February 29th, 2008

Man mistakenly assigned Vonage number now has to go thru PITA of requesting it back

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 1:13 pm

Categories: Packet 8, Vonage

Tags: Vonage Holdings Corp., Packet8, Telecom & Utilities, Russell Shaw

Yesterday I blogged about the case of reader dmuniz, who wrote to tell me that his Packet8 phone number was mistakenly assigned to Vonage- even though he is not, and never has been a Vonage customer.

Just a few mins. ago I got this update from the same dmuniz:

Yesterday I handed the whole thing over to my attorneys. They contacted both Vonage and Packet8. They were able to get more information from Vonage than me, but also got a different explanation of what happened from Vonage than the one I got from Packet8.

Packet8 now wants me to contact the actual company that received my phone#. I have to ask them to give it back to me(?). I also have to get a copy of the authorization from them to port my number to them(?).

What a mess. I’ll keep you posted.

February 29th, 2008

Vonage spent nearly $1.4 million to lobby Feds in 2007

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 1:00 pm

Categories: Regulatory, Vonage

Tags: Vonage Holdings Corp., Telephony, Telecom & Utilities, Telecommunications, Networking, Russell Shaw

The Associated Press reports that Vonage spent nearly $1.4 million to lobby the federal government in 2007.

Vonage’s key lobbying activities  were related to  telecommunications competition and consumer issues.

That’s according to a disclosure form posted online Feb. 13 by the Senate’s public records office.

You are looking at selected portions of the form at the top of this post:

Much of the need to lobby seems to be directly mappable back to issues raised in several patent disputes Vonage participated in last month, as well as in 2007.

Specifically, the AP notes that in January, Vonage settled litigation with Nortel Networks, the latest in a series of multimillion-dollar patent settlements with traditional telecommunications companies. Last year, the Holmdel, N.J.-based company agreed to pay AT&T Inc. $39 million to settle a patent suit. Vonage also settled lawsuits with Verizon Communications Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp. for a total of $200 million in 2007.

According to its most recent filing, Vonage spent more than $601,000 in the second half of the year lobbying on those issues.

Under a U.S. Federal law enacted in 1995, lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches.

February 28th, 2008

Reader: Vonage assigned my Packet8 number, and I'm not even a Vonage customer

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 1:59 pm

Categories: Packet 8, Vonage

Tags: Phone, Vonage Holdings Corp., Packet8, Telecom & Utilities, Telecommunications, Russell Shaw

I’ve just received an email from “dmuniz,” who is a reader of this blog.

Are you ready for another Vonage horror story this Thursday afternoon?

K, well, then, here’s what he wrote:

I don’t subscribe to Vonage, I use Packet8 for my VOIP. Somehow Vonage assigned my Packet8 phone no. to one of their new customers. I called Vonage and they told me that since they had a request to “port” the number, they did it.

I called their customer that received my phone # and advised them that Packet8 was in the process of taking back the #. They advised me that they didn’t ask for the #, Vonage gave them a random phone #. Today is Wednesday. I have been without phone service since Monday. When I called Vonage today, the rep advised me that they won’t be taking any further action on the matter.

FYI, in California, the Public Utilities Commission doesn’t regulate VOIP phone providers.

Truly a bad customer service experience and I’m not even a customer of Vonage.

Has anything remotely similar to this happened to any of you readers? If so, how did you deal (or not deal) with it?

February 26th, 2008

Have you had difficulty understanding offshored Vonage support reps?

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 5:30 am

Categories: Vonage

Tags: Vonage Holdings Corp., Vertical Industries, Benefits, Healthcare, Enterprise Software, Software, Human Resources, Russell Shaw

Before I present the issue,  I feel compelled to state a hard and fast ground rule.

I do not want to see any bigoted comments.

OK, now to my point.

For years now, I have read numerous comments on the Vonage Forum from some Vonage users frustrated by the fact they have had trouble understanding Vonage’s Tier One customer support reps.

