If you want to use your previous phone number with Vonage, you have to fill out a piece of paper, sign it, and send it over a phone line with a facsimile machine. They then say it’ll be a minimum of 20 days for the transfer. Since it’s in their best interest to make it happen as soon as possible, I trusted them to do so.
On the third day after we got signed up, I sent in the form. I didn’t get a response, but that didn’t really concern me that much.
About a week ago I logged into their site to see if there was a status monitor for that issue. There is, and it said they hadn’t yet recieved my paperwork, and therefore hadn’t started the 20 day minimum yet! That really bothered me. It already bothered me to lose 20 days of paid service because that’s how long it took if it went as fast as possible.
So I called them. I was on hold for 25 minutes, which didn’t really help at all. When I got someone, he said to FAX it right then, and gave me a number in his office. That number turned out to be disconnected. He gave me another number and that one worked. I was feeling pretty bad about the whole thing at that point, but hang on, there’s a happy ending.
I sent them email and said that as things stood, it was going to be about 45 days from sign-up to number change if there weren’t any MORE glitches. That’s a month and a half of paid service, with no benefit to myself. And I didn’t get a response for days and days. I think about a week and a half. Not cool.
But then the other day I did get one, that said that they were very sorry for the trouble, sorry for the delay in answering, and that they would credit me for any days over 20. That made me happy.
Then today I got another note that said my number transfer will be happening tomorrow. That made me very happy.
So, the bad: they dropped the ball on the paperwork, and didn’t communicate well with me when I needed them to. The good: when they finally got their act together, they did everything they could to make it up to me.
So tomorrow I should be using it. We’re going to keep our old phone line for a month to see if we want to switch back, since reconnect fees are nasty. Stay tuned for further updates.
