April 24th, 2005
I checked consumer complaint sites for Vonage posts; guess what I found
I spent part of this weekend on some consumer-complaint Web sites, tracking incident reports of "converged home" customer service issues.
Although my reason for doing this involved a broader scope of technologies than just IP telephony, I’d like to share some of the VoIP-related complaints I managed to dig up.
First, tho, two caveats:
1. You can’t please all the people all the time. It’s in the nature of some people to complain, and that’s how they’ll always be.
2. All major VoIP providers will get their day, but I don’t want to be too lengthy here. So, let’s focus first on Vonage.
On ConsumerAffairs.com, complaints encompass canned customer service responses, long hold times for tech support help, ad too much static during calls.
On Complaints.com, issues raised include a malfunctioning Vonage fax service, to which a user received no response to several email requests to customer service; delays in switching existing phone numbers to the Vonage service; and once again, lengthy times on hold.
No specific Vonage-related feedback yet on Epinions.com or Bizrate. The Better Business Bureau site is actually a disorganized, cobbled-together collection of local bureau sites with varying ways they present complaints. The BBB of New Jersey site handles input about Edison, N.J. Vonage. The only service details I could see were that "complaints (have been) processed concern service and billing issues." Unlike some other BBB sites, there was no information about whether or not these complaints have been resolved.
Have you ever been tempted to go to a complaint Web site and post anything about your IP telephony service? Post a TalkBack and tell us what you’d like to say if you had the chance. And via TalkBack, you do.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
