Rate Vonage Customer Service

Posts: 16 · Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:13 pm Post subject: Rate Vonage Customer Service

Do you think its better to have Vonage Customer care outside on inside the homeland ???
any good/bad experience you like to share with us with regarding your call with any Vonage representative ?
just post it here and let us know ! Very Happy

Posts: 102 · Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 1:08 am Post subject:

Vonage customer service improved a lot since last year. my mom used to tell me that she had hard time understanding the reps before but based on my experience theyre doing a pretty good job.

i have bad experience with their telemarketers though..i didnt knew a line has been added to my account until i called and an agent explained why i paid twice as my usual bill

over all rate though i can say satisfactory

Posts: 15 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 23, 2007 Posts: 15

When I first got Vonage just over 2 years ago, I had the hardest time understanding the customer support reps. I've had to call customer support more than 15 times within the last 3 days...
I have only gotten to speak to TWO (2) people that sound american and talk very clear. One person out of the two, did have a texas type accent though.

I am not sure if their customer support calling center is based overseas or if they just have a lot of middle eastern people working for them. but, I think some of the people REALLY need to take speach therapy courses. It is bad enough I'm hard of hearing, but to barely be able to understand someone is worse.

I actually had to hang up yesturday and call back because I couldn't understand the person. First time I've had to do that.

I will say the english in some of the reps has gotten better over the past few months though.

Posts: 208 · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:57 pm Post subject:

Here's the question:

Would you rather pay $5 more per month and be guaranteed to talk to one of the American reps?

or

Would you rather be interested in a .25c/minute premium number to call for American Vonage tech support?

Think before you answer. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there in this whole Voip thing, it really is.

I'm sure the outsource reps must be able to solve a good share of the cases that come their way, otherwise, there's no way to quantify the cost.

Posts: 102 · Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 10:04 am Post subject:

i'd rather pay $5 per month.. i believe that would be unlimited calling as well right? Lol

Posts: 172 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Apr 19, 2006 Posts: 172

I have nothing against overseas reps as long as they could understand me and I could understand them...I am no racist. Although, sad to say sometimes talking to tech support from India at times is frustrating as some (not all) have thick accent and couldn't understand what my questions are or could not clearly express what he really means or suggesting. I just wish Vonage would have a training for them so they could listen to a customer intently and also try to lose a bit of their accent. They are really nice people and very helpful but oh well if you can't understand them it would still be hopeless since you can't get things done due to language barrier.

______________________________________________
*Beauty & Brain? Who said a girl can't have it both?**c".?

Posts: 41 · Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 5:49 pm Post subject: re

I don't have a problem with tech support. I have a problem with customer service. They are much more rude than tech support. I was calm last night. I have been without service off and on. Tech support found it to be my firmware. He updated it. I told him its been going on for about 3-4 weeks. He said that during that time they have been updating the service.
He warmed transferred the call to customer service for a credit request. Customer service said no problem. I speak to him and he said I am not going to issue a credit until the issue is resolved. I said they continue to say the issue is resolved during the past 3-4 weeks. Its solved for now. Tech support was listening in and said the issue was resolved. Customer service done nothing and hung up on us. He gets me over to someone else and they gave me a credit.
I said I am not no credit junkie. Take a look. I received one credit during the past 4 years because I was charged for an international call and it was a friend of mine who at the time was on Vonage service. Go figure. Just venting. Smile

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: May 05, 2007 Posts: 6

Well, I can say that when I had Vonage 2 years ago, and the tech support was in the US. I had a good experience then. I did leave the company because QoS features were lacking; and firmware updates finally broke my service.

I bought the service again last month. My first experience with customer service regarding voice quality went rather well. However, when my service completely broke 2 weeks into the service, customer service suddenly became useless.

I can say that as a network engineer that owns his own computer consulting company, I deal with Indian tech support from a variety of companies on a regular basis. Some companies hire techs that actually sound British. You can really understand them, and sometimes (but extremely rarely) they have some degree of expertise. In my experience with Vonage, this is not the case.

I began with troubleshooting my problem by sending an email to tech support. I received a prompt reply. I tried the solutions, but they didn't fix the issue. The email said to then call tech support. I talked to tech support through 2 tiers of support over 2 hours. The more "advanced" tech said she would put in a ticket and call me back in 24 hours.

After waiting for 3 days I called back. I asked for tier 2 support, but still had to waste 30 minutes with some guy that absolutely could not understand English. It took 6 tries over 10 minutes to explain that:
"I get a dial tone. I dial a number. There is silence for 10 seconds. Then I get a fast busy signal."

You would think that telephone tech support could understand phrases about telephone tech support. I was finally transferred to tier 2 support. Over 1 1/2 hours, this tech had me do the exact same things that the last tier 2 agent did 3 days earlier.

Finally, she insisted that I make changes to my IP address settings on my Vonage adapter & firewall that didn't match my network (or any semblance of networking theory). I kept asking for a network engineer or tier 3 support, because her network addressing settings made no since. She couldn't understand, because she had NO network training. She refused to transfer me & told me that I either needed to remove my firewall, because "It is a firewall", or I needed to upgrade my $700 Sonicwall firewall/router to support Vonage!

I am usually calm with foreign tech support. But after requesting to be transferred over and over I finally hung up. Luckily, I finally remembered something that Vonage's American tech support told me 2 years ago. They actually knew something about firewalls. After 4 hours of heartache on the phone with tech support, and over 1 week without service, I fixed the problem with 2 year old advice: "Disable SIP transformations".

Here is the crux of the situation. I don't believe that all Indian tech support is bad. Just 99% of it, unless you just need to reboot something, or make sure it is plugged in, or you can't read instructions.

If you are going to use India for tech support for a NATIONAL COMPANY, then pay for support centers that hire techs with real degrees in information technology AND have extensive training in English. Otherwise, use American tech support. Not only are you taking jobs from Americans, but you are providing lousy service.

I have numerous friends that have worked in tech support call centers. Memphis, TN is one of the cheapest places in the US to hire entry level techs due to the low cost of living and large supply of tech savvy individuals. I understand wanting to be competitive, but suggesting $5 a month extra or a per minute charge right from the beginning? NO!

I might understand a per minute charge for premium support after 90 days (note that I said premium). That gives the customer time to get the bugs out of the setup & get used to it.

I bought 3 Vonage adapters last month. One for me, one for my elderly father, and one for my mother-in-law. Had I not been able to fix the problem on my own, you would have lost 3 customers at once. If I ever need tech support again, I hope that you have changed your tech support call center.

Posts: 208 · Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 3:42 pm Post subject:

You say "I hope you change" ... keep in mind this is an unofficial forum. Vonage does not have official forums.

Now, it sounds like you didn't speak with someone in Advanced Tech. And, you're right, most of the other techs seem to just have you restart. What I've done in the past is just say that I was previously speaking with a representative from Advanced Tech in the US, and they usually transfer me without any trouble.

Shrug, if you're upset at the way that the overseas reps didn't transfer you at your request, I advise that you e-mail them or call corporate. There's a number for corporate somewhere on their website under the Investor Relations link.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: May 05, 2007 Posts: 6

Like you pointed out, Vonage doesn't have officially moderated forums. This is just one more example of the lack of support from them. I really can't expect someone who doesn't understand English to transfer me when I ask them to. That would be too basic of a request in my experience. From what I've read in these forums, it is not uncommon to get overseas tech support for this company that is impossible to converse with.

On both tier 1 & tier 2 support, I told them that I had been speaking with tier 2 support before. I even told them that on my previous call, tier 2 was waiting on a response from tier 3. That didn't change the fact that I had to go through troubleshooting completely from the beginning every time I talked to a new person. Even the tier 3 person didn't listen to my symptoms. She started her troubleshooting by reading from a script and asking me if I had a dial tone after I just told her that I did. And, on top of it, she insisted multiple times that I hold the phone up to my Vonage phone so she could hear what it was doing. Apparently, just listening to me when I describe the symptoms wasn't enough.

I would hope that even though this is not officially moderated, that market would data mine these forums to get hints on customer retention. I shouldn't have to dig through Vonage's web site for Investor Relations. At least in my experience, if you have to dig for contact information, the people that you do speak with probably either don't want to or can't help you. There are too many other Voip providers out there for me to go that far to complain.

The nice thing is that my Voip box is easily unlocked (and sold pre-unlocked on eBay). If I want to, I can easily change providers. Vonage will either learn that, or go under. I have already heard rumors that Vonage is either selling out or closing. If anyone has heard anything on this, I would be interested in knowing for sure.