Vonage ripoff, THIS IS A SCAM PEOPLE! Internet

Latanya, re-read this paragraph from your reply:

"Customer care reps are required to stay on the line until someone in account management picks up the line sometimes they are swapped with calls and the calls go to general customer care reps who have to take call back info and forward it to the account management department. SO in response to your comment customer care reps can not just terminate your account because we dont have access to that program."

When I called customer service at 12:10AM (EDT) on 8/8, the rep verified my identity before giving me information about my account. I assume he did this for a reason. If you have an "internal" problem that makes it impossible for your account management department to believe a customer service rep who says, "He verified his identity," please don't make it MY problem ... or a problem for other customers wishing to terminate their accounts.

Maybe customer service reps don't have the authority to terminate an account. But they do have the authority (if not the mandate) to verify the identity of a caller so as not to make unauthorized changes to an account. Suggestion? Vonage should make it a policy to "believe" their own customer service reps who verify identities of callers. And if you can't believe them, why even have them?

For what it's worth, when I terminated my account, this is an excerpt from the first email I got from your account management person, Ron Harrington:

"We are sorry to hear that you wish to cancel your account. To cancel your account and provide you with all of the important cancellation information, we need to verbally verify the owner of the account. This is done to protect you from having another person terminate your service without your knowledge."

So you see, he was merely asking me to REPEAT a verification process I'd already gone through.

Want to know why I quit Vonage? How about 6 unresolved customer service inquiries followed by 2 unfulfilled promises to "force-activate" 911 service because my new number didn't pass your "address matching test." Two of your reps, Anthony and Xaviel, promised me activation in 48-72 hours. I gave them 120 hours and Vonage dropped the ball.

Also, after I left Vonage, I found out something interesting that I didn't know before. Vonage is being sued under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (911-related) by the Texas State Attorney General:

http://www.oag.state.tx.us/oagnews/release.php?id=850

I urge potential Vonage customers to visit and read the Attorney General's page before signing up ... and be sure to listen to the MP3 they link to which typifies a call made to 911 on a Vonage phone. Current customers may also want to visit the page to consider their options in that regard.

And all this time, I thought I had REAL 911 service. But of course, Vonage urges you not to "test" it. Maybe there's a reason for that other than the obvious one. Kind of like buying a can of pepper-spray from a store for personal protection only to have the store clerk say, "Whatever you do, don't open the bag until you need to use it." And when you do need to use it and open the bag, you find it's empty.

In response to #4 on the list of things to do to terminate your vonage account SEE BELOW. This is not true sorry.. General Customer Care Reps do not have the access to terminate the account which is why we have to transfer you the account management department. I would be more then happy to click and button and just close up the accounts.

Customer care reps are required to stay on the line until someone in account management picks up the line sometimes they are swapped with calls and the calls go to general customer care reps who have to take call back info and forward it to the account management department. SO in response to your comment customer care reps can not just terminate your account because we dont have access to that program... But you can follow this procedure if you like sounds good to me.

And as far as sending an email do you think it would be a good practice to just terminate your account after receiving an email that you want to close it? If so what happens when a husband and wife are divorcing or a BF and GF are separating and one wants to be vendictive and just send up an email telling us to terminate the account we close it and now you are calling telling us you didnt authorize the terminations of the account? How does that look.. can you just close your bank account with a simple email? NO YOU CAN NOT.. They need to speak with you to verify that you are the individual who owns that account and that you want it closed so please do not be upset that we want to protect your service and your information... Maybe everyone should just go around closing account via email then you would be writing that this business should do that they should verify first.

4) Using your Vonage phone, call up their customer service department shortly after midnight (Eastern time) on the day of your cancellation. Give the customer service rep the ticket numbers of the cancellation notices sent to Customer Service and Billing departments and tell them you're cancelling your account effective at the end of the business day. They may tell you that you HAVE to call an account manager to cancel. That's not true.

You only have to verify your identity to the customer service rep and refer to your emailed cancellation notices. The reason why they ask you to call an account manager (aka as a "recovery specialist") has nothing to do with verifying your identity. They just want to get you on the line to try to convince you to stay. In short, a sales call. Your call, made on your Vonage phone, PROVES you are who you say you are ... and a record of the call will show up in your outgoing call log that any Vonage account manager can access.

I wouldn't necessarily call them a "scam." But I hear what you're saying regarding cancellation of your account. For those who may find themselves in this same situation in the future, here are some consumer tips to avoid the problem.

1) When you send an email complaint to Vonage, you immediately receive a generic auto-response. I suspect they make the assumption that their auto-response "resolves" the issue ... and take no further action. This happened to me. I sent in a complaint on July 23, 2005 and when I called them up on July 29, 2005, their rep said, "Oh, we show that problem as resolved," and opened up a new ticket. Advice? As soon as you receive the auto-response, "reply" to it saying, "Your auto-response did not resolve my issue. This is what I said in my initial email." And copy/paste your initial email into your mailer and mail it again. Your 2nd email, with a ticket number on the subject line, will NOT generate a subsequent auto-response.

2) Send cancellation notices to both Customer Service and Billing departments. And yes, send them AGAIN when you receive their auto-response. Make your effective cancellation date the same as the last day of your current billing period. You'll never get any prorated money back from them anyway.

3) A week before your scheduled cancellation, log onto your Vonage account and change your billing and shipping addresses to "Former customer" and "Leave me alone." Don't try to change city/state/zip because it might not accept it ... just change the addresses. Then, change your credit card info to reflect an incorrect 3-digit card verification number and expiration date. That way, any attempts to bill your credit card when future billing periods roll around will fail.

4) Using your Vonage phone, call up their customer service department shortly after midnight (Eastern time) on the day of your cancellation. Give the customer service rep the ticket numbers of the cancellation notices sent to Customer Service and Billing departments and tell them you're cancelling your account effective at the end of the business day. They may tell you that you HAVE to call an account manager to cancel. That's not true. You only have to verify your identity to the customer service rep and refer to your emailed cancellation notices. The reason why they ask you to call an account manager (aka as a "recovery specialist") has nothing to do with verifying your identity. They just want to get you on the line to try to convince you to stay. In short, a sales call. Your call, made on your Vonage phone, PROVES you are who you say you are ... and a record of the call will show up in your outgoing call log that any Vonage account manager can access.

5) As soon as you hang up the phone after that final call to Vonage, unplug the power cord from your ATA device and DON'T USE YOUR VONAGE PHONE AGAIN FOR ANY REASON. A day or so after you cancel (during the "next" billing period), you will receive an email from a "recovery specialist" saying they were unable to reach you by phone ... and asking you to call them back for "important cancellation information." Uh-huh. What they're trying to get you to do is use your Vonage phone during a NEW billing period. Use it only once and they've GOT YOU ... and can demand you pay the bill for the new billing period. Don't succomb to that trap.

With your phone unplugged and your address information obliterated, they have no way they can contact you. And credit card companies will continue to deny charges made with incorrect identifying information.

One final note to NEW Vonage customers. If you own your own domain ... or your ISP allows you to have more than one email address ... set up a new email address exclusively for contacting Vonage ... say, "vonage@mydomain.com" ... and have mail sent there forwarded to your REAL email address. That's what I did and I'm glad I did it. Shortly, I'll log onto my domain and change my special "vonage" email address to an autoresponder -- with an appropriate message sent back to them telling them (politely) to get lost! And when I get around to it in a month or so, I'll "delete" the email address entirely giving them "bounces" on any future emails they may send.