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08/10/2003 Entry: "Vonage: Why Lily Tomlin isn't a good customer service model"

Given the poor state of the economy, and the dismal job market for senior UNIX administrators in my area, I've decided to start my own business. I'll be helping people with their Macs (and UNIX boxes), doing Web design, graphic arts, etc.

To get the business off the ground, I needed a business phone number and a fax line. I'd heard good things about Vonage, a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephone company. When I was at Global Crossing, we had VoIP phones from Cisco, and they worked pretty well. I'd heard that their support wasn't stellar, but their price was just where I needed it to be. I thought I'd give it a try.

Unfortunately, it seems that they took Lily Tomlin's old "Ernestine" SNL skit to heart: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company," Lily said. That's the impression I've gotten from Vonage's "dedication" to customer support.

Here's the (slightly edited for jargon) post I sent to {{link news:comp.dcom.telecom comp.dcom.telecom}} about my Vonage experience to date:

Pete Romfh wrote:
> I've been using it for about 3 months now and have been quite satisfied.
> There have been a couple of outages, each relating to a problem here.
> Things stop working when spouse trips over LAN cable in closet
> and doesn't tell you. Also stops when power to cable modem and router
> is interrupted by loose plug at back of UPS. Neither could be blamed
> on Vonage service.

Good thing it was on your end.

I just signed up with Vonage, on one of their small-business plans. In fact, my Ethernet-to-phone adapter hasn't arrived yet. However, I'm *this close* to marking it "return to sender" when it does arrive.

Supposedly, almost immediately upon signing up (and being billed), you get a phone number that has operational voicemail.

In my case, the voicemail seems to go to a totally different company in the area.

I tried calling Vonage. After spending over 20 minutes on hold, I abandoned that idea.

I tried e-mailing them. Thirty-six -- yes, 36 -- HOURS later I get a response, which consists of a polite "works for me." Guess what? It doesn't work for me, or for other phone lines in my local telephone exchange.

I send back a reply e-mail. This one gets answered in about half a day, with a suggestion that I call SBC, the traditional phone company in my area, to find out why the calls aren't being routed correctly. That's not acceptable. If I'm paying for business-class service, I certainly expect that they'll do their own detective work when a number they sold isn't routed properly within the local dialing area. Their response, so far: "We'll look into it. See if it works when you get your adapter."

I'm damn glad I haven't run any ads with that number yet.

I've heard good things about the service when it works. My experience so far is: when it doesn't work, you're in trouble. While their customer support people seem polite, they don't appear to be going too deep in tracking down problems, and the response time is atrocious.

If you are going to *depend* on this line for your business, I can't recommend Vonage right now. It might make a good additional line, or a cost-saving measure, but it doesn't seem like they're really trying to win the small-business customer. (After all, their service, *if it came with telco-class customer service*, would be a natural for the sole proprietor starting a business out of the home. And we know how dismal telco-class customer service is nowadays!)

I'm hoping that they'll decide to get serious about fixing this in the next day or two. The alternatives are prohibitively expensive. They have a killer product, but their customer service is a killer in a whole different way.

The lesson for businesses: Customer service can make or break your business plan, especially in a service industry. A customer buying "telephone service" expects that the service will work, and that you will provide "service" when it doesn't work.

When customers discover that you've skimped on customer support during your "early phase," they're likely to leave and never come back. It's better to turn away customers with a polite "I'm sorry, but we're at capacity now, could you check back in a month?" than to have them sign up and get screwed when something breaks. You have a good chance of getting the customers you turned away. (Some may even be impressed that you aren't overselling yourself.) You have a poor chance of getting back the customers you've pissed off.

Also, if your business plan includes "word of mouth" as a promotional avenue, you're especially at risk. Bad customer service will get you the "word of mouth" you don't want, as those words will probably include profanity and some variation on "stay away."

Posted by Joe @ 05/26/2004 11:55 AM ET

Just two cents so folks know it's not just Vonage who has problems like this. I almost signed up with Nuvio but thankfully didn't. My co-workers who did (all for residential service) have had nightmares. Days with no phone and no customer service support. Broadband phone service is an awesome idea that seems to be just not quite ready for mass usage yet.

Posted by Rob Levandowski @ 08/11/2003 11:08 PM ET

The Vonage ATA finally arrived today. Setup wasn't as easy as it could have been. The instructions aren't as clear as they could be. They are complete, but phrased in a way that could cause confusion. So, it took me a while to get it working.

Also, although it's advertised as being compatible with NAT, if your NAT includes any firewall capability, you'll need to open up some ports. These ports aren't listed in the enclosed documentation. Luckily, I had read about this issue on the Web, and tracked down the ports I needed to open up.

Dialing out seems to work OK, although sometimes there won't be any dialtone unless I hang up and try again.

Inbound is still messed up. It still goes to the wrong place. The fax line goes to the wrong place, too... albeit a different wrong place.

Several e-mails (and hours) later, Vonage finally calls me and puts diagnostics on the line. It seems that local calls aren't reaching me. (Gee, really?) They're co-ordinating with the local phone company.

Seems I'm the first customer in this particular phone exchange. Perhaps they need better testing when they activate new service areas?

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