VONAGE VOIP ripoff dishonest billing abysmal business ethic Holmdel New Jersey

I signed up with Vonage on February 10, 2006. I had expected great service from Vonage but what I got was far from anything positive.

My intent was to transfer my current home number to them. They forwarded me what the call a letter of Authorization (LOA) in order to initiate the process of transferring my home phone number, which I immediately completed and faxed it back THE NEXT DAY!!!!! (February 11, 2005)

I did not hear from them for over a week so I called them to find out the status of my transfer request. They of course told me that it takes 10-14 days at least to process the request. When I first called, it had been exactly 10 days.

So I gave them the benefit of the doubt and let another week of inconvenient use of my cell phone for most incoming calls. Only close family and some friends had what Vonage calls the "Virtual number... Now it is the last week in February and of curse I don't hear anything about my number transfer so I call again.

This time the customer service rep actually told me that there was a problem with the request and that they were not able to complete the transfer. They told me that the number could not be transferred because my current carrier (in which I was still sending payment to) told them that the account had been terminated.

Of course when I called my current carrier that was not the case. I emailed Vonage with this information, since speaking to their customer service reps was not going well and waited for some type of reply. I began to email them at this point so that one, I had documentation of what was going on and 2, I no longer wished to speak with their incompetent customer service reps.

I continued to receive the same response from Vonage each time I asked for an update to my transfer request. NO once had they taken the initiative to tell me there was still some sort of miscommunication on their end. On March 20, 5 weeks after I signed up with them, my number was STILL NOT TRANSFERRED.

I cancelled my service with Vonage, but agreed to pay for any fees related outgoing calls I made.
My disgust with this company came to a climax when I received an email the same day that listed a summary of charges which included the full cost of their equipment, the full monthly service charge and an EARLY TERMINATION FEE, all which totaled over 125.00.

I of course called them and told them that I will send back their equipment at my cost but I feel some sort of credit for the early termination fee is appropriate since they did not hold up their end of the bargain and provide me with the service they so graciously offered but did not deliver.

I since use my cell phone as my primary phone and will never recommend Vonage to anyone. They have abysmal customer service and an even worse business ethic.

Mark
ROBBINSVILLE, New Jersey
U.S.A.