Not worth the trouble

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 4

About a year ago I was on this site looking for Vonage reviews. Although there were many negatives things about Vonage, I figured they wouldn't happen to me and decided to sign up. I was wrong and have had problems with the service since.

My first big problem was hearing garbled voice from the person I was talking to. It was bad, and would last for about 10-15 seconds on calls. I called Vonage and somehow got an engineer to call me back. To Vonage's credit, the engineer was very good and spent a lot of time with me and fixed the problem. However, I spent half of my day on the phone with him troubleshooting the problem.

Now people I'm talking to say that my voice is choppy and they can't hear me good. I can hear them fine.

This is it for me - I'm switching back to regular phone service. Vonage just isn't worth the time and trouble. I love the idea and the features, but if your phone doesn't work the way it should those features aren't of much use.

If you're reading this and are evaluating Vonage please note - the problems you hear described in this forum ARE real and could happen to you. It's a pain and not something a paying customer should have to deal with.

Posts: 4751 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4751

One of the problems with VoIP phone service is that you must have reliable and solid internet service as well as reliable VoIP service to get good phone service. If the services are from different providers, you can have problems resolving issues.

It no longer matters to you since you've made your decision to go back to POTS. However, if you really want to help others make their decision about VoIP, it would help if you'd give details about your internet service- such as upload and download speeds and details of a test call at www.testyour voip.com . That might help people who want to know what to look for in a service that apparently didn't work out. It would also be good to understand what the issues were back when the Vonage engineer was able to help- and what he did. Without that, your warning has reduced value, since a reader of this forum knows that some people do get good service with Vonage and is trying to determine what makes the difference.

Posts: 39 · Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 6:54 pm Post subject:

There are so many variables regarding service. Internet bandwidth quality, service quality, local network setup, other's using the Internet connection during calls...

VoIP is still a relatively new (and bumpy) service. It does require some technical ability to configure and make reliable (unless you are really lucky). You'll see messages on here where folks are adding new firmware to their Internet routers, reconfiguring Quality of Service settings, just generally messing with some very esoteric settings in their gear.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience. Perhaps we could have helped had you visited sooner.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 4

I posted the results from testyour voip.com below. I also tested my speed on broadbandreports.com and it is: 1360/244 kbps. It looks like I have a less-than-average score on testyour voip.com. As far as what the Vonage engineer did to fix the incoming garbled voice problem: He had me go through a bunch of tests, calling him/him calling me, restarting the router, installing new firmware, etc. He then had me unplug my fax machine, which the Vonage router was connected to. He also did something where he observed my Internet connection over the weekend, and did say that I had some packet loss. However, after unplugging the fax, I didn't have the garbled voice anymore so he closed the case.

I understand that a lot of people enjoy the technical side of using Vonage and like to tinker with the settings, etc. When I first got it I enjoyed this as well. However, after having it and having problems, I just want it to work without have to tinker with it and without have to point fingers at my cable provider.

The point that I wanted to let fellow forum readers know is that, if you're like me and don't want to spend countless hours playing with your settings, talking with tech support and constantly monitoring your Internet connection, then Vonage probably isn't for you. It can be a real pain - especially if you have important business to conduct via the phone and it doesn't work.
--------------------
MOS Analysis from You TO San Jose
MOS analysis chart
Media Quality
MOS
3.8 / 5.0
(Best with G.711 is 4.4)

Degradation Sources
Codec 0.58 46.1%
Latency 0.27 21.5%
Packet Discards 0.40 32.3%
Packet Loss 0.00 0.0%
Codec G.711 (PCM at 64kbps,
20ms RTP payload,
80kbps IP BW)
Round-Trip
Latency 400 ms
Packet Discards 1.6%
Packet Loss 0.0%
Loss Periods
Min: 20 ms
Avg: 40 ms
Max: 120 ms
Burst Loss
Jitter
Min: 0 ms
Avg: 15 ms
Max: 344 ms
Signaling Quality
Post-Dial Delay 110 ms
Call Setup Time 110 ms
Media Delay 260 ms

MOS Analysis FROM San Jose To You
MOS analysis chart
Media Quality
MOS
3.6 / 5.0
(Best with G.711 is 4.4)

Degradation Sources
Codec 0.57 40.2%
Latency 0.28 19.9%
Packet Discards 0.54 37.6%
Packet Loss 0.03 2.2%
Codec G.711 (PCM at 64kbps,
20ms RTP payload,
80kbps IP BW)
Round-Trip
Latency 400 ms
Packet Discards 2.2%
Packet Loss 0.1%
Loss Periods
Min: 20 ms
Avg: 20 ms
Max: 100 ms
Burst Loss
Jitter
Min: 0 ms
Avg: 2 ms
Max: 100 ms
Signaling Quality
Post-Pickup Delay 126 ms
Call Setup Time 121 ms
Media Delay 156 ms

Posts: 39 · Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:45 pm Post subject:

Quigs,

You are entirely correct. I imagine Vonage loses a great number of customers who never even find this forum. I hope feedback like your helps them justify the need to improve their OOBE (geek for "out of the box experience").

Folks do expect their phone to just work, something Vonage (and for that matter, all VoIP vendors) still needs to work on.

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 12, 2005 Posts: 6

I believe the overwhelming majority are like me - plugged it in ten months ago and no problems since. We only hear from those who have problems here at the forum, but I believe that is a very small minority.

Posts: 39 · Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 6:21 pm Post subject:

For those who use the PAP2 or another dedicated TA that is probably true. I haven't had a lick of trouble. Things get trickier when you combine routing and the learning curve goes up as well. I've seen so many folks here who were using third-party firmware to try to fix QoS, or who were dealing with intermittant bandwidth issues (admittedly an ISP problem). It's never easy being on the leading edge of any technology. Who remembers adjusting tracking on a VCR with a dial?

A lot of us here are geeks first and foremost. Many of us are trying to do VoIP and still use BitTorrent (or some such excitement). The guy/gal with DSL bandwidth to burn and whose ISP isn't also a competing VoIP provider is probably pretty well set.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 04, 2005 Posts: 2

Aside from myself, I also have family members that use vonage. I had it for about 7 months...later settled for just a cell phone, and now I have vonage back. I haven't had any issues with the service. Obviously if there is an outage I reset everything, but my brother in-law, and father will both agree that, for the price, Vonage is awesome. I am very computer-savvy so I guess that makes setting Vonage up simpler. However, once set up; it will perform without hiccups for a long time. I'm connected with cable internet at 768 kbps down and 256 kbps up. Once e911 is available for where I live it will be that much better. It's too bad that these few customers have to provide such negative feedback on a great service.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 03, 2005 Posts: 4

dcarlton wrote:

It's too bad that these few customers have to provide such negative feedback on a great service.

I would disagree with this statement. I think prospective customers should know the potential problems associated with Vonage - and and if current customers don't tell them, no one will. I also think that getting it out in the open will hopefully get Vonage and other VoIP providers to provide a better service. I'm not the only one that's dissatisfied with their service - look around the Internet, there's tons of us.

Posts: 4751 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4751

Your feedback is appreciated. Hope to see you back some time.