A Feature Operation Section

Posts: 492 · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 2:54 pm Post subject: A Feature Operation Section

Let's face it, the Vonage Help Knowledge Base, the Learning Center, and the User Guide oftentimes fail to provide complete information on a features functionality. There are gaps in the provided instructions that often confuse the user. Also, a detailed description of how the feature will operate in the proper or expected manner. A method for us to bring these shortcomings under one roof rather than spread them across several different forum headings would be extremely helpful, in my opinion.

Here is an example from a thread that appeared over the March 25th weekend. The user forwarded his Vonage phone to his wireless phone. He set it up for simultaneous ringing. He assumed that his wife would be able to use the Vonage phone and he would be able to use the wireless. I do not know where he got such an idea, but nowhere in the Vonage user guides is it an impropriety. Obviously, things did not go as planned. His wife could not make any phone calls nor receive any. However, the phone did ring. The gentleman tried to call his wife at home using the wireless phone. He was surprized to find that his calls to home were transferred to his wireless Voicemail rather than calling home. He reasoned that there must be a bug in the Call Forwarding software.

I personally find it curious that there is demonstrated a marked propensity toward Vonage users, that post in this forum, to immediately blame Vonage, the equipment, or customer service instantly upon discovery of something amiss. One should do a little troubleshooting and reading before you jump to conclusions, I believe. I would hope a Forum section dedicated to malfunctioning features might help those having difficulty with them. It is unfair of me to single out Vonage users. I believe that this conduct is categorically an individual shortcoming. In other words, we all do it.

When a user sets up Call Forwarding to say, a wireless phone. All functionality is basically removed from the forwarding (home) phone with the exception of the ringer. You can set it to ring for a few seconds and then transfer the call to the forwarded (wireless) phone, or you can set it to ring simultaneously with the forwarded phone. There is little purpose to this, in my opinion, except to remind you, perhaps, that you forgot to reset Call Forwarding when you came home. I have often picked up the phone to find no one there several times before I realized that Call Forwarding is still on.

You can not receive a call when Call Forwarding is on and neither can you call out. That control has been given over to our wireless phone. Only the wireless phone can receive phone calls and only the wireless phone can call out. If you happen to call your home phone it will be forwarded back to you. The wireless phone company will switch the incoming phone call to its respective Voicemail because the phone line is busy. You're calling home on it and you suddenly find yourself talking to your own Voicemail.

The solution to this gentlemans dilemma is simple. First of all, we know his wife is home. Call Forward is not enabled. When a call comes in at home the wife answers it. If the call is for the husband she needs only dial the Call Transfer function, #90 (or #91 to announce the call) and the 11 digit number displayed on the caller ID, or ask for the number. She hangs up the phone. Now the wife has full use of a telephone, the husband can call home, and the wife forwards his calls to him. I wish that I would have thought of this when I was reading through his weekend posting.

This is one solution to dealing with trouble in the Vonage features area. To compartmentalize problems and solutions so that they are not scattered throughout the forum. There are many 911 questions, Voicemail is popular, Call Waiting, Caller ID, Call Transfer, and 3 Way Dialing are seen again and again on the Vonage-Forum as problems when they are merely misunderstandings on how the features function or won't function. All are the result of a lack of instruction in the Vonage Help file. I believe that we can do better.

Mike

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 2

The REASON i have seen so many posts concerning this call forwarding issue is because on land lines with just about EVERY phone company if you call forward that phone to another number, you can still DIAL OUT on that phone. People expect that if you call it 'call forwarding' like the other telco's call it, that it should work the same. It's human nature. Vonage is a big company wanting to play with the big boys. It IS their fault for not explaining it correctly. If they want to stay in the phone business they should cater to their customers and help them with the new Voip technology...

Posts: 249 · Posted: Sat May 28, 2005 1:16 pm Post subject: Re: tsk tsk

voiptrader wrote:

The REASON i have seen so many posts concerning this call forwarding issue is because on land lines with just about EVERY phone company if you call forward that phone to another number, you can still DIAL OUT on that phone. People expect that if you call it 'call forwarding' like the other telco's call it, that it should work the same. It's human nature. ..

I have "Simul Ring" set up on my Vonage phone, but not call forwarding to ring both my cell phone and my Vonage phone. I can answer Vonage calls on either phone. The cell phone still makes cell phone calls out and the Vonage phone still calls out on Vonage.

That seems to work for me.

Posts: 318 · Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 8:15 pm Post subject:

Another frequently asked question: What is this stutter dialtone? It seems so simple to me, it's how all my previous voicemail systems have worked, but most people just don't seem to know what the stuttered dialtone means for some reason...