Account Cancellation- Headaches

Posts: 20 · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 10:03 am Post subject: Account Cancellation- Headaches

Why does Vonage make it so difficult to cancel your account? I have read on this forum and on DSLReports of others experiencing the same problem.

Here are my main frustrations:
• You cannot cancel your account online
• Calling customer service to cancel your account can take an extremely long time. you are kept on hold

It my opinion Vonage has a great product. In fact, I am still a customer of theirs. I only want to cancel a business account that was set as a short term solution.

Vonage has come a long way in the past year with their customer service; however, the headaches associated with closing account needs to dramatically improve. Being kept on hold to speak to a customer service agent for over a half hour is just not acceptable.

Posts: 20 · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 10:39 am Post subject:

Just got off the phone with Vonage...

I spoke with Rachael, employee # 12059 regarding closing my account. She spent over 5 minutes refusing to close my account and kept on asking me to reuse this service somewhere else.

After, she gave up trying to convince me I didn't want to close my account; she placed me on hold for another 5 minutes. She came back on the phone and started asking me to keep the service. At that time I was very frank with her and told her to close the account. I was placed on hold again for about a minute then was advised that I could close my account but would pay a lot of fees. She said this account did not qualify for an automatic waiver of the equipment costs and I would be billed $99. I explained to her that the account had completed 6 full billing cycles (it’s on my online account) and that I called back in May which I was informed to close it after June 5.

She refused to waive any of the fees and said they would be charged to my account. I said you can close my account and we will place in dispute the charged with the bank.

I would like to know why I had such a problem and why it was so difficult closing an account. Account Number: 1005138054

Maybe Vonage may want to take a lesson from AOL… if you recall one of their customers recorded their experience and posted online. It made news on CNN.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13447232/

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 26, 2007 Posts: 1

I am dissatisfied and feel cheated by Vonage.

When I was subscribing to Vonage, an additional line was almost shoved down my throat and I was told that I will have 24/7 total control over my Vonage account once my account is set and I would be able to remove this additional line whenever I choose to do so.

Well it is now almost 3 months after that phone call, and you would think I have complete control over my account 24/7 thru the web interface right? WRONG!!!!!

Today I have tried to remove this additional line. After spending half an hour trying to find a useful link about how to remove this additional line I gave up and gave a phone call to Vonage Customer Care and learned that, not only I was NOT allowed to remove a line from my account from their web interface, but also the customer representative is NOT able to do it for me, because I simply called after hours and their account management desk is closed. Hello? You are outsourcing your Customer Services to overseas, do they follow the same time zone with us over Philippines ???? And when I asked to talk with her supervisor, I was told that her supervisor is unavailable and don't know when he will be back.

How nice is that???

They keep staff online 24/7 to make sales but they don't keep anybody online to satisfy customer requests about cancellation?

That is not only a poor business management but also flat out being cheap.

Furthermore, as it turns out I have been lied at the signup, not once, but twice in fact. First, being able to have 24/7 "total" control over my account through their web interface (not correct), and second I can not cancel my additional line "whenever" I choose to do so (not correct as well).

So to make long story short, the above posters problems do not seem to be unique but unfortunately wide spread. Sad

Posts: 448 · Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:17 pm Post subject:

If you have an American Express card, I recommend using that as the payment method on your account. I don't have to dispute many charges, but on those rare occasions, I have found American Express is by far the best at standing up on behalf of their customers.

From everything I've read here recently, and in dslreports.com, I'm expecting a battle when I try to close my account (which is almost 3 years old now). If they give me any static, I'll just let AMEX deal with them.

Posts: 102 · Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:26 pm Post subject:

the only lines that we can remove from our web account are toll free numbers and virtual numbers..the rest we have to call, reach account management since customer service cant do it and have it remove. the reason why we cannot remove other lines especially cancel an account via web is simply because there are charges attached with every removal and of course they have people there too whose job is to keep us as customers. however lately to reach that dept., you need to be on hold for an hour and they are only open until 8pm eastern standard time.

sometimes people are cancelling not because they are not satisfied with the service that they are getting but they feel uncertain if they could get help right away once they encounter problems with the service. this draws to a conclusion then that Vonage needs more people to take in calls and that my hopefully that lessens customers frustration to get help may it be cancelling an account or just a simple modification in the account.

with regards to agents in the Philippines, i believe they are way better than those people in India that we usually talked to before.

Posts: 20 · Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 9:16 pm Post subject:

The next time I call to cancel service I am going to record the entire conversation and posted it to YouTube.

I found a great article on how to do this at:
http://skypejournal.com/blog/archives/2005/02/call_recording.php

I thought I might share this information since I often read others with frustrations. Perhaps, if people start recording their conversations and posting them online, others will hear in real life what’s really happening and prompt Vonage to change.

Again, I like Vonage and the products they offer; however, don’t understand their customer service practices. They turn a deaf ear to many complaints and never respond.

By the way, when you call Vonage you are told “your call may be recorded…”:

Posts: 81 · Vonage Forum Senior Joined: Feb 27, 2006 Posts: 81

johncostanzo wrote:

The next time I call to cancel service I am going to record the entire conversation and posted it to YouTube.

I found a great article on how to do this at:
http://skypejournal.com/blog/archives/2005/02/call_recording.php

I thought I might share this information since I often read others with frustrations. Perhaps, if people start recording their conversations and posting them online, others will hear in real life what’s really happening and prompt Vonage to change.

Again, I like Vonage and the products they offer; however, don’t understand their customer service practices. They turn a deaf ear to many complaints and never respond.

By the way, when you call Vonage you are told “your call may be recorded…”:

That is correct. Your call is used for training and scoring. For the call centers I support we have sessions called "Customer Listening" where we listen to calls live and watch the agent's screens. And you must also give the same notification if you are going to record the call. If you do not and you post it to a web site, Vonage can sue you to have recording remove and you may be held liable for damages.

Vonage may be in financial trouble, but they have enough lawyers on retainer that, in a legal battle, you would run out of money long before they do.