Multi-Day Vonage Outage Doesn't Help Longevity Number of users lose service enitirely for days... On the heels of news of yet another patent lawsuit (this time by Nortel), Vonage didn't help ease the minds of worried investors/users when a number of users suffered a multi-day outage over the weekend. An outage that started last Friday lasted until late Sunday for many users. "I've had Vonage for 5 years -- not counting this weekend, it's been years since I had an outage of any kind," says one user, who called the outage an "extreme situation." "I've only had Vonage for a few months and my service has been out twice for days," says another.
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 | | Never had an outage I had Vonage for about a year and never had any outages, unless it was my DSL connection, never anything that was Vonage's fault though.
I cancelled my service with them a few months back partially due to these lawsuits, and partially because we have a couple cell phones and didn't really need a landline.
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F R O S T Y
www.mindfrost82.com | |
|  |  nekoAll Hail CanadaPremium
join:2006-08-11
Canada | Re: Never had an outage I had Vonage for over 2 years & never had an issue... | |
| | |  knightmbEverybody Lies
join:2003-12-01
Franklin, TN | Re: Never had an outage said by neko:I had Vonage for over 2 years & never had an issue... Had it since 2004, had one semi-outage which was a local calling issue with Bellsouth. Was fixed within the day. Since then, no outages.
I feel sorry for those that do have an outage, but every phone company has some sort of outage either due to technical problems or mother nature. My mom has an outage with AT&T about every other week in her area, but I guess it's not large enough to be news worthy  | |
| | |  tc1uscg
join:2005-03-09
Saint Clair Shores, MI | said by neko:I had Vonage for over 2 years & never had an issue... Ha.. I've had pots for almost 25 years and not till the last year, I've had more "issues" within the past 12 months with AT&T then I've had all the previous other times and I've lived everywhere from Hawaii to Florida (various telco's). So, 2 outages on a pots line, lasting for more then 5 days on one, 2 on another. So, what does that tell ya? That nothing is immune to technical burps. Count yourself lucky, at least you didn't have Sunrocket..  | |
| | | | | only ever had one outage... and it was a blown DSL filter on my internet connection, so not vonage's equipment or fault. | |
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| | | Why did you cancel your service with them partially due to the lawsuits? Is it from some moral stand point or you believed the service will deteriorate as a result of the financial burden? | |
| | | | | Re: Never had an outage Mainly because I thought they were going to go under or the service would deteriorate due to the financial burden...in addition to not needing a landline anymore.
I cancelled their service and still don't have a landline and we still don't come close to using all of our cell phone minutes. | |
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| Reviews:
 ·Comcast
| Been with vonage since May of '03 I've had minor issues here and there, but otherwise solid.
As a matter of fact this past Saturday my mom's vonage line went crazy. it kept ringing like every 15 mins, and when they'd pick up there would be no one at the other end.
It was fix by around 10am Sunday morning. | |
| | | | Vonage is Voyage into an eventual Hell. | |
|
 ptrowskiGot Helix?Premium
join:2005-03-14
Putnam, CT
kudos:4 | Solid when I used them. I am surprised that it was so bad. When I used Vonage for almost 2 years I never had an issue. | |
| | | Parents have Vonage And it goes through my Verizon DSL circuit. It never goes down, and it never sounds like shit either.
Must have been some serious network outage. | |
|  La LunaSurvived AshrafulPremium
join:2001-07-12
Warwick, NY
kudos:3
 ·Vonage
·Optimum Online
| What outage? I didn't have any outage this weekend, didn't even know there was one. Not complaining of course, but no problems here at all.
I can't remember the last time Vonage was out due to something on their end. A few times when cable was having issues, but nothing with Vonage itself. I've had it since 2004 and it is still as solid as ever. | |
| | | No outage for me I had no outage. My inlaws still called  | |
| | | | Re: No outage for me  | |
| | | | Re: Inlaws: Hilarious!!!!! | |
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| | Outages for me I've been having intermittent Vonage outages since Friday night. The light on the Vonage box randomly keeps turning yellow and there's nothing I can do when that happens.
It was out for hours and hours on Friday night, then all was fine until last night when it crapped out for hours on end again.