Most of these reps are in the Philippines.  Give that is a nation with a substantial percentage of English speakers, I still read reports indicating frustration along the lines of “I couldn’t understand what he/she was saying.”

Of course, the reason Vonage offshores its Tier One tech support is to save on payroll. And a point could be made that without those savings, Vonage would have to charge more per month than they currently do for phone service. That would be especially true if Tier One tech support was based in the U.S.- with our pricey health care system and related, employee-provided benefits.

Vonage-using (or ex-Vonage using) readers, would you like to see Vonage bring back their Tier One tech support back to the U.S.?  Would you pay $5 more a month if they did so?

February 20th, 2008

Vonage customer cancels, then gets call from collection agency, and then...

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 2:54 pm

Categories: Vonage

Tags: Agency, Vonage Holdings Corp., Telecom & Utilities, Workforce Management, Human Resources, Russell Shaw

Wayne Anderson, from the south Chicago suburb of Antoich, was frustrated that - how shall we say this- his efforts to cancel his Vonage service wasn’t handled with the smoothest business process best practices.

Wayne was so p.o.’ed that he wrote into Stephanie Zimmermann, who writes”The Fixer,” action line column in his hometown newspaper the SouthTownStar.

Here’s what Wayne wrote:

Dear Fixer: I signed up for Vonage phone service last spring, and it was connected. But after one week, the service was so bad I called to cancel. My phone would ring twice and then stop. The person dialing me would hear it ring and then go dead, so they would have to redial.

I was running my business out of my home at the time, and I couldn’t get the calls, so I called Vonage, and it tried everything to keep me.

But I said “please cancel” and switched back to AT&T. Just recently, I noticed a $5.99 charge on my credit card from Vonage, and I found out the company had been billing me since I signed up and had never canceled.

I called and questioned the charge. In so many words, Vonage told me: Tough luck. I asked for a supervisor, and I was told there wasn’t one there. I come to find out Vonage’s call center is in the Philippines. I was told there was a $49.99 charge to cancel the service. I said I wasn’t paying it.

Then I sent e-mails to everyone in the system who I thought could help, and I got a phone call. The person said he was a second-level supervisor and that he was canceling my account and I would never hear from Vonage again. That was fine for a month.

I just got a letter from a collection agency for $49.99. I called and contested the charge, and the agency said it would contact Vonage again but said it wouldn’t help.

It looks like Wayne did the right thing. Stephanie was able to cut through the clutter and apparently solve the issue:

Dear Wayne: You gotta love the collection agency’s promise to contact Vonage or your behalf even though it wouldn’t help. Now, there’s honesty. We had a little better luck. We told your story to Vonage’s Meghan Shaw, and she was able to get that pesky $49.99 wiped off your account. They’ve also requested that this be removed from collections.

Readers, I do know that Vonage makes it a witch (Mom raised a gentleman) to cancel. Have any of you had similar problems to Wayne Anderson’s?

February 14th, 2008

VoIPing this Valentine's Day? How did your call go? Tell us your stories

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 12:51 pm

Categories: Skype, Vonage

Tags: Call, Valentine's Day, Internet Phone, E-mail, VOIP, Online Communications, Telecommunications, Networking, Russell Shaw

Not everyone is with the one they love on Valentine’s Day.

Maybe the one you love is on a business trip, on a faith-centered mission, off at graduate school, in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Maybe they have Skype, Vonage, or some other Internet phone application on their laptop or powered up in their dorm. And maybe you have something similar.

Presumably you have, or are going to, try to reach them today.

Share your stories with us. What type of Internet phone service and connection did you use? How was the voice quality? Were there echoes? Was latency (voice delay) involved?

Was your call a video a call? How was the quality of the video-crystal clear, pixel-y as all get out?

