About to give up on Vonage
Let me preface this by saying that my husband, Scott and I were happy Vonage users from June to early-December 2007. Our first problem was when I tried to call home one night in December as I was leaving work and the number was not in service. Scott called Vonage and they said they were doing emergency repairs and the phone would be out for 24-48 hours. Okay, it was annoying but things happen and we had cell phones.
Then later in December as the holiday season was coming into full swing our phone was having problems again. There was an obvious delay when we spoke. Our DSL connection was acting up as well. It was the speed of dial up. We thought our DSL must be the problem but when disconnected from the Vonage device, the internet connection seemed fine. After my husband spent literally 8 hours on the phone with Vonage in total (and we were sent another refurbished router) and 2 phone calls to our DSL carrier, someone from the DSL carrier finally had the insight to tell us the very basic fact that DSL needs a landline. No, we did not know this. We thought "aha!" that must be the problem. We switched DSL carriers and added a basic land line. We thought we would see if it worked and then ask the new carrier who supplied both DSL and a phone line to stop the phone service and give us a DSL dry loop once everything was working properly. We have not gotten that far yet because Vonage is still not working properly. After another 2 hours on the phone with Vonage troubleshooting, we were sent a new router and a tech. The tech came this past Friday. He was a strange man who did not instill much confidence. He said he was very sure that our problems would be solved if we switched to cable for our internet connection. I asked him how the two worked and he didn't know the technology behind DSL vs cable. He said Vonage would not admit that DSL did not work well with their technology but he was adamant that I should switch. I prefer to be given a reason before I spend more money trying to salvage our relationship with Vonage. If not, I already have another phone carrier right now and just need to try and switch our numbers.
The tech only hooked up the Vonage device to one phone so we could test it. We do have a dial tone but have not been able to successfully make an outgoing call yet. I am skeptical about a cable internet connection finally being the solution to our problem. We have not had a landline with Vonage in a month and a half. Every time we call Vonage, we talk to a new person and they run us through the entire trouble shooting gambit because they do not seem to trust that we have done it all before. We finally had to insist upon a new router and a tech visit. If I did not like the phone service when it was working and the low cost, we would have already left them for good because they do not seem concerned that our phone does not work.
Does anyone think a high speed cable internet connection would help Vonage work again?