AT&T has ramped up and rolled out its VoIP service, CallVantage offering availability in 100 markets.
When you think how fast AT&T has gone from zero to 100 in number of markets it is rather impressive, and in many ways they are really lighting the fuse for all of VoIP as a residential play. Vonage, which clearly paved the way is still part I want to be a public company, part dot.com hubris, but gets the credit for being the first player really in the game in a big way.
In looking over the discussion forums at Broadband Reports, a place I consider super early adopter, heavy geek/tech types, I found it interesting while many questions were about Vonage, and complaints about other carriers (i.e. Lingo by Primus, Broadvox Direct, Packet 8) where they ranged from QoS complaints, customer service complaints or problems with service in general, I found very recent commentary about CallVantage, and almost no cheap shots at Vonage. That makes me think two things.
1) The service both companies promise is being delivered.
2) They are not having the kind of problems the other VoIP players seem to be having because they have more mature platforms that have been tested.
Vonage’s deceptions are deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair, and perhaps unlawful gain.
I paid more than 100$, and I received no service at all. The telephone
did not work one single second, the telephone adapter could not connect with their routers. They charge you to connect and they charge you to disconnect, which would have been understandable if
in fact you were ever connected!
There may be competitors out there that can deliver good quality and value of VoIP, but Vonage is not one of them. For a service to reach a large part of the population, it must work out-of-the-box. If something as essential as the telephone service takes a PhD (which by the way I have one!) to make it work then … draw your own conclusions.
The expression “Vonage customer service” is an oxymoron; the first
word cannot precede the last two. Their customer service was not only bad, they were almost aggressive towards their own customer!
If you think that it is going to cost you $25 to transition from your convenient landline to VoIP …. think again! Not only the expense is much more than that (due to hidden or indirect costs) but switching back to your company will be a painful exercise. In retrospect, I can see why their customer service seems to be so indifferent, the cost that you pay (more than $100) without even having one second of telephone service is for most people too high and they are probably willing to tolerate the rude service because they do not want to loose the money that they invested in that (mockery of a) business.
Please, spread the word if friends of yours consider to move into VoIP.
They must certainly do their market research first and they should definitely think twice about doing business with Vonage. Do not say … “None told me!”
Sincerely,
Babis Marmanis
My parents (Atlanta) signed up for AT&T CAllVantage – we dubbed it calldis-vantage. From the moment they were hooked up it didn’t work. Either no calls in , no calls out or flat out no calls. My parents health is poor at best – we almost lost my father twice in Jan. This was a big worry for us since they couldn’t call out or recieve call’s for the majority of the time. All of this started before Hurricaine Ivan and was just corrected Oct. 18th.,Over a month latter. I was on the phone almost everyday from 1-5 hours fighting to get the phone fixed then finally put back on a regular land line. Even at that point they said 8-10 days which ended up being 16 days before working again. The 12th day they sent someone who said there was still a problem that had to be fixed at the phone company – though they had promised it would be fixed by that evening – it wasn’t. One of our fears happened that night 1 wk before my mothers 70th birthday she fell in the floor and was unable to get up – my fathers health would not allow him at 72 to pick her up. Thankfully my sister had left her cell phone with them for emergencies and they were able to contact my brother. Otherwise my mother would have been left in the floor for hours before someone made it by to check on them. I was told repeatedly that they had never meant for this service to be for residential nor for a main line, though this is the way it was sold to my parents. When all of the information arived after being set up it gives you all of the warnings and advises you to have another phone for emergencies. If you are unable to tell your location when you call 911 and get disconected they have no way to tell where you called from since your number doesn’t show up. This is what the various people repeatedly told me while telling me they could not fix the phone – & they were oh so sorry. They had more sales than they could deal with and were hiring people as fast as they could (hold time was a min. of 45min. each time before speaking to anyone) and they were having alot of problems and not enough tech’s to fix all of the problems. Though the workers were mostly polite – they couldn’t or wouldn’t fix the phone for over a month. Please advise everyone to avoid getting involved with this. Especially if you may ever have an emergency – need to call 911 or your doctor. They better get a messenger to be on 24/7 stand by. After all of the years dealing with AT&T my father now no longer wants anything to do with them.