About 2 weeks ago, I decided to push our house even further off the digital cliff and switch our phone service over to Vonage, a VOIP provider. I figured, for $25 a month of unlimited calling anywhere in the US, it would be a really big savings over our currently monthly phone bill.
After hearing nothing but glowing reviews, I decided to take the plunge, sign us up, and transfer our current phone to them. Vonage happily charged my credit card $68 (for signup fees and the first month), and told me it would take a week or so for the VOIP modem to arrive.
Well, everything looked good to go: It arrived yesterday, I opened up the package and everything seemed to be in order. I was planning on getting things set up tonight.
That is, until I received 4 emails today (in this order):
- A final billing information email stating that there was a $39 cancellation fee.
- A email saying my service was cancelled (per my request).
- A notice that my line number transfer was cancelled.
- A note saying that I need to return the modem immediately or I may be charged the full price of the modem.
Um, what?
My guess is that for some reason, Verizon wouldn't allow the current phone number to transfer, so Vonage went ahead and cancelled my order. Which would of be fine, if:
- They let me know
- They didn't go ahead and CHARGE me $100 for the pleasure of NEVER using the service.
I would of expected a nice email, saying that they were sorry that they couldn't provide service, and I should return the modem immediately for a refund. Of course their offices are on the east coast, so it'll have to wait until tomorow to see how this pans out. I'll be curious to see how their customer service is - so far, I'm not impressed.
This whole mess has lead me to wonder if it's just worth completely dropping home phone service and use our cells as our 'house' phone instead.
