Nate Update

Well, good. Nowhere to go but up.

I read today at Geek.com this announcement from Vonage. The author closed the article like this: “Since it has a good product at a great price, there will always be potential for growth.”

To the author: Have you used Vonage? I have. I hate it. In fact, my assistant was on the phone with Vonage Customer Support (transferred SEVEN times) for two and a half hours this afternoon to find out how we could cancel Vonage altogether. Solution: “Did you reset your modem?” Puh-lease. Daily. (Note: I reset the modem 3 or 4 times a week, usually on the occasion that I get a phone call to come through to me, then drop it, or when my clients tell me that they’ve been trying to fax me unsuccessfully for 3 hours, or god forbid- try to leave me a voice mail).

I supported Vonage like I do many “new-school” technologies that stick it to the monopolistic big businesses that boost consumer’s rates annually and generally never do anything but “work.” (I did the same over the last ten years with SIRIUS, DirecTV, TiVo, Adobe InDesign, Apple OSX, Palm Products, and so on…) The main difference between these progressive companies and Vonage: They stand by their product, they have excellent customer service, and they are willing to swallow their egos and give you your money back if their product blows. Vonage is the opposite. Bear in mind that I’ve only had Vonage since June – it’s early August as I write this. I’ve been hung up on. I’ve been transferred to India where English wasn’t even a 3rd language of the “specialist,” and I’ve taken 2 “how-did-we-do?”surveys in 4 weeks.

Think hard before you switch to Vonage. Take it from me, I’m stuck with ‘em for another 4 weeks.

-edit-

P.S. I just read another story on Geek.com announcing Ooma, another Voice Over IP service coming soon. Look into that instead. I know I will.