Let us know. And if you made a recording of your call and would like to share, email me and I will post it. Email: russjourn@comcast.net

February 14th, 2008

Vonage's immediate future: debt re-fi, more patent trolls

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 8:01 am

Categories: Vonage

Tags: Vonage Holdings Corp., Asset Management, Operational Accounting, Operational Planning, Business Operations, Finance, Russell Shaw

Our own Larry Dignan has been looking at Vonage’s year-end financial report, and points out Vonage’s debt issues.

Noting Vonage’s patent infringement settlement payments for more than $200 million for the year, Larry notes that:

To wit: Vonage had $190 million in cash, marketable securities and restricted cash as of Dec. 31. A year ago, Vonage had $508 million on that same basis. Forking over more than $200 million in settlements hurts–especially when you lose 3 percent of your subscriber lines each quarter. Vonage ended 2007 with 2.6 million lines total.

However, Vonage isn’t out of the woods by any stretch. The company disclosed it has $253 million in convertible debt, which can be cashed in at the end of 2008. That math doesn’t quite work since Vonage only has $190 million at its disposal–actually $151 million excluding restricted cash.

Vonage is pursuing a re-fi, but although they are a company and not a homeower, these are not exactly the best times for that. And when you owe more money than you hold in assets, lenders of any stripe are likely to drive a hard bargain.

And, what about the patent trolls? They may be looking at Vonage as a company that will settle to make these disputes go away.

January 29th, 2008

Let's play a little Trace Route with Vonage, Skype sites! Guess who wins!

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 4:10 pm

Categories: Skype, Vonage

Tags: Vonage Holdings Corp., Skype Technologies S.A., Hop, Sales Tools, Web Site Development, Productivity, Web Technology, Sales, Internet, Russell Shaw

Please understand I am not talking about Vonage or Skype calls. That’s for another conversation.

What we are going to do here is employ a new Web-based Visual Trace Route tool run by a site called YouGetSignal.com.

Based in the Los Angeles area, YouGetSignal takes your site page request, and then mashes it up with Google Maps to show you how many hops the request took before it reaches the site you have selected.

Not only how many hops, but what hops. These intermediary hops can also unmask various hosting services these sites use.

Not only how many hops, and what hops, but how fast it takes. In theory, at least, that would have an influence on how fast the page loads that you are requesting.

OK, let’s fire this one up.

Vonage, you go first:

OK, Vonage, what took you so long? More than 36 seconds and nine hops! Well, at least we know they use Level 3.

Skype comes next.

Testing now, BRB…

He’s b-a-a-c-c-k.

Twelve hops yes, but only in two seconds.

“And your point is, Russ?”

My point is that although these results can vary from attempt to attempt, this little drill we’ve just done is:

A way to tell what routing services various websites use;

How many hops your packets travel; AND arguably most of all, a

Fun distraction for a rainy, cold Tuesday afternoon.

January 29th, 2008

Vonage to deliver "a mobile service": here's what I think it might be

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 7:21 am

Categories: News, Predictions and Observations, Vonage

Tags: Mobile, Vonage Holdings Corp., Citron, Wireless LANs, Advertising & Promotion, Wireless, Wi-Fi, Marketing, Russell Shaw

USA Today ran an interview with Vonage founder, chair and current CEO Jeffrey Citron yesterday.

The interview finds Jeff upbeat about the future of the company. Interesting considering the stock is trading at $2 a share. But investor-related Vonage concerns are for another post.

Citron says there are lots of new features on the way, including what was referred to by reporter Leslie Cauley as “a mobile service.”

I see that as far less likely to be a bundled service offering with a cell provider such as Cricket Wireless, as perhaps an alliance with a WiFi service provider and a revival of now-dormant Vonage compatible WiFi phones.

Maybe a branded Vonage WiFi phone co-branded with a company such as Boingo  Wireless and then configured for added compatibility with Boingo hotspots?

January 21st, 2008

Has Vonage stopped selling WiFi phones? If so, why?

