A Vonage-Free Work Environment

The experience was about what I expected, with one pleasant surprise.

On June 6th, I called Vonage to tell them I wanted to cancel. Got put on hold. Finally got someone on the line. "What is the reason" she asked. "The service has been unreliable at best, and I cannot afford to spend 3 hours to 3 days every quarter diagnosing Vonage problems." "Ok let me connect you with the account management group," she said. On hold again. Long wait listening to noisy music. "Thank you for calling Sales, this is Alex how can I help you?" a voice says (amid what was one of the most impressively loud cacophonies of call center voices in the background: imagine a room the size of a football field filled with telemarketers yakking on the phone). Tells me he's gonna give me a ticket number, and says someone from the "cancellation department" will be getting back in touch with me. Total call time 11 minutes.

By June 15th I'd never heard back from Vonage (no surprise there). Funny thing is, maybe they tried to call, but my phone never rang. Or their message wasn't saved in voicemail. After all, it would have been a Vonage phone number they'd have been calling, and anything's possible. I call Vonage again at 8:29am. "Thank you for your loyalty as a customer," the recorded announcement begins. Yeah, right. I get someone on the line, give them my ticket number. Now they need to "verify information". I give them some information to verify. I pass that test. Then they ask me, "Why are you cancelling" and I give the same reasons I gave last time. "Sir if you don't mind holding please thank you -- CLICK" and she puts me on hold. Loud rock and roll music and Vonage voiceovers about being part of the revolution. I so do NOT want to be a part of the Vonage "revolution". Finally get another rep on the phone, who says I am about to receive an email confirmation of the cancellation of service. And of course, this new rep couldn't resist asking me AGAIN what my reason was for cancelling. "Your account is completely null at this point," the rep tells me. I was expecting to be charged a $39.95 cancellation fee --- I'd heard that this was the way Vonage punished customers who ended their service. No cancellation fee for me. I didn't ask them, they didn't bring it up. Done at 8:40. Another 11 minutes.

Now, flash back to May. I'd called SBC, the Phone Company, and told them I wanted phone service. I found I had to explain to them slowly and carefully that I was using Vonage (which they didn't seem to have heard of). They could not understand the concept of Voice over IP. They connected me to the "WinBack" department -- I guess SBC has a program sort of like Apple's famous "Switch" gimmick for former PC users. So SBC was winning me back, except, I was never an SBC customer before. Oh well. Anyway, it took about 45 minutes to an hour to place an order for two business lines, gen-yoo-ine POTS lines, for the office. Then they had to get me on the line with some independent organization who drilled me with a series of questions (which they recorded) about whether I was authorized to get these lines and change service and move the phone numbers from Vonage to SBC, yadda yadda.

Long story short, the office now has old-skool SBC telephone lines. We don't use no stinking internets. And guess what. Stuff works. Phone rings when someone calls. Voicemail works. I no longer worry about what business calls I am completely missing because of Vonage.

It's fun not being a part of that particular revolution.