Worst case of sales power play. Lost a customer.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 09, 2011 Posts: 1

Hello,

I just wanted to use this forum to vent my frustration with the Vonage sales and customer care and the fact that you cannot talk to somebody in Canada. One of the customer service guys even had the audacity to say that keep dialing the customer care number till you get somebody in Canada.
Well here is my story. After seeing an ad on TV I got interested with Vonage service and did my research. After the research I had a couple of questions but was fairly convinced that I wanted to sign-up with the service. Therefore I called the sales number for Canadian sales and was promptly connected to someone in the Philippines. The girl that answered the phone seemed fairly new and not very knowledgeable to answer my questions. After a 15 min discussion I was convinced that we were not getting anywhere, so I hung up and called back after 30 min. I again connected to some sales guy in Philippines, this guy he said his name was Sam was ok. He tried to answer my questions, some incorrectly, but however I was satisfied and decided to sign-up. The entire sign-up process took about 15-20 min where he also took my credit card number. At the end of our conversation he gave me a confirmation number and I thought we were done.
15-30 min after I hung up, I got a call from another guy, his name was Reggie. He said he was the supervisor of the first girl whom I had spoken to earlier but I hung up. I mentioned to him that thank you for giving me the clarification on my earlier questions but I have already signed up with Vonage. Upon hearing this he said if I could give him a confirmation number so that he can check the status of my order (My first alarm bell goes off here – this guy he calls me to discuss the previous call discussion, he has no knowledge of me signing up with Vonage, upon hearing that now I have already signed up he asks me the confirmation number under the pretense of checking the status of the order.) After verifying a few details he says that he needs to bring a customer service agent on-line to activate my account since it was in a pending state. In the meantime I have received an email from Vonage stating that a payment has been processed on my credit card (Second alarm bell – If my account is pending how has a charge been processed to my account. Does Vonage not have proper controls in place as to when they decide to charge an account? If there are issues with a contract how can Vonage charge my account? Does this not borderline fraud or misusing a customer’s trust?).
However, the customer service guy, his name is Victor, states that he has reviewed the account and the account is invalid therefore he has to cancel the order and reprocess (Third alarm bell – Reggie passed me to Victor to activate the account and Victor states that account is invalid and needs to be cancelled. I could not understand how has my account gone from being created to charged to pending to invalid…)
At that moment I was able to piece together the entire thing and you do not need to be rocket scientist to know that this was all a sales commission issue. I think they wanted to give the sales credit to the first girl I talked but since the order was processed along with the payment there was no way that the credit could be posted the sales girl without invalidating and cancelling my account and recreating the account. While I appreciate the camaraderie between the sales and customer service guys in terms of how they work in cohorts, to the putting me a hostage to their sales play was totally unprofessional and reprehensible. Therefore I cancelled my account.
I called in several times to lodge a complaint but every time I got connected to the call centre in Philippines and with no recourse to talk to anybody in Canada to address this issue. It is during this time that one of the customer service reps had the audacity to tell me to keep calling in till I get connected to somebody in Canada – he said his name was Victor. I am therefore using this forum to vent my frustration and see how a company can operate a business in Canada with no contact in Canada. Does Vonage even have CRTC or Industry Canada approval to provide services in Canada? Maybe I should contact Services Canada as they might have proper address and telephone number of executives who have registered this organization in Canada. With no proper contact information in Canada and an inconsistent, unreliable and untrustworthy call centre in the Philippines I am really calling out the credibility of Vonage as a reliable service provider in Canada? Is Vonage as a telephone service provider equipped to effectively, efficiently and correctly handle any customer concerns arising out of its operations at par with its competitors Bell and Rogers?
If the real Vonage customer service folks are trolling this forum and happen to read this post – I might be just one unhappy customer – but I had signed and now will probably never return to Vonage – how does this affect your customer perception rating, your ROMI and your ARPU?