Known downtime in at least N. Virginia

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 28, 2008 Posts: 3

after 20 minutes of waiting a Vonage customer service rep told me that there is known downtime in my area preventing incoming phone calls. (I have a dial tone and can make calls, but incoming get a busy or a msg saying "number is disconnected." (glad my business doesn't use vonage!)

It is amazing that:

1) Vonage wouldn't simply post known downtime on its website so people wouldn't have to waste their time calling the India call bank and waiting on hold.

2) THe only way I got a Vonage phone number was by digging through google to find that someone had posted a secret Vonage support number in another forum. The Vonage "contact us" and "support" pages are completely useless for anyone who wants to report a downtime issue or actually get any useful information or make a communication with Vonage. There is no sign of any phone number or email or email submission form anywhere on the Vonage support web pages.

3) The web support pages simply send you around in a circle and mostly ask you to make sure that your account is active. A complete moron has designed these pages to be as unhelpful as they possibly could and to maximize the time wasted by Vonage customers. And in the end, to just also waste the time of the people in their call bank in Hyderabad.

4) a pathetic showing by Vonage. I"ll be looking for a new Voip service provider who understands basic customer service efficiency and communcation methods and doesn't hire complete morons to design their customer (dis)service web pages.

Posts: 881 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Nov 05, 2005 Posts: 881

It took me all of two-clicks to find a support contact number on the Vonage web site. http://www.vonage.com/help_contactUs.php?lid=footer_contact&refer_id=WEBCU0706010001W1

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 28, 2008 Posts: 3

That page has no phone number.

From that page I clicked on "Technical Support/ Voice and Call Quality"

From that page I clicked on "Unable to receive inbound calls"

From that page (which wasted my time with things that have nothing to do with solving a problem for someone whose connection is otherwise working but is unable to *receive* calls) I then clicked on "If you need further assistance getting your Vonage service working, please Contact Us."

Which took me back to the first page!.

Total incompetence and terrible web page design.

Also I clicked on various other things on that page that look they ought to link with a page that has a phone number and I still never saw a phone number, so I don't even know what you think you are linking to.

Wherever the phone number is currently hidden it should be front and center.

Or better, I don't even want to talk to anyone in Hyderabad, I simple want an email touble ticket submission so that I can email my issue to them and tell them to fix the problem and not waste my time on hold.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 28, 2008 Posts: 3

After clicking about every link on that page I still found no phone number.

Eventually I found that the ** GREYED OUT ** headings are the links. The things that don't even look like normal links like all the other links on the page are the call and email page links.

If something is a link, make it look like a link for crying out loud! And if you want people to think it is active, **don't grey it out**.

see google.com for intelligent simple effective web page design.

web design 101: links are underlined!

Posts: 881 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Nov 05, 2005 Posts: 881

How much more simpler could it be? On the page I referred you to, there is a BIG call button...thats a sure giveaway that clicking that button would give you a telephone number.

Posts: 1179 · Member of the Week Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1179

I agree Darrell, the # is pretty obvious to me as well.

Posts: 1327 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Nov 08, 2006 Posts: 1327

Since you couldn't see the big call button here is the number.

Call us toll free at 1-VONAGE-HELP (1-866-243-4357)

Posts: 831 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: Jun 08, 2007 Posts: 831

vonzmisst wrote:

It is amazing that:

1) Vonage wouldn't simply post known downtime on its website so people wouldn't have to waste their time calling the India call bank and waiting on hold.

Typically (at least when I had an outage in my area about 6 months ago), a notice is posted on the main "Account Dashboard" page toward the upper right hand corner. Currently it reads:

Service Announcements
No service announcements at this time