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Vonage Retention

I got a Vonage line for work purposes about two years ago. It worked well, the unlimited long distance was nice, and it was very cool to be able to move around my "land line" while I was migrating around the country a bit. Nice!

Unfortunately, this did not last. The quality of the international calls was poor - which made it useless for work with a co-worker in India. Then the U.S. long distance call quality got worse and worse - static, low volume, and lots of drop outs. It did not seem to matter which network or the amount of other network traffic that was going on. Sometimes it would work fine for the first minute, then it would start sucking and never recover. It became useless for any kind of important business calls - it is quite embarrassing to not be able to hear a question directed to you in a conference call!

I held on to the account, mostly for purposes of holding on to my "business" number, but finally decided to not bother going through the number trnsfer process and just cancel the account. Annoyingly, this can only be done via the toll-free number. (I should have called it on their line so they could see how crappy the quality was!) They tried to retain me as a customer, offering:

• A team of technical experts" from the home office to try to fix the quality issues I was facing.
• A free month of service while they were trying to fix the problem.
• A reduced ongoing monthly rate.

I tried to politely decline. I think the basic press story about Vonage is right, though - they are screwed. I just wish I could tell if it were their issue or an ISP trying to reduce competition problem.

My next task, I guess, is to get some new business cards printed with no phone number. Who do I want to talk to on the phone, anyways?