To continue my dull as paint-drying story, I have now discovered that Vonage is every bit as evil as Qwest. The only reason I post this boring story is in the case that I half-convinced you to consider changing phone service, I wanted to give you the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The sad sad truth.When I signed up for Vonage online, it was very specific. DO NOT CONTACT YOUR CURRENT PROVIDER. WE WILL DO THAT FOR YOU. So I didn't. I went along my way. "This is great," I thought. After all, calling to cancel my home phone was like breaking up with a bad girlfriend. So if they wanted to do it for me, great.
But the problem is, Vonage did an awful job of breaking up with my bad girlfriend. Not once did they tell me I needed to activate an additional "dry" line with Qwest. Nor did they set up a dry line fore me. So when Vonage "stole" my number from Qwest, they deactivated ALL SERVICES. There was just one little problem... You need DSL service for Vonage to work. So basically, they deactivated DSL, leaving Vonage completely and utterly useless. Clear as mud?
When Vonage finally got to my house it worked great for a few days, hence my earlier post. But then, Qwest finally got around to deactivating my services, and it hasn't worked since. We have no home phone and no internet. Luckily, we could set up our home phone to forward to Jana's cell phone, but on the other hand that has been eating up all of our minutes.
The insult to injury is I was under contract with Qwest for my DSL, and since I terminated early they were going to charge me a $200 early termination fee. Thankfully, when I called Qwest to reactivate my services, I was able to talk them out of it. But Vonage doesn't know this! What if Qwest wasn't kind and forced me to pay that fee?
When researching this big switch a few weeks ago, I called Qwest to see how it works. They never once said I needed to set up an additional "dry" line. They also specifically said the price on my internet wouldn't go up. When I called back to reactivate my DSL, they said the price will go up $7/month. This reduces the $$ I save to only $8/month. I guess that works out to $96/year, which would have still been worth it if I didn't have all this hassle.
So Qwest is evil. Vonage is evil. They're all evil. Take your phone and throw it out the window.
6 comments:
ha ha ha ha, oh man that story is so funny to me.
That stinks! I am sorry you guys had to go through that. Yes, I've decided all phone companies are just out to get as much money as possible from their customers, but sadly, you could say that about most companys out there. Hopefully this mess is all sorted out now for you guys! Thanks for the warning, we've thought about switching for a while to vonage, I guess we should probably just stay with Qwest for now.
Wait, so ALL phone companies have horrible service? You are breaking new ground here, Ike.
Hey I had the same thing happen but I found out my contract was only on my DSL not on my home phone plan. You CAN call Qwest have them kill your phone but keep your DSL. Then have another sultry affair with Vonage. They will probably hike your DSL price saying that the low price was for a bundle with your home phone. Long story short you can look to save about $10 per month with vonage + more if you call long distance a lot.
sorry i should read your whole blog before being redundant. i really just needed an excuse to use the words 'sultry affair'
He he, sultry affair. I need to start using that phrase more often.
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