Broker told me DON'T PAY for that Vonage IPO!

Posts: 30 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: May 21, 2006 Posts: 30

So I went to my monthly investment club meeting tonight.

Our broker goes to every other meeting. He's an older guy, been trading the market for a long time. He's a VP at a major national brokerage firm, a senior broker at the firm, and has his own financial radio show program.

I told him, "So, I bought the Vonage IPO..."

Before I could say another word, he says, "Don't pay them a DIME! If I were you, I would sit on my money and refuse to pay them for it. They lied, they tried to screw you. Screw them. Don't give them a single dime!"

"Who did the underwriting?"

me: "Smith-Barney, Deutche Bank, UBS"

broker: "Crooks."

me: "So, what does this mean? Are they going to redo the IPO?"

broker: (shrugging shoulders) "They're going to have to pull it back. How could they get away with this? People are going to jail over this one."

He then got sidetracked to speak with other investor members.

One thing to keep in mind is that our broker gets very excited and he's very in-your-face about his opinion (think of Jim Kramer). While he may not be right about people going to jail, or that they'll pull back the IPO, I did listen to what he had to say about not paying for it.

You guys do what you want. Pay for it out of some weird unfounded guilt -- like being told you're buying a Mercedes and getting delivered a Hyundai, and paying for it anyway, aw-shucks. I'm not paying a dime.

Posts: 66 · Full Forum Member Joined: May 25, 2006 Posts: 66

Quote:

like being told you're buying a Mercedes and getting delivered a Hyundai, and paying for it anyway

There seems to be a lot of people here who feel burned in this way, but as I read the prospectus, it pretty well described a Hyundai priced at Mercedes money?

I wonder if a lot of people thought it was going to miraculously turn into a Mercedes simply because of the price stated?

I have to say that something doesn't smell entirely fresh to me about the whole way the IPO has gone, but I think that investors need to shoulder a certain element of resposibility.

I don't think you should not pay for the shares. Wait until someone actually does go to jail or the IPO is reversed or whatever happens, and then get your money back from the brokers/insurers. And if it turns out that nothing wrong or improrietory has been done, then you know that you just took a bad gamble. You win some you lose some. That's the nature of the stock market.

Posts: 72 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 21, 2006 Posts: 72

Just remember - it's not your broker who gets their credit rating screwed, and potentially ends up in court, for not paying. If the IPO is 'undone' in some way then you will get back the money that you have paid. Surely being out-of-pocket for a period is better than risking the full force of the law for refusing to pay.

Posts: 62 · Full Forum Member Joined: Apr 29, 2005 Posts: 62

DMS1 wrote:

Just remember - it's not your broker who gets their credit rating screwed, and potentially ends up in court, for not paying. If the IPO is 'undone' in some way then you will get back the money that you have paid. Surely being out-of-pocket for a period is better than risking the full force of the law for refusing to pay.

I have heard this credit statement quite a bit. Can someone speak to this further? I have been told by corporate lawyers that credit is not an issue here, a broker cannot mark your credit in this instance. Anyone know for sure?

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 22, 2006 Posts: 1

Even if not paying for the shares has no affect on credit, I wonder if you will eventually incur the annual maintenance fee from the broker because the account would remain open. Seems like that would have an affect on credit.

Posts: 111 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jun 15, 2006 Posts: 111

I have no idea if they can hurt your credit rating, but seems doubtful since Vonage is obligated to cover any customer who does not pay, so the broker does not suffer any loss.

Now if Vonage tries to go after its customers, it will mean even more bad PR. Plus the very first thing the class action suits will do is request a preliminary injunction against Vonage from collecting on its fraudulent IPO. Such injunctions are not all that hard to get, and remember there are ten differant firms out there, and only one of them has to be sucessful.

There seems to be some misconception that you have to sign up with one of the firms. Actually, they in theory each represent all of you automatically, though if you don't want to be represented you will be given an opportunity to "opt-out" of the lawsuit.

You only have to sign up if you want to be a class representative, aka a "lead plaintiff."

I encourage people to do this because you will be helping the cause of recovering money, but it is not at all necessary.

I hope that explains things!

ckudrna wrote:

DMS1 wrote:

Just remember - it's not your broker who gets their credit rating screwed, and potentially ends up in court, for not paying. If the IPO is 'undone' in some way then you will get back the money that you have paid. Surely being out-of-pocket for a period is better than risking the full force of the law for refusing to pay.

I have heard this credit statement quite a bit. Can someone speak to this further? I have been told by corporate lawyers that credit is not an issue here, a broker cannot mark your credit in this instance. Anyone know for sure?

Posts: 72 · Full Forum Member Joined: Mar 21, 2006 Posts: 72

BigTime wrote:

Now if Vonage tries to go after its customers, it will mean even more bad PR.

Why does everyone think that it will be bad PR for Vonage if they go after people who refuse to pay what they owe? Vonage is a VOIP company, and its number of VOIP subscribers must be many times its number of shareholders. and many-many times greater than the small number of shareholders who refuse to pay. As a Vonage customer, which press release would you prefer to read - the one that says that Vonage is diligently recovering money from bad debtors to keep its costs down, or the one that says Vonage has had to lose money as a result of some bad debtors and may need to increase prices to cover these losses?

Posts: 17 · Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 2:40 pm Post subject:

I sat back and watched the train wreck that is the Vonage IPO for awhile now. I have come to certain conclusions. Vonage at the time leading up to this IPO practically begged their loyal customers to purchase the stock. Multiple e-mails, leaving voice mail messages, etc. I read the prospectus and given how hard Vonage pushed the IPO I said, "No way." I firmly believe that Vonage knew the IPO set price at 17 dollars a share was highly inflated.

This whole incident reeks of fraud. When the law suits and investigations are finished I have a feeling certain individuals associated with Vonage are going to be facing jail time or at the very least severe penalties. If I were in the shoes of the victims of this fraud, I would not pay them a dime. Do not be swayed by the fan boys and cool aid drinkers of Vonage. It is a good product, that does not mean the corporate players and shills of Vonage are good.

Posts: 111 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jun 15, 2006 Posts: 111

Of course suing your best customers, the ones who had so much faith in the company they spend thousands of dollars to buy the IPO, will be bad for the company.

Plus, for those that just scan headlines rather than read the story, they will see "Vonage sues customers who bought its failed IPO" and be turned off from the company.

I also agree with Actor90. Nobody says that you are entitled to make money off an IPO, but the custom that is followed in virtually every IPO is to slightly underprice the IPO. Here they overpriced it by a huge amount. Stocks just don't fall 25% the day of their IPO, and 50% in a month.

DMS1 wrote:

BigTime wrote:

Now if Vonage tries to go after its customers, it will mean even more bad PR.

Why does everyone think that it will be bad PR for Vonage if they go after people who refuse to pay what they owe? Vonage is a VOIP company, and its number of VOIP subscribers must be many times its number of shareholders. and many-many times greater than the small number of shareholders who refuse to pay. As a Vonage customer, which press release would you prefer to read - the one that says that Vonage is diligently recovering money from bad debtors to keep its costs down, or the one that says Vonage has had to lose money as a result of some bad debtors and may need to increase prices to cover these losses?

Posts: 94 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Jun 17, 2006 Posts: 94

Vonage has 1.6MM customers., Going after 500 won't cause a problem.