Don't sign-up with Vonage

Prior to signing up with Vonage I contacted their customer services department to confirm that I would be able to call a 1901 number in the

UK that I use for international calls. I did this on at least half a dozen occasions and each time was told that I would be able to and that

it would be covered under the =A39.99 plan. Each time I called I explained exactly what the number was for and how much it costs to call

the number with BT.

When I finally signed up and received their phone adapter I called the number to check it and found that it was blocked. A quick call to their technical support people confirmed that the number was blocked and that I could not call it.

Furious that I had been lied to so many times by sales reps who were obviously just after a sale I called to cancel the service. It has actually taken me three calls to cancel because the first two said they

had cancelled me but actually didn't. They then had the cheek to charge a cancellation fee and refused to refund any of my money until I

returned the phone adapter. The second person I spoke to said that they would arrange pickup but as he wasn't sure how to do it in the UK said I had to contact their UK office. The number he gave me doesn't work. So I called their US office again (all calls go through to the US office) and now they say I have to pay for the return of something that doesn't work for me despite promises to the contrary.

Anyway, I would recommend that nobody sign up with Vonage UK if my experience is anything to go by. You get lied to, you have to deal with Americans who don't know what they are talking about, all their documentation is for their US service and they are just generally rubbish.=20

Regards, Jake.

I second Jake's sentiment and recommend Vonage UK is given a wide berth.

I regretted subscribing less than a day after account activation, before i even had the router. Contrary to reasonable expectation there was no way to use the service via a Softphone unless you took out a separate phone number and paid for it. Replies to customer service emails were always canned and irrelevant, even if the questions were quite specific.

Then my router arrived. It was impossible to get incoming calls, but even more impossible to have a coherent conversation with most customer service representatives. I found that while the US call centre was bad the Indian one was far worse, with the staff unable to engage in even the most basic conversations unless it was in their script, and were also unable to hear you.

For example when giving your person number after calling (for identification) they would repeat it back to you, almost always wrongly. So if your phone number was a London one e.g. 020 8 xxx xxxx, they would say in a monotone "let me repeat that 8725 3727 yy". This would go on for about five minutes. Once after 5 minutes I just asked "Is that number you repeated one actually offered by Vonage? If not why are you repeating it?". The operator had no comprehension of what I was saying so went to the beginning of the script as the reply namely "Hello my name is xx, May I have your phone number please?".

With no incoming calls and realising that Vonage were impossible to deal with I decided to cancel under the 14 day money back guarantee. As Jake describes it took several phone calls and transfers to get through to someone who 1) understood that I wanted to cancel and b) was the right person (in theory anyway). This person took some details and then said I would be called back in

45 minutes. I was not happy and asked why it was that he could not do it there and then. Again no logical answer. I repeatedly asked "Why can't you cancel the service now?" to which the response was "you will be called back in 45 minutes". I asked if the person understood what ?why?? meant and he replied that I would get a call back in 45 minutes about that!

I moved on to explain that I would be out in 45 minutes and could I be called back tomorrow. Such a statement was way too complex for the operator who replied "yes I understand, you will be called back in 45 minutes". It took a further 10 minutes to get him to understand that I would be out in 45 minutes.

Anyway a day later no call back so I called again and this time by some miracle my account was cancelled straight away (well after 30 minutes on the phone anyway). I didn't bother to ask for a pick up. I just sent the stuff back as instructed and quite surprisingly all my money was actually refunded under the

14 day guarantee