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bgraham
join:2001-03-15
Smithtown, NY | Why such a high churn rate? Why do they have such a high churn rate? I don't use them for my VOIP but most of the reports that I read here are fairly favorable. | |
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Jeffrey
too dark too early
Premium
join:2002-12-24
Dix Hills,NY
clubs:
 ·Optimum Online
 ·Verizon FIOS
 ·Vonage
·magicjack.com
| Re: Why such a high churn rate? said by bgraham  :Why do they have such a high churn rate? I don't use them for my VOIP but most of the reports that I read here are fairly favorable. I'm not 100% sure. I've had 3 Vonage lines for about 4 years now, with very, very little to complain about.
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And so castles made of sand, slip into the sea, eventually.
I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing. | |
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Matt
Take me down to the paradise city
Premium
join:2003-07-20
Jamestown, NC
 ·North State Commun..
| said by bgraham :Why do they have such a high churn rate? I don't use them for my VOIP but most of the reports that I read here are fairly favorable. Because most people who have bargain basement broadband, with only 128k to 512k up have trouble with Vonage when they try to do anything else with their connection. | |
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battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000 | Because they market as CHEAP! CHEAP! CHEAP! The kind of customer you attract is the kind that jumps ship over a buck. I don't think it's so much the service as it is the type of customer they market to. | |
| | kiddo1985
join:2008-02-21
Beverly Hills, CA | Re: Why such a high churn rate? Not really coz' Vonage customer's are not the kind of customer that jumps ship over a buck. These are customers that are smart enought to think about their money | |
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linicx
Caveat Emptor
Premium
join:2002-12-03
United State
·CenturyLink
| Re: Why such a high churn rate? Because the help desk is dreadful and not helpful. I wasted four months trying to convince the folks in New Jersey their equipment was dead. It took two days and something like 13 hours to finally kill the expired contract. Only then they were willing to replace the defective device -- and they kept me on the cell phone for 45 minutes trying to keep the customer.
The irony is, IF they had replaced the defective unit, I would still be a Vonage customer. AS it is, I not only would not touch them with a 10 foot pole, I certainly would not recommend their service. Vonage PR sucks; they do NOT value customers.
After I tired pf fooling with Vonage non-tech support and non-help desk, I contacted FCC, and I got back the money I was forced to spend to wait out the gd contract until it expired. This is what you get if you do not live in a large city. And I had two lines.
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Mac: No windows, No gates, Apple inside | |
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Supervisor
Premium
join:2006-03-26
Lebanon, PA | 30% annual churn is the same as 2.75% monthly churn. Perfectly normal for an ISP, probably normal for a VoIP provider too. | |
| rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO
| I think the real challenge with VOIP is the fact that consumer broadband is a best effort service. I don't think Vonage requires an extraordinary connection, but let's face it. Some broadband connections aren't very good. If you're trying to use a connection that has capacity problems or packet loss, ANY VOIP experience will be poor.
I also believe that it's very difficult to diagnose VOIP problems because consumer broadband is a best-effort service. This means there are no guarantees from moment to moment whether or not that stream of RDP packets making up your VOIP audio will continue.
I recently almost transferred my number from Vonage to the local cable company because we kept having random 1 second audio dropouts. This went on for months despite getting a new cable modem and trying several new wireless routers (took them all back because they didn't solve the problem and they weren't as good as the one I had). As a last ditch effort I went downstairs to the patch panel and plugged a wired handset directly into the Vonage telephone adapter. I made a call to my work voice mail system and recorded a song on the radio as a message. Then I kept repeatedly playing the voice mail to detect sound dropouts. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that my switch uplink light went out when one of the audio dropouts occurred so I started watching it more closely. Then I noticed that every audio dropout was tied to the switch uplink light going out. I plugged the Vonage telephone adapter directly into the router and the problem vanished.
The problem here is I'm in the IT profession and I was just about ready to give up but I finally found the problem. How can the average consumer be expected to diagnose such a problem? The other fact of the matter is that the periodic switch uplink doesn't bother any of the computers hooked up to it in terms of Internet access and file/print. But that random uplink drop was murder for a RDP audio stream.
I've had a couple other call-quality problems with Vonage that were related to my cable connection or Internet "weather". Once the technician told me to go to testyourvoip.com. I received a green 4.0 rating but he said there was some "jitter" and that this was likely the problem. What a load of B.S. The problem cleared on it's own the next day (usually does) and I have run that test many times since then and the "jitter" is always there.
VOIP is a great technology but until someone puts more intelligence in the devices to provide more troubleshooting help, it's a fringe technology. VOIP companies cannot expect the average consumer to know how to fix these problems and there's no way customer service can diagnose the problems without a lot more information coming from the telephone adapter.
But even if they can accurately diagnose the problem, if it's tied to a bad broadband connection and your provider isn't capable of fixing it, VOIP service will be bad. | |
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