New Adaptor / Customer Servicve Help

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 10, 2005 Posts: 20

I've had Vonage for a week and a half. I got the Linksys PAP2 adaptor at Best Buy, hooked it up, did an online retail activation and was up and running in 10 minutes. I tested it with my alarm which worked, and TiVo which worked about 80% of the time so I decided to keep Vonage and disconnected my landline. I called Vonage to make sure that everything was setup right for TiVo since I had heard about changing the packet size to 10 which the guy said he did. He told me to unplug the adaptor and plug it back in to restart it. I did that and the adaptor power never came back on. The adaptor had died. So they told me to take it back to BestBuy to exchange it.

I exchanged the adaptor at Best Buy yesterday, got home plugged in the adaptor and called Vonage with the new Mac address. Its now been a day, about 3 hours on the phone with Vonage, 5 calls, and my new adaptor isn't working.

On the first call I gave them the new adaptor MAC address and we could not get it working I did notice that the adaptor got updated software from the 2.?.? it had when I plugged it in to the 3.1.3 it got after this phone call.

The symptoms are the power light and ethernet lights are blinking and the phone 1 and phone 2 ligths are always off. I can get a dial tone but nothing dials out and nothing comes in.

The second call the guys asked again for the MAC ID and said it should be working,. I was sent to level 2 and after all the basic trouble shooting he said I have to wait 2 hours for activation.

This morning the adaptor still isn't working and I called again and went the through all the basic debug steps without any luck before being cut off.

Customer service is very frustrating because every time I call, even after I have called before, they ask my netwrork setup, make me read the MAC address, make me unplug and plug stuff in, etc.
It's also very hard to communicate with them because it's hard to understand people with an indian accent, it's hard to communicate over a phone line with significant delay due to the distance. and using my cell phone in my basement isn't the clearest and I usually get cut off around 30-60 minutes.

It seems like one of 2 things are wrong:
1) Vonage did not set this adaptor up correctly and something is wrong at their end. After talking with 5 people they don't think it's their problem.
2) I happened to get another bad Linksys adaptor (which would not surprise me because every Linksys product I have used has been crap)

Does anybody have any suggestions before I cancel Vonage ? Should I call back a 5th time ? Should I exchange the adaptor for another one ?

PS - My network is the same as when my old adaptor was working so I don't think it's my network.
Comcast->Motorola Modem->Airport Extreme->Linksys PAP2->Phone

Posts: 28 · Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:41 am Post subject:

End me a pm with your Mac address and your account info. I'll see what I can find out for you.

Posts: 400 · Vonage Forum Evangelist Joined: May 05, 2005 Posts: 400

What kind of up and down speed do you have on your ISP?

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 10, 2005 Posts: 20

I have Comcast cable that was just put in the neighborhood 2 years ago and has been unbelievably great with no down time and excellent performance. The speed test I recently did was about 2.8 Mb down and 350 Kb up. The first PAP2 phone adaptor worked great for voice.

Posts: 20 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Jul 10, 2005 Posts: 20

Well, it turns out that when the first LinkSys adaptor died it also must have damaged the ethernet port on my router. The wireless part of the router still works and the ethernet port works with my laptop, but it no longer works with the LinkSys adaptor or my desktop computer.