Well, my last update on Vonage was more a positive one compared to my writings today. This morning I placed an order with a conventional phone carrier to move my phone service back to a normal land line. I declare the Vonage experiment failed. In my opinion Vonage offers some great features combined with cheap prices, but they are not ready for main stream no matter what you might see otherwise. Sure, I am a single customer, but overall compared to my phone service experience over the last 10 years – I did not have that many problems with my land line in 10 years than what I had to experience with Vonage in about 30 days.
Don’t get me wrong, I think VOIP is the way to go, but there are certainly thinks that need to come into place first. Reviewing the Vonage experience, I can say one thing that this company is doing wrong: Their entire troubleshooting seems to be around the customer’s ISP and broadband connection. I was clearly providing enough information to rule out my broadband connection and still we wasted lots of time “troubleshooting” the latter.
I think if Vonage (and I assume other VOIP providers) can provide more stability and reliable connections, it will be my first choice again. What broke my trust for now was broken hardware (the Vonage V Portal adapter). It not only broke, but it also broke at a time when we needed a reliable phone connection due to a relative (my wife’s grandma (94)) being very sick in another country. I had to get a phone card from the store to be able to make international calls through my cell phone. It’s easy to ignore call quality problems or issues when it is not that important and critical to make a phone call, but you come to realize how important a working phone is in case of emergency. So, as soon as my new phone company has the line in place it is time to say good-bye to Vonage for now.
Related posts: