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Vonage Kicks My Ass as a Parting Shot

So after weeks of waiting, my port of the Vonage number to my ooma account finally went though.  There was some type of problem verifying that I was who I said I was and I had to send them a FAX of my electricity bill, which is ridiculous because with Vonage, I am able to use it anywhere I take their box.

But I digress.

So, I go online to vonage.com to close my account.  As per usual (for closing accounts at any big company), they want you to call a live person, but they are not open on weekends or holidays.  So I wait through the Labor day weekend and call them on Tuesday.  For some reason, the first 2 times I called, I got disconnected after getting to the initial person on the line who said they’d transfer me.  The first one was definitely in India somewhere.

On the 3rd call, I got an American (maybe) who did not have to transfer me.  He apologized for the slow service because the Vonage computer system was down and it was difficult for him to access my account.  As a matter of fact, I wasn’t able to log into my Vonage account before calling.  More reason to close my account.

Then the customer service rep told me that if I stayed, I could get 2 months free service. Eventually, he did close my account for me.  Finally.  But he reminded me that there is a charge to close my account.  I “forgot” to read the fine print in the Vonage contract which says they’ll charge me $39.99 to close my account.  Damn it!

If I knew they were going to offer me 2 free months, I could have called them 2 months before I switched over to ooma, and saved enough from that to cover the cost of closing my account.  Oh well.

Now, it’s going to take me 2 more extra months to break even on switching to ooma.  I sure hope ooma stays in business that long.  (Crossing fingers and knocking on wood.)