December 24, 2006 at 1:29 pm · Authored by Ewan · Filed under Mobile, VOIP

You remember Vonage, right? I bought it the moment they entered the market — and was delighted to receive their little router. It worked perfectly. Unfortunately the call quality was shit. I mean ridiculously bad. So much so that I have never, ever managed to make a Vonage call without someone saying, ‘Er, this is a ………. very…….. bad …….. line………’

See this and this — two posts I wrote about the service this year.

It wasn’t Vonage that was the problem per se. My colleague Keith uses them phenomenally well in Canada — where they’ve actually got fast internet. My thesis is this: I reckon Vonage will only work properly when you’ve got a proper internet connection.

Me? I’ve got a 2mb ‘business’ connection — but it’s out in the sticks — I’m about 30 miles from London, which means, nigh on regardless whatever service you bought, your connection is and will always be crap.

I’m lucky on a good day to get 120k a second throughput. And if you then consider that Vonage — at its highest setting — is having to take a massive chunk of that…… and even then, the throughput is hardly guaranteed at the best of times. So it never worked. Not once.

So instead of using it as a phone line, I used it as a call divert service — annoyingly expensive. If you phoned my ‘London’ number, it diverted to my mobile.

Interestingly, I could always tell if someone had called via my Vonage line because there was a …….. skip………. skip……. now and again.

Why did I put up with this? And why did I put up with the annoyingly large bills? Well, I wanted to support the new technology. Much like Windows Mobile, I really liked the concept and hoped the actual reality would change — and it would work.

Then, trouble. I changed my direct debit bank card. The numbers had worn off it, I’d used it so much, so I had another one issued — a nice shiny new one. Which meant that I had to change the details on various online services I subscribe to — Vonage being one of them.

I got a ‘woops, we couldn’t bill you,’ message from Vonage.

‘Ahhhh, I thought…. not a problem!’

I logged into my account and hunted for the change-your-credit-card-details section.

Couldn’t find it.

I spent 15 minutes hunting, then wrote them an email saying I couldn’t find the form.

They wrote back, telling me to use the online form to pay.

I wrote back saying I couldn’t find it.

They wrote back telling me to use the online form to………you what?

I emailed and said, ‘Have you got a PayPal account I can send money to?’

Nope. Who knows what was up with my account? For some reason I didn’t have the option to change my credit card details.

Gahh. ‘Here are my new credit card details then,’ I said — putting them in the text of the email.

Nothing.

So I owe Vonage 57 quid and they’ve, naturally, disconnected service. I’ve emailed to ask for a bank account — or ANYTHING — to enable me to get the money to them, beyond writing out a cheque. I haven’t written a CHEQUE for ages. How disappointing would it be to have to pay for a futuristic service like Vonage with a piece of paper and a pen?

I’m actually quite relieved. It was silently annoying me, paying for a service every month that a) didn’t work for me and b) was costing me a lot more because it didn’t work, since I had to make some sort of use of it and thus used it as an [expensive] divert service.

I’m sure Vonage is working for someone in the UK. If that’s you, do drop me a mail or post a comment as I’d like to hear about it. I really liked the concept of taking my Vonage router to my hotel and having my calls routed there!

In the meantime, rest assured that I shall work out some way of paying Vonage the money I owe them.