Monday, August 10, 2009

Canceling Vonage phone...

Vonage... the name conjures up so many good things in life. 1 low flat monthly fee, the ability to take your phone anywhere, no hidden charges...really!

However, for the last one year we have had trouble with the service. If we are downloading data from Internet, voice quality on Vonage phone goes south (well I realize that both data and voice are sharing same Internet link to the home). And sometimes, the voice quality will go bad for no reason (we have all read news reports about cable operators and ISPs giving some special treatment to Vonage ;-)).

Anyhow, I finally did cancel the Vonage service due to it being not compatible with the home security system we just installed. When I called 800 number, I was quickly transferred to a customer representative who very politely handled the call. Upon mentioning my reason, he referred to a website "alarm.com" which provided home security service/products that are compatible with Vonage (interesting!). Anyhow, when I asked how much I will be returned back for the service I did not use for this month (Vonage takes payment at the beginning of the month for the service to be provided for that month)... he told me zero! Vonage does not pro-rate the monthly charges and may be it is mentioned in their not-so-brief contract (an industry standard BTW). Now the amount owed to me was insignificant but I found it a little odd that a company will charge for a service that it did not really provide. So much for good things in life.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sandeep;
Maybe this explains your problem with Vonage.

http://www.cringely.com/2009/09/neutrality-begins-at-home/

Sandeep said...

Arif,

Thanks for your comment and the URL.

In fact, in my previous life as a software engineer with a networking company, I worked on a feature to "rate-limit" the traffic on the service provider routers :-)