Vonage Promised to refund initial charges of $59 when notified to cancel service, reneged and charged additional $155. ripoff Edison New Jersey

Charlie,

I agree with you 500% here, but my service never even got that far. I couldn't make any calls without hearing the recording, "In order for you to complete the call, you must dial 1-0 and the 3-digit code first!!" No one had the 3-digit code.

Vonage has taken from me to this date of 3/7/06, a total of $93.53!! Their equipment was picked up today by UPS. We'll see how long it takes for them to put that money back, because I'm giving them until march 15th to do just that. In the meantime, I'm going to the Office of The Attorney General in New Jersey for my complaint and to let his office know that Vonage continues to be fraudulent in their rotten business practices!!

A Word for the Wise; Don't even think about calling Vonage for any kind of telephone service. If you saw the movie-Nightmare on Elm street, you have no idea what you're in store for when you sign up with Vonage!!! Take my word and the words of others who got the "SHAFT"!!!

Charlie,

This response has nothing to do with your billing issues. Vonage has plenty of problems in that arena, many of them documented here and in other forums. But, I did want to address the unacceptable call-quality you experienced.

I was a Vonage user for 18-months, finally leaving after numerous customer service issues were unaddressed. However, afterward, I learned that many of those issues (except the last one involving 911 service) may have had two culprits, not one.

My ISP is Comcast. Yours is Verizon. What do the two have in common? Besides being Internet providers, they also happen to be telephone companies (offering their own VoIP and/or landline packages). In order to dissuade clients from using the services of a competing telephone provider, many ISPs employ a technique called "packet-shaping." In essence, when they notice someone using a competitor's service, they "throttle" (slow down or interfere with) the connection. There is only one way to get around this packet-shaping scenario - by employing a technique called "dynamic porting."

Last year after dumping Vonage, I signed up for service with Packet8. Every issue I had with Vonage disappeared. And when I mentioned this in a Packet8 user forum, I was given a potential reason. First, my ISP was likely using packet-shaping to throttle competing services. And secondly, Vonage probably doesn't use dynamic-porting. Put the two together and you have a recipe for bad call quality. Forum users also told me that Packet8 uses dynamic-porting.

In short, your problems with Vonage may have been only half the problem ... the other half coming from Verizon. By choosing to go back to Verizon, you may be doing EXACTLY what they want you to do (and is the reason why packet-shaping is done).

Now ... I have no idea whether Comcast or Verizon use packet-shaping. And if you asked them point-blank whether or not they DO use it, I'm not sure you'd get a straight answer. In fact, I doubt if many customer-service people are so technically aware that they'd even know what packet-shaping is. All I know is this. When I switched to Packet8, all call quality issues vanished.

However, no one can say how long this will be true. If I can use an analogy, police use radar to detect speeding. Consumers responded by inventing the radar detector. But as I understand it, police now have radar detector detectors ... and many states make using a radar detector illegal. Likewise, ISP police use packet-shaping to detect speedy competitors. Consumers responded by inventing dynamic-porting. How long will it be before ISPs develop a dynamic-porting detector and find a way around the technique? Who can say? However, since other online utilities use dynamic-porting, I think it's unlikely that ISPs will want to mess too much with it. I can always hope (grin).

Good luck.