay .08 again if it only meant we might have to call a couple of times before we connected. Just bumping the price up to .20/minute without warning is a very unreasonable solution. And why wouldn't the same price be applicable for all other providers? Did the international provider just decide to suddenly pick on Vonage and no one else?

Posts: 35 · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 9:08 pm Post subject:

BTW, please don't take this as a personal attack, I just wanted to explain where the rate increase most likely came from for anyone else who may be wondering. It's likely that Vonage may have received complaints from other customers about the completion rate and may have in turn contacted their international carrier to seek a higher completion rate and reflected some of that increased cost back on to the customer who calls those numbers. If you really like Vonage and it concerns you which by this post, it does, then take it to the corporate number from the Vonage.com corporate site. Everyone I know who has contacted them at the corporate number receives some kind of follow up. Maybe they can at least shed some light on the rate increase for you as I am just going off of speculation from personal experience.

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 13, 2006 Posts: 9

First off, ok, sorry about the rate comparison. I didn't realize it was against forum rules. I was just trying to show how no one else's rates had increased - I wasn't trying to purposely advocate other services.

However, this does not change the fact that I feel this sudden more than doubling (150%) rate increase without warning or notification was completely unjustified.

Do rate increases happen? Of course. But if you consider businesses like Comcast (who provides the internet service that our Vonage runs on), who send out notifications of price increases a month before they happen, you begin to wonder why Vonage is unable to do the same. I mean, Vonage has all of our email addresses stored already - why can't they just email us to let us know before or even the day it happens???

Also, how can a 150% increase possibly be fair? Sure, going up a penny or two a minute is not so bad, but up 12 cents from .08 to 20 cents a minute overnight???? If my company suddenly decided to increase rates without notification by more than double you'd bet i'd see some immediate complaints and some really pissed off customers.

I'd love to talk to someone - but can you please provide me with a better number to call than the one from the website? I've already spent TWO HOURS on hold for support from the main number just to get someone who can't help me and speaks in broken English. I do believe I am entitled to some sort of reimbursement - AT LEAST for the first month of when the price suddenly went outrageously high without warning. (If you want to put the phone number in a private message that's fine).

Thanks

Posts: 35 · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 11:08 pm Post subject:

try this: http://www.vonage.com/corporate/contact_directions.php

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 13, 2006 Posts: 9

Thanks, i'll call tommorrow.

Posts: 293 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Jan 22, 2006 Posts: 293

Just a curiosity I have here.

I look at the posted rates of Vonage and see that code 58 is $0.08 while code 582 is $0.20.

I'm guessing that is the area related to your calling and just personally wondering if either you previously or Vonage recently have been misclassifying the call.

Not saying that is the case, just as I stated above, a curiousity. Afterall it is probable that I've picked the wrong two codes.

In either case, my experience has been that Vonage seems to be reasonable and generous with the credit requests.

Posts: 9 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 13, 2006 Posts: 9

Actually what happened was the "582" zone .20 cent charge did not even exist before 4/6. All there was was the "58" zone at .08 cents.

Vonage suddenly decided (after a year of using the service at .08 cents) that numbers that start with 58 + 2 should be charged .20 cents instead of .08. The problem is most of the populated areas and major citiies of Venezuela start with 58 + 2, so basically Vonage slapped this fee across most of the country (without warning of course).

To top it off - without comparing prices to other VOIPs - no one else has invented this "582" zone nor raised rates. Just Vonage. Did Vonage purposely do this just to generate revenue? Who's to say. But since no one else needed to increase their rates nor add this "special district" it is highly suspicious.