I decided to give Vonage a try because it is cheaper. I liked the online account management. It was easy to install. That's about it for liking it.

They advertised at 24.99 but it was almost ten dollars more per month after other charges. Ok, that seems to be the norm, so I disregarded it.

There were numerous small oddities in quality, but again, I disregarded it and thought it might be attributed to ther things, like maybe the integrity of my power supply, my computer, my cable modem, various wires, etc. There was a consistent echo, the time between dialing on my end and ringing on their end was occasionally really long, more times than I could count, my initial call would have to be dropped and redialed because it sounded choppy, like we were both talking through a fanblade. At times, it would go completely mute on my end, and either I would hear nothing from the person I called or they would hear nothing from me, for sometimes a half a minute at a time. There were clicks and pops consistently. And sometimes I would get a call on my cell from someone trying to call my home phone, and if I am on my home phone, didn't get a beep or any indication like call waiting like I normally would and should, or if I wasn't on the phone, it would ring once, or not ring at all. The only way I knew the call didn't make it, was because the caller tried my alternate cell phone number telling me they calledmy home phone and couldn't get through, yet I often didn't hear it ring even when it was right next to me. It makes me wonder how many calls have been lost that I didn't know about from people that didn't know my cell. Clicks, pops, sporadic muting, I shouldn't have had to deal with, but I did. But towards the end, it was all that plus repeated problems dialing out and receiving calls at all. I do not want unstable phone service.

Now, in regards to customer service, I have mixed reviews about this. They were hard to understand sometimes (India from the sound, which was fine except for the few of them that had an extremely thick accent), and didn't ever seem to understand what I wanted and continued talking over me for a script without hearing me. This was frustrating. However, if I had an error message that made the phone service inoperable, they walked me through it, frustrating commnication and all, successfully and politely. Problem is, the error messages became more and more frequent. The several times I had to call support, they fixed my problem, but the problem always came back almost immediately.

Right before cancellation, for two days I had continual and changing error messages. Not only would my phone not work, but my internet would not work either. I called Vonage first. They determined it was an internet connection problem. Ok. I called my internet provider and they walked me through but couldn't fix anything either. SO, my internet provider sent a service technician who came to my house, confirmed my internet was fine by using his laptop, but could not determine why my phone nor internet would actually work on my computer. Ok, I hooked up a seperate computer to my net modem after he left, and the net was fine just like he said. I then hooked up Vonage, and boom, their computer froze, the net stopped working, and ofcourse, the phone still didn't work. Aha, so the problem is with Vonage after all. I called Vonage a second time with intent to cancel, but decided to walk through fixing it one more time (maybe it was a fluke, stupid me thought), and he successfully got my net and my phone working. I was happy. Until I hung up, tried to use my phone a split second later, and saw another error message and had no dialtone. And the net was out again. Aggravated, I unhooked Vonage completely, rebooted my pc, and my net worked again. So, the problem was Vonage. It was Vonage all along.

I called Vonage to cancel and a thousand times I had to tell them I was to disconnect service instead of using technical support. They were determined I was going to go through technical support. I was firm and repeated over and over I wanted to disconnect. I was put on hold, transfered to another, went through the same thing, put on hold, transfered, and put through the same thing. I was informed I was going to have to pay 39.99 disconnect fee and 79.99 for the Vonage adapter. I was furious. I now owed my internet provider $25 for a service visit because the service visit was determined to have been rooted in a cause other than with their internet. And they were right. They came out to fix the net and nothing was wrong with the net. The problem was with Vonage. So I owe $25 extra to my internet service provider. Because of Vonage making me think, through their tech support, that I had a net problem. And considering my net didn't work, well, it made sense. Problem was, Vonage was what was screwing up my net. SO I said, "I do remember the disconnect agreement, BUT you can deduct the $25 I spent because of your tech support, and I certainly will not pay for faulty equipment that I am more than willing to ship back." She was determined I owed the bill, because she said I had used the service three months and also tech support resolved my problems. Yes, three months of overlooking minor problems and tech support temporarily fixing a problem only for it to come back almost immediately. They were tryign to say they had given me flawless service when they didn't. I have read from other users that they will charge your card for this disconnect/adapter fee almost immediately, so my advice is to not give them a chance. If they take your money, I guarantee you will never get it back, and customer service's "dispute resolution" is code for "Try to get your money back now" according to other users. To provide not even substandard service and think they are justified in charging for faulty equipment and fining you for disconnecting service because of them providing you with inadequate service is ridiculous. I can understand if Vonage was great service and you just decided to stop. But it's poor service, and disconnecting is a result of poor service. Not because I have nothing better to do with my time. The agreement was I get quality phone service. They didn't keep their end so that negates me of any responsibility on my end as far as I'm concerned.

My advice is don't get Vonage to begin with.

Purchased a Vonage phone line for my fax machine in late June 2008. My fax machine did not interface with Vonage's line. After several calls to the company's customer service & tech support, decided to cancel. They changed me to a "fax line". It also didn't interface with my fax machine. When I canceled the service (10/2008) I found out that they would not accept the return of the modem, plus they charged me a 39.99 cancellation fee (I was unaware of both), plus they cut the line with three weeks remaining on my already paid monthly bill and refused to refund me the last three weeks on the paid invoice.

Have had Vonage for three months and have yet for it to work. Called several times and they will not cancel the account, they only try to fix it which takes more time than I have. Tired of paying for nothing.

We signed up with Vonage to save money on our phone bill. The customer rep. assured us our DSL would work with their service. After we transported our phone number to Vonage, we lost our DSL service because it is not a stand-alone DSL provider, which the Vonage rep. would have known. Consequently, we had no phone or internet service for almost 2 weeks and had to use cell phones to contact Vonage and cancel the "1-month free trial". They tried to give us a list of stand-alone DSL providers instead of canceling, but none were available for our area, so we called again to cancel. Apparently they never officially canceled, because we got a bill for the next month's service (billed in advance, strangely enough and debited it from our checking account using the debit card we used to sign up for the service!) After numerous calls and emails, we are still waiting for the refund we are supposed to get once we returned the Vonage router, which we could not use obviously without our DSL service. We had to pay reconnection fees to our telephone company to get phone service and DSL re-enstated. All in all, this whole venture cost us over $ 250.00, a sad lesson to learn when all we wanted to do was save a few dollars on our phone bill! I will never recommend Vonage to anyone and am amazed at all the similar posts complaining about the same thing. The BBB will hear from us too! This is obviously a fraudulent scheme to withdraw funds from people's bank accounts and Vonage needs to be stopped.

In Jan 07 I ordered Vonage phone service, when it got here it was a headphone set that you used at a computer, it had a key to plug in the front of the computer so you could take it where ever you wanted that had high speed internet.

I called to cancel & said this was not what I expected, & wanted to cancel, so the salesperson told me that I had got the wrong one, that I needed a motorolla, so I said o.k. I could try that, for $19.99 a month unlimited service. well it came on Feb 5th , after I got it hooked up i found I could call out, but all incoming was long distance, why would my neighbors want to call me long distance from across t he street, so I call & talked to a Dexter employee # 2497 & said I wanted to cancel. he told me there would be $150.00 disconnect fee. I said why & he said because I went past my 30 day cancellation deal. I said they kept me trying without telling me my time was running out, he said the only way he can waive this is if I keep it for March & April at $24.99 a month & I said why $24.99, it was only supposed to be $19.99 & he said well, this is how it is if I want to cancel. I feel this has been a big rip off & feel I deserve my $68.00 they took out for the hook up plus $34.04 for feb. 07.