I haven't had any problems with it in the one year + that I've had Vonage, but I'm getting nervous now. Maybe it's time to switch to another VoIP service, but to whom? Any suggestions? And do I really need to pay $30 a month (after fees, taxes and whatnot) for VoIP service? I could always get my VoIP service via Time Warner, but theirs costs a whopping $40 a month. Whoah!! | |
| | | | Re: Outages for me said by jerryp :
I could always get my VoIP service via Time Warner, but theirs costs a whopping $40 a month. Whoah!! When I spoke to TWC about phone service, they put me on a triple play package that worked out less then I was paying for Vonage and TWC TV and Internet service. | |
| | fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | said by jerryp :
Maybe it's time to switch to another VoIP service, but to whom? Any suggestions? And do I really need to pay $30 a month (after fees, taxes and whatnot) for VoIP service? I could always get my VoIP service via Time Warner, but theirs costs a whopping $40 a month. Whoah!!
Two things wrong with that comment.
1) You're having problems with a VoIP provider and you're asking who to move to next? In your case, measure that by the least number of times they go down. While I've never had any outages (that I'm aware of) I still don't put full faith and credit in anything from a 3rd arty VoIP provider.
2) "Do I need to pay $30 a month".. wow! Unfortunately, around here you WILL get sympathy from people on the price of VoIP/Phone service here. Phone is a life line service and in my opinion nothing to shake the cheap stick at. The question to ask you is if you use long distance or not and how much? If you don't use long distance, then get a standard land line and call it a day. If you use long distance for more than 3 hours a month, then that "whopping $40" a month from Time Warner is ... *nothing* in the case of a phone bill.
The term VoIP phone service has become a slang term by many to define the 3rd party stand alone providers. Cable companies have never called their service "VoIP".. only SOME users do. I won't get into any debate that cable is VoIP.. it runs on that technology, I know. But, the two services are in NO comparison to each other as far as what you get for your money.
If you need a local dial tone, like a few calling features like call waiting, 3-way calling (does anyone use this any more? ) caller ID, voice mail or call forwarding along with a few hours (3 or more) a month of long distance including the intra lata long distance (the most expensive form) then $40 a month is nothing... A bill like that with Bell can/used to cost up wards to $70+ a month. And, the fact that companies like Vonage and Call Vantage came along with a toy telephone service starting around $24.95 - $29.95 does not mean that cable should drop their rate or that it sets the standard of phone bills. The two services do not compare.
The only thing that remains true about 3rd party voip is that many people get frustrated, sooner or later, with the service when ever they need service.. $15 more a month over a toy of a service (which I do subscribe to as well) is NOTHING when it compares to the issues you deal with on 3rd party.
But.. if you do find another, cheaper voip service (via talk for example) it will be interesting to see your future comments.
No matter what you pay for any voip service, and no matter how many reviews people post on any 3rd party voip product, one should NEVER need to "tinker" or "get working again" their phone service more than 1 time in a decade. | |
| | | rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO | Re: Outages for me Perhaps we should lay off calling third-party VOIP a toy and instead direct our efforts at the real problem -- consumer Internet access.
I would bet that five-nines percent of the time Vonage isn't the issue. I've had Vonage longer than most (Feb 2003) and I don't ever recall a problem that could not be traced back to poor ISP Internet performance, ISP outages, "Internet weather" events or a POS consumer-class router problem.
Granted, there's the famous Bible story about building your house upon the sand but I think it's unfair to cast such a low remark against third party VOIP when the problems rarely lie with them. They incur a lot of costs trying to support problems over which they have little control. They should be given a bit of praise for that. Even my cable company won't support me until I connect my computer directly to my cable modem! I know this doesn't comfort the consumer and they still experience something that doesn't work but I think your statements are extreme.
Your argument is similar to Unix folks that used to call x86 architecture a toy. Of course now that there are beefy X86 servers with lots of I/O throughput, MIPS, and they'll run Linux, the thumping of their chests isn't as prevalent. | |
| | | | fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | Re: Outages for me Actually, while I agree that 3PV is is USUALLY not the MAIN issue for problems, 3PV is FAR from 5 9's. Vonage has had more problems, outage, etc that I know of than I ever have with POTS service in my entire life. And, to be honest, I've only had a POTS outage once ever...
I call it a toy, and will continue to, because of what it is. They DON'T have control of quality, reliability, etc. I also disagree that broadband today is a problem. Does it go down? yes.. is it perfect and running at peak efficiency all the time? HELL no... but, it's a residential service and was never intended to be a life line or a service with any kind of solid reliability to handle such apps as phone.
Many people on this site believe that the BB service they receive in their home for the price they do should run problem free and be as reliable, if not more, than business class services. The fact is, many business class services have problems as well. Now, put the two together. the expectation is that their residential broadband should never slow down and never go out - which is what business service SHOULD be, but isn't either.
Like you, I've had vonage from the beginning. I do like the service.. the price is OK for one line, expensive when you get into more than one line since they don't discount, but to be honest with you, since they can't stand by the service from stem to stern, I will still call it a toy of a service... Is the concept good? Sure... is it ready for prime time? Not in the least.
Another 'real' problem is that if companies like Vonage are going to market themselves as a "phone company" then they should have the same responsibility. I think that they should NOT be allowed to market themselves as such since they are not. Communications service? Sure.. Phone service? Phone company? no.. they aren't... not in the context in which people are expecting them to be. | |
| | | | | rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO | Re: Outages for me Couldn't agree more on the "phone service" claim. It gripes my ass to pay USF fees on my Vonage line just so the "non toy" companies, as you put it, can feed at the public trough.
I think consumer broadband is reliable. From my perspective, the plant isn't the typical problem. Sure there are fiber cuts and storm damage but it's rare to have an outage related to an actual plant issue. It's more likely that the outage is related to the "NOC staff spilled a cup of coffee" syndrome. This stems from either incompetence or a "best effort" attitude from the ISPs. They typically blow their own foot off with lack of redundant systems or careless maintenance.
Of course this attitude isn't just limited to ISPs. From my experience it's prevalent in most corporate environments (locally, MasterCard and some brokerage firms seem to get it.) Gone are the days when the mainframe never died and maintenance wasn't performed in the middle of the business day. (Where I work they actually had the UPS vendor performing maintenance over lunch on a Friday. The vendor did something wrong and the entire data center lost power. One would expect a $40B company to have the technical service talent to know you perform maintenance on the power systems during a quiet block time on Sunday morning. If there is no block time then the company should have an RDFed hot backup data center so that services can fail over if such maintenance goes wrong.)
One could use the excuse that today's services are much more complex and error prone than the mainframe of yesterday. However, somehow the car industry manages. Today's vehicles are far more reliable than ever even though complexity and customer demands always increase.
Considering even business class computing infrastructure, has anyone ever released v1.0 that works without the need to patch? And most problems requiring patch aren't minor issues. They usually lead to total failures. | |
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| | | I have had a "POTS" line with AT&T / Bellsouth for around 25 years and have one major problem, due to lightning damage; it took out about five blocks in my area and was repaired within 36 hrs. (the local C/O had to be replaced)
I have tried the VoIP service and don't like it.
I hear all of these companies claiming "lower prices"
Compared to standard land line, VoIP isn't worth it.
When you consider that most people pay on average of $45 for DSL/Broadband service and then have pay $30 of more for VoIP service, 45+30 = $75.00 for a phone line = Get Real People. | |
|
robpower
join:2004-11-15
San Francisco, CA | Wasn't a network outage. Must have been a software glitch. I had the phantom calls thing, too. But it was more like every minute than every 15 minutes. Three times over the course of the weekend, at one point around 3:30 or 4 in the morning. And it didn't just ring my Vonage line, but it even rang my cell line, even though forwarding to my cell line was disabled. I had 20 one-second silent voicemails in less than half an hour. I didn't go over cell minutes this month, but if I did, I wonder if Vonage would have reimbursed me, since they were the ones who caused it. And, another time, I was on the phone with the person showing up on the caller ID for the phantom calls, and we had perfect sound quality all the time, aside from the call waiting beeps on my end. So, it clearly wasn't a network outage.
If it were a financial resources issue due to the lawsuits, it wasn't that they couldn't afford the bandwidth. It was that they couldn't afford a competent software engineer.
:-|
I had been trying to get my family in other cities to switch to them, but now I'm going to recommend against it. I guess I'm just bad luck. I was a SunRocket customer who got screwed out of months of prepaid service when they went under. At least I'm on Vonage month-to-month. | |
| |  JeffreyWilpon please sell the MetsPremium
join:2002-12-24
Long Island
kudos:3
·Vonage
·Optimum Online
| Re: Wasn't a network outage. Must have been a software glitch. Yeah I had the phantom calls as well. For me, started late afternoon Friday and ended in midmorning on Saturday.
Largest, most strange outage by far in the several years I've had Vonage.
It happens - I'll take one problem like that every so often for the price I'm paying and features I'm receiving.
--
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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| | vonage outage I had a vonage outage about a year ago, there was a huge blizzard, It was like 35 inches of snow, and the power and phones went out. I wasnt able to talk on the phone for two days... much less 911 callls....
actually im just kidding. | |
| | | Vonage Good service Good price
Cant say enough good things about Vonage's
service its never failed me once. I have been
off line many times but that's issues with Comcast
and there sub-par service dropping my internet connection. | |
| mecha50
join:2004-06-11
Daly City, CA |  Outage Cause by maintenance
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| | | Outages? Vonage has been extremely reliable for us. Comcast was a bit "difficult" about bandwidth when we initially acquired Vonage. There have been no instances of Vonage being out for us except for ice storms when all power was off. We have cell phones to take up the slack and calls from Vonage are automatically forwarded to the cell phones if service should become disrupted.
Our phone bills went from $200 - $300 a month with AT&T to the price Vonage has always advertised for unlimited service.
Sound quality is excellent, 911 is excellent.
We will stick with Vonage, no questions asked! | |
| |  bencPremium
join:2007-06-17
Glen Carbon, IL
·Charter
| Re: Outages? $200-$300?? Did or do you make a lot of International Phone Calls?
If you only make domestic calls (within the U.S.) there's no reason it should cost that much.
For about $71 (through AT&T), I get this:
- Unmetered domestic calls for a flat-rate. Calling my cousin in NJ costs no more than calling my parents (three hours away) or even calling my neighbor next door.
- Caller ID
- Voicemail, though I can't use it.
- Call Waiting, though I don't really use it.
- Plus some other features I can't remember.
Once my bill was $92, though I also made some International calls that month. | |
| | | | | Re: Outages? Quite a number of calls of long duration to CA, NYC, TX, each and every day!
We have had Vonage since 2004, as I recall.
If we got a bill from AT&T that was as low as yours at its max, it was considered some kind of miracle.
When we had AT&T, there were no calls for a flat rate. There was no such thing at that time. EVERYTHING was timed except for local calls. We were charged extra for everything and every service. None of the features you have were included in the price of our AT&T exorbitant fees and bogus taxes.
We have had telephone service for over forty years. AT&T was miserable to deal with. Vonage has been just the opposite.
How much do you ACTUALLY know about Vonage?
Happy Holidays! | |
| | | | bencPremium
join:2007-06-17
Glen Carbon, IL Reviews:
·Charter
| Re: Outages? said by enichols:Quite a number of calls of long duration to CA, NYC, TX, each and every day! We have had Vonage since 2004, as I recall. If we got a bill from AT&T that was as low as yours at its max, it was considered some kind of miracle. When we had AT&T, there were no calls for a flat rate. There was no such thing at that time. EVERYTHING was timed except for local calls. We were charged extra for everything and every service. None of the features you have were included in the price of our AT&T exorbitant fees and bogus taxes. We have had telephone service for over forty years. AT&T was miserable to deal with. Vonage has been just the opposite. I'm sorry to hear that. At least nowadays they have flat-rate service. It's great, since probably at least half my calls are long distance. That's because I call my parents a lot.
said by enichols:How much do you ACTUALLY know about Vonage? Happy Holidays! Not much, though I'm biased against VOIP in general (not Vonage in particular) because any broadband I consider affordable tends to be a bit flimsy. It goes out whenever, and even though it usually comes back pretty quickly it's unsuitable for anything real-time (like calls or video).
My experience is that POTS has never gone out on me. Uptime can't be 100%, but of any service, utility, whatever that I have used nothing has been more reliable.
Plus it's great for complaining to the power company when the power goes out. | |
| | | | |  JoeG4
join:2001-12-16
945941 | Re: Outages? $71 for something roughly equivalent to what I pay $30 to Vonage for?
LMFAO. Yeah. Bargain. GTFO my internets. | |
| | | | | | Reviews:
·Shaw
| Re: Outages? The difference in price is reliability. Our local phone provider is advertising non stop right now about how reliable their POTS system is. And they are right... it is reliable... likely 99.99% uptime. (Which is less than an hour a year)
whereas Vonage is around 99.9% uptime (about 8 hours a year)
I don't run a business off of my phone... my phone not working does not mean I lose business. So I'll gladdly pay half price for a service that provides more features and is slightly less reliable. | |
| | | | | | | JoeG4
join:2001-12-16
945941 | Re: Outages? The only reliability issues I've had with my phone were caused by something I did or a little rewiring in my house
On that note, the phone service here with AT&T wasn't that much better, we have underground wiring and THEY STILL had outages from time to time, it was mostly with the internet service, but it still happened with the phone occasionally. | |
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| | | | | | I believe Vonage outages that we experienced were discussed at the beginning of our discussions.
Don't let anyone kid you. Vonage takes bandwidth to have consistent sound. We have Comcast's high-end Internet services, so that is not an issue for us. Also, in the first part of our commentaries, it was pointed out that Comcast gave problems because they were actually lying about the uplink speed. Vonage caught that, and it took many calls and many inept Comcast service personnel to get the issue corrected, and it took some months. Very annoying. However, my wife and I strongly believed in the principle of VoIP, and Vonage has lived up to what we thought it would be.
I tinkered with other VoIP services, but they were not as good.
Comcast and others who offer "digital" phone service that hints at being VoIP, are as annoying and greedy as AT&T. They cost more and nickel and dime as much out of your billfold as they possibly can!
We have friends in England and Germany. All calls to England are free and Germany calls are two cents a minute. (One hour = $1.20...let AT&T top that!) We also call Alaska. Those calls are free. Canada is included as are Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
It's pretty remarkable for us to be able to do that since we can remember when there were no dial phones (you asked the operator for the number) and long distance calls had to be placed and you were called back within a half hour to talk to whom you had called. There were no area codes, etc.
The cost of Comcast and Vonage together averages out to what the basic AT&T bill was without any calls.
Go to Vonage.com and see all the amazing features you get included with the cost of unlimited service.
Perhaps when you can get better bandwidth, you'll give Vonage a try. I am pretty certain you'll like it as much as we do.
Peace... | |
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jsiani
join:2007-11-03
Lemoore, CA | Vonage Outage I never had an outage, even when I was in Sicily. Just recently, I did have a strange one. I could make calls, but not receive them. Two hours later, it was fine. Vonage is still outstanding and will support them. | |
| | | Vonage very reliable After two years only two problems and the last one was this past weekend.
Incoming calls were not working properly.
Very pleased with the overall service.
Hope they stay in business a very long time ! | |
|  HRMGod Bless AmericaPremium,MVM
join:2002-02-03
Darien, CT
kudos:1
1 edit | Why pay more than I have to? I only pay 19.66 total for my vonage plan of 500 minutes which I have only once gone over in three years. $29.00 is too much money for me to spend on something I can get for less. I pay to electronically speak to people and no matter what it costs, that is all I get in return. Why pay more than you have to?
Residential Basic 500 Minutes Plan (21/Nov-20/Dec) $14.99
Regulatory Recovery Fee $0.99
Emergency 911 Cost Recovery $0.99
Federal Universal Service Fee $1.27
Sales Tax $1.02
State 911 Fee $0.40
Total Amount $19.66
Somewhere about 700 minutes I would have been better with unlimited plan, but even then at .03 cents a minute, overages wouldn't break the bank.
No problems here, but then again I have optonline which has been rock solid for many years. With a UPS backup of my router I have phone even during power outages for about 8 hours. | |
| | | Service Does Vonage send out technicians to solve problems?Do they own anything you can pick up? Vonage is software and thats about it. When you figure in your cost for Broadband,Vonage is not such a bargain.Oh yeah during 9/11 and Airstikes in Granada,guess what worked,yes a good old payphone.It seems like many people on this site are just here to confirm their purchase or bitch.Get real and when Vonage builds a network see how much it costs then.Cell phones are much more expensive and less reliable that most people think,we all are paying more for making a call than we did when there was less choices.Who cares how many megapixels or songs it can hold,just make a phone that works. | |
| | | VOIP I consider Vonage a "leach" service. They completely depend on others to provide the infrastructure they ride on. They need power from your power company to function. They need either a DSL or cable connection, both provided by someone else, to work. If you lose power you lose phone service. If you lose your internet you lose phone service. You'll never see a Vonage truck in your neighborhood working on anything. 911 is spotty. There are just too many points of failure in this kind of service. It's cheap and that's it