Savings

Posts: 120 · Member of the Week Joined: Aug 30, 2006 Posts: 120

Asking for support from Vonage regarding things your ISP, Cordless Phone manufacturer, or someone else should be providing usually ends up in poor advice. Vonage has nothing to do with anything but the Vonage adapter(s). It's up to Vonage clients to settle their home networks, and phone hardware in a suitable manner that suits their needs, and to make sure their ISP provides a solid network for reliable Voip streams. However, I do agree it can be a pain in the butt to get things running smoothly.

I moved my office also last month in order to have my cable modem closer to the point where the cable line enters my house. I spent dozens of hours perfecting/tweaking everything from splitters, coax cables, new cable modem, firmware update on my router and only called Vonage when my actual Vonage adapter started to act up. They quickly sent me a new one within a week, and I was up and running again Smile

However, I agree that Vonage should not have provided you with bad advice. They should have simply said "sorry, we don't support that. Please call your ISP to work out any dsl issues, and please call a network consultant to help you work out the network schema in your house". Sometimes I think they try a little too hard, and it usually results in providing advice for something they don't know much about.

I called techsupport a couple of times, and quickly noticed, like with any tech company, that I can know more then they do, after researching any topic on my own for a bit. This forum has been a good source for that Smile

Posts: 16 · Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 7:16 pm Post subject:

Thanks for that. I didn't call Vonage for network connectivity help, they were on the line working with me on another issue (connecting the second modem) when my network went down. They had me undo the work they just told me to do and my network came back up.

I didn't call them about my cordless phone, but they should be aware and notify people that there are certain models out there that interfere with their product. Asking what model phone you have should be a troubleshooting question early on.

I was on the line with tech support another time (one modem kept returning to default settings) which is when I asked them about instructions on how to wire my home so that I could get both my Vonage numbers... was there a way to use the second line (albeit dead line) coming into my house so that I could move my phones. That's when I was given the brilliant instructions to use my second dsl modem. I only asked because they already have home wiring instructions for one line, and since I can get as many phone lines as I want with Vonage, you would think that I wasn't in a unique situation and that someone somewhere had already asked this question and it had been addressed. So I asked.

I think it's delusional to think that the tech support tries too hard. They are in the high tech business and their techs should have at least a basic understanding of how dsl works. When I asked that question in a different forum just for dsl, I darn near got laughed at. Told, would you put two dial up modems on one line? No, so why two dsl modems? It was a bit humiliating.

Sorry you thought I contacted Vonage for support for other issues. They are always my last resort. I spent hours on the line with outside sources and hours researching online trying to understand and fix the problems. The problems I mentioned, which are only a few, were only put to question to Vonage tech support because they were already on the stupid phone line with me for some other Vonage problem.

Posts: 120 · Member of the Week Joined: Aug 30, 2006 Posts: 120

sorry if you took my post as being pro Vonage and against you. Not how I meant it at all. I was agreeing, cause my experience has been the same unless my question was directly related to the phone adapter and/or Vonage services/features.

I had to figure it all on my own by asking other Vonage users, via this forum, and a few others, hence the hours spent to get it working right.

However, once I got things worked out, Vonage seemed to work fine. I hope you get it working reliably eventually. Users on this forum are quite helpful if you post detailed questions on your problem.

I've worked in a few tech support departments in my early years and learned quickly that companies tend to put few resources in this department, resulting in sub par support more often then not. And turn over in tech support gives managers nightmares, resulting in newbies answering the phones quite often. My motto has always been don't talk out your butt to clients when working in tech support, but not everyone works that way :\

That being said, I did get one smart guy on the phone from Vonage tech support in mississauga, Ryan was his name. I doubt I'll ever get him again unfortunately Sad

Posts: 16 · Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 9:25 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the 'support' LOL! I wasn't upset with you, just ticked off at Vonage. Yeah, I've busted my buns trying to find a work around that pleases my 'boss' aka husband! He's in the early learning stage of technical stuff and knows just enough to be dangerous... he's just a level or two below me so together we can break anything!

I have an aptitude for fixing this kind of stuff so hopefully I'll get it solved. I do have a detailed post here but so far no responses.

If they could make an amplifier for cordless phone ranges I'd be in business! I've looked extensively and haven't found anything.

Oh, I should give kudos to a tech site that I love just for the fun of it - no particular relevance to this post but X-10.com is fantastic and inexpensive. All kinds of cool gadgets from audio visual to security and phones and automation, etc... You'll love it... everyone does.

Thanks for letting me vent! Karen

Posts: 448 · Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 1:45 pm Post subject:

dewd wrote:

I recently got a "we want you back" letter from Verizon. They were offering a package very similar to Vonage - only $15 MORE per month (and fewer features). Why did they even waste the paper to offer this to me????

I get those every couple months. Take a closer look, though. If yours is like mine, it's $15/month more than Vonage just for the unlimited long distance package alone, not counting the $18+ per month for the base phone service itself.