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 5:24 pm

Categories: Vonage

Tags: Phone, Vonage Holdings Corp., Wi-Fi, Starcom, Telecom & Utilities, Russell Shaw

Perusing through Vonage’s own forum (as opposed to the independently owned and run Vonage Forums), I’ve found a thread that raises the issue of whatever happened to the Vonage WiFi phone

The thread has been started by someone named tophtml, asks the question about why it is so difficult to find the Vonage Starcom F1000 or F3000 WiFi Phone.

Obviously doing his research, tophtml writes:

When will Vonage and/or their authorized retailers begin offering Vonage WiFi Phones again? I have searched all of the authorized retailers and the Vonage site and find NO offerings for the Vonage UTStarcom F1000, F1000G or the F3000.

I currently own a UTStarcom F1000 and in my opinion, allowing Vonage WiFi phones to be discontinued would be a SERIOUS mistake. I have had many inquiries regarding my phone from current Vonage customers who have seen me use it and I must tell them that all Vonage WiFi phones are currently out of stock and unavailable.

After reading what tophtml posted, I went to the Products section of the Vonage site. Just like the Staple Singers sang, “I’ll take you there.”

Near as I can tell no Vonage Starcoms are being offered.

Either one of two things are going on here. Starcom has been having production issues, and the supply chain with Vonage is all gummed up, or because of slow sales or a belief this gizmo was released ahead of its time, Vonage is de-emphasizing the product.

What’s your hunch?

January 17th, 2008

Report: Vonage's website traffic down 90% from a year ago. Here's what this means

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 7:19 pm

Categories: Predictions and Observations, Vonage

Tags: Vonage Holdings Corp., Web Site, Web Site Development, Web Technology, Internet, Russell Shaw

According to Max Freiert of Web site traffic research and analyis firm Compete.com, Vonage’s own website traffic was down 90% in December, 2007 as compared to December, 2006.

Well then, let me perform some of my own analysis. Seems to me the traffic to Vonage’s web site was down in part because of fewer-signups. That phenomenon would have driven site visits down because fewer Web users would have gone to Vonage.com to research the service as well as consult the various tech and customer support resources assembled there.

And as to the existing Vonage customers carried forward from December, 2006’s flurry of visits?

Not so much that they have left Vonage as they have:

Become more used to Vonage, and have less need to go on to the Vonage site for questions:

Have become more aware of independent third-party resources such as the Vonage Forums, and have become more comfortable asking questions (and venting) there.

January 10th, 2008

Here's a list of two-digit codes for Vonage calling features

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 9:27 pm

Categories: Vonage

Tags: Vonage Holdings Corp., Web Site Development, Web Technology, Telecom & Utilities, Telecommunications, Internet, Russell Shaw

Over on the independently owned and run Vonage Forums, a frequently-posting member named roscopco has taken it upon himself to perform what I can only describe as an AFT (A Fine Time) :-) public service.

Roscopco, who ever he is, has just posted a list of the most common numerical codes to access and use various Vonage features.

The post, which is available as a “sticky” (i.e., always on top) of the Vonage Forum, includes these following numerical codes:

• 3-Way Calling Call, Flash, Dial 3rd party, Flash
• Disable Bandwidth Saver *99
• Call Return *69
• Anonymous Call Blocking *77 On, *87 Off
• Call Forward *72 On, *73 Off
• Do Not Disturb *78 On, *79 Off
• Call Transfer Flash, #90, Dial, Hang UP
• Call Transfer Announce Flash,#91, Dial, Announce, Hang UP(may not work anymore)
• Call Waiting Flash when tone is heard
• Call Waiting Disabled *70, then Dial Number
• Caller ID Block *67, Dial Tone, Dial Number
• Repeat Dialing On busy signal press #5, Hang Up
• Voice Mail *123
• Emergency 911
• Directory Assistance 411 (not free)

Although I am not currently a Vonage user, I would find this list incredibly helpful if I was.

Would/do, you?

Dontcha think Official VoIP and for that matter, all telco websites should include these instructions?