international calling fees misleading

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 11, 2007 Posts: 3

i just wanted to share something about the "free" international calling that vonage so proudly trumpets. this offer ONLY applies to calls made to landlines and other vonage customers. after searching and searching i finally found a reference to this in the fine print amongst other unrelated conditions.

i'm not pissed that they charge this fee but rather that they go to great lengths to hide it. i would have never know about it until i made a call to my mother who is traveling around europe. if you are going to make an offer that has a significant condition, all i ask is that you make that condition clear.

i apologize if this topic has been presented before.

hopefully this helps someone else not make a mistake that they don't discover until they receive their bill.

Posts: 182 · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 12:52 pm Post subject:

Sorry to hear you got that surprise.

Europe (and most countries in the world) use a caller-pays system on mobile phones, so if you call a mobile phone in, say, the UK, you pay a lot more per minute, whether you are in London or New York. Calls to landlines in the UK are a few cents per minute but calls to mobiles can be 20, 30, or 40 cents a minute or even more because you, as the caller, are paying the cellular company for their airtime.

The way we do things in North America is actually very different from what the rest of the world does.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 11, 2007 Posts: 3

i have no problem with them charging the fee and it makes perfect sense why they do. my problem is that vonage makes it look like calling to europe is no big deal and free in a lot of cases.

clearly disclose the conditions and you keep customer good will because we all hate billing surprises. as it stands i am ready to dump them after 4 years of being a customer because this caps a long list of recent missteps by the company and their customer service reps.

Posts: 1320 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Nov 08, 2006 Posts: 1320

I am not sure how much searching you had to do. It clearly states:

Free calls to Europe offer does not apply to calls to cell phone numbers or to special services numbers such as toll-free or caller-paid information services or 900 numbers, and is limited to Italy, France, Spain, UK and Ireland. Valid for Unlimited plans only.

I found this here: http://vonage.ca/features.php?feature=calls_to_europe&vc_lp_id=v_plans_all&link_id=index_flash_allplans

When I travel to Europe I have an unlocked cell phone, I buy a sim card and top it up (pay as you go here in North America). I don't have anyone call me on that because I know it is cheaper for me to call back home, about 9 Euro cents a minute from Germany to Canada!

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 11, 2007 Posts: 3

since i am an existing customer i looked up the international calls info via their help system and it returned this page: http://www.vonage.com/intrates.php?lid=nav_intrates

without reading the very fine print at the bottom, does it look like there are any restrictions beyond having the unlimited plan?

never crossed my mind that i should look at the plan info for potential customers as a reference.

thanks for the cell phone tip, though.

Posts: 429 · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 8:28 pm Post subject:

Sorry to hear you got a suprise, I guess I was just aware of those conditions somehow.

My two cents is that Vonage could sure make it a whole lot easier for customers to know the rate to call any phone number before you actually pick up the phone and dial. Look, there are a ton of country codes, area codes, city codes, landline, cellular and for someone who doesn't make a lot of international calls, it can be just plain confusing. I say, if they can almost instantly charge my account when I hang up a call, they can give customers access to the same database to check the price for the exact number you want to dial. My thinking is they don't, because they can count on a certain number of dialing mistakes every month that add up to more money.