rwasiluk

I had a friend who came home to find his five year old daughter jumping off the roof of their home. When you think of all the things that you need to tell your five year old daughter, not to jump off the roof is NOT on the list. This is the best frame for my story about business with Vonage.
I purchased the service as a business contact vehicle to control long distance charge and whimsy charges that the state has allowed AT&T to levy upon its customers. Of course Vonage knows that they don’t have their act together so the ground of the relationship is a two year contract. I never dreamed that I would need to ask if the telephone number I was issued was discrete but, I should have. I discovered fairly quickly that there was an auto dealer in Savannah Georgia and an animal grooming service in South Carolina with the SAME telephone number. I can’t describe the confusion that this brought to my business. Calls were lost; Messages were left at various places around two states because the animal grooming service was a mobile operation which relied upon call forwarding. I had cards, letterhead, and a website with the number as the way to contact me and I was bewildered and amazed that a telephone company would issue the same number to three (or more) different parties. I called Vonage as soon as I realized what was happening and began the level climbing to someone in the company that could grasp the fact that three business’ with the same telephone number was less than operationally ideal. Of course everyone was sorry but no one seemed to have the power to correct the problem. I finally opted to scrap my business set up with that number in exchange for a NEW telephone number without any consideration for Vonage to wasted time and money spent advertising my business using the first contact number. THIS time around I made very certain that the customer service rep understood that none of this arrangement could work for me unless I was the only entity with the Vonage issued telephone number. I was assured that she understood and so I accepted the new number with the hope that the original fault was an anomaly, a fluke that could only be replicated as a direct result of the passion and desire to do it again. Of course it was already established and understood by all that would be absolutely unacceptable. Well…you guessed it, it happened again.
I’d been around the dance floor with my “partner” Vonage and the tops of my feet hurt so I let them know that I wanted to end the relationship. When the rep finally called me back she wouldn’t accept no for an answer! I said it politely then directly, and finally loudly and then I asked for her supervisor. She resisted passing me onto the supervisor and refused to accept my cancellation. This woman was trained to not accept a cancellation! When I did get the supervisor I was told that cancellation would result in penalties because I terminated the two year contract. My defense was simple. My bill should be divided amongst every party that had the Vonage issued telephone number! None of the parties should be liable for the entire bill (of 23 months of service) because we all shared the number. Vonage collected ALL of the monthly charges from each of us but none of us had a service that was ours alone. Since this happened to me I found that there are other people who have had the same experience. Vonage is getting away with this because there has been no way to hold them accountable. There is an attorney out there somewhere who would do well to look into a Class Action Suit to recoup charges for services not provided by Vonage. You know where to reach me if you need my records and deposition. Believe me there are many more who have been scammed by Vonage in this way.