iamme-
Vonage would be the LAST place I looked if I weren't happy with current customer service. They are probably the worst I ever encountered, and I experienced Dell and HP ad nauseum (which means It is really bad.)
On Friday I had a terrible Vonage exeperience. A new client asked me to look over her computer system. It was running excruciatingly slow. Turns out her Vonage adapter is cutting bandwidth in a major way, which is why they unplugged the Vonage line completely and relied just on cell for their phones. I got them a router and separated voice from data, and that helped the speed issue. But the adapter also rebooted itself occasionally and ran very hot. I called Vonage tech support, and that was an adventure in itself. Took forever and the guy was not friendly at all. I explained about the rebooting part (and that I was a computer networking specialist) and he agreed that the unit needed replacing. But the original unit (which was purchased by the lady almost a year ago in a local Best Buy) had to be shipped back to Vonage at HER expense and in the original packaging it came with a year ago. She does not have the original packing box from a year ago, but he did not care, insisted that it had to be in that box. When she asked when her contract would be up he stated that there is no contract, that the service is on a month to month basis. So she responded "So, if there is no contract I don't have to pay any cancellation fee, then?" to which he of course made her aware of the $41 cancellation fee. So, OF COURSE there is a contract. When I asked if they could at least pick up the shipping charges, he reacted kind of nasty to me. I said "You don't understand, with all the problems these people were having, they are close to cancelling. It would show some good-will if you did something like pick up the shipping charges back to you." He refused. He also refused to ship overnight, referred me to customer service for such special requests. He was basically smug and not helpful at all, very unprofessional. He was the type who does not care if you cancel with them because "we already have many customers, who cares?" attitude.
They had a nightmare year with Vonage, from what she told me. After getting service on July 4th of last year porting of their Verizon # took until the end of November, with no explanation given, an extremely long time during which they had to carry not only the $28 for Vonage but also their expensive POTS line. No concession or free months were given for that debacle. They also had call quality issues, dropped calls, sometimes the other party can not hear them, etc. She had never heard of Sunrocket, but she is ready to pull the trigger on it. Just another month of wait before getting it so she can avoid the cancellation fee (calculating about 30 days for # porting to SR to bring the Vonage debacle to an end after July 4th.)
SRs level 1 customer service is script and ticket based, so not as helpful as a direct-link to true engineering and tech support could be. But they are a heck of a lot better than what Vonage puts on with their script-based smugness from overseas and their even worse smugness from their obviously overworked tech support people. IMO, of course.