Vonage's banner ad asks us to get rid of our stone-age phone service company. After the trouble I am going through in the last couple of days with Vonage, I am ready to go back to stone age myself.
Most phone companies in the US, both traditional and mobile, don't care too much about people like me who need a phone connection for only a few months. They would rather go after the customers who are ready to pledge their souls to them. So I did not have too many options when I needed a phone for a short duration. I had to end up with Vonage, the new, cool, hep and happening VOIP phone. I was indeed surprised about the ease of obtaining the connection and setting up the equipement.
Two days back their LinkSys router started giving problems. Without being instructed, as if it has a soul all by itself, it is rebooting itself every 30 seconds or so! After having gone through all the diagnostic information available in their manuals (as a true engineer), I decided to call their customer support. I know some of you are already grinning. Though I knew the ordeal wasn't going to be smooth, I was not prepared for how it actually turned out. I ended up waiting 115 minutes (yes, almost 2 hours) waiting for a customer support representative to talk to me. Instead of at least playing some music, they were content in playing a message that repeatedly said they were 'sorry' about the delay I was experiencing and they 'value my loyalty' as a customer. I think they were trying to push me to some kind of trance by playing a repetitive hypnotic message. But after listening to this message a gazillion times in 2 hours I decided to hang up.
Not all was lost, though. They have e-mail support facility. So I shot off an email to them describing my situation, hoping they would sympathize with me and do something. Of course I received immediate replies to my mails, but their help was not even as valuable as the paper on which I printed out the procedure they asked me to perform. (Stand on one foot facing East and chant "Vonage" three times. Now turn North and walk two steps and so on ...) I know I am not a networking wizkid, but I am sure I know more than their 'experts'. But to be fair to them, I guess they are used to talking to customers who cannot tell their zip code from their IP address. So after two days of struggling with the router, it is still rebooting every 30 seconds and I am watching it's little blue LEDs blink all the time. I have no hopes of the situation improving any time soon. Unless I am ready to listen to their trance inducing message for another couple of hours. Meanwhile I wonder how people used to communicate in stone age. Smoke messages?
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