Sporadic connection to international numbers

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 03, 2005 Posts: 2

This started a few weeks ago. I dial a subscriber overseas and one of the following happens:

1. Rings, no pick up (yes they are at home)
2. Rings, they pick up, I can hear them, but they can not hear me
3. Rings, they pick up, neither of us can hear each other

After many many tries, the call goes through hence I could
reconstruct what happened.

Looking at my bill, I get charged by Vonage for ALL attempts.
Even at 7 cents a minute, it adds up.

This became fairly regular now, appears to be a detoriation
of the service (worked fairly well prior).

As usual Vonage customer service did not reply to my repeated
emails. In the past I got only reply when I wrote directly to their
CEO. I may have to do it again.

On a very small sample (my friend uses Vonage as well and she is experiencing the same problem) it seems as not an isolated case.

While Vonage is OK from the price/performance perspective, their support is lousy. :(

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 1:21 pm Post subject:

just out of curiosity, has it been tried from another phone? (pots, different Voip, cell) and where are you trying to call?

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 03, 2005 Posts: 2

I assume you are asking if I tried to call the overseas number from a non-Vonage phone? The answer is YES, I tried POTS (Verizon) and it works every time.

Next I will try Skype to see if it exhibit the same problem.

While I do not know how the Vonage network is constructed, my guess is
there could be some performance issues at an overseas gateway.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 24, 2005 Posts: 1

I have had the same problems with my international calls, even calls to Canada have connect issues.
The customer support response was a joke, the service is very intermitent, it's a shame they don't pay attention enough to try to address a serious issue.

I have also tried dialing the same international number through a
pre-paid calling card using the Vonage phone to dial the 800 access number and it connects fine that way. just very poor service dialing internationaly with Vonage.

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 08, 2004 Posts: 7

I sat down for about 45 mins each time over 4 days to make a couple of international calls. I tried about 10 different numbers but NONE of them went through. While I am pretty happy with Vonage service in the US, their International service is really bad. I think I will cancel Vonage and try AT&T - they probably have better international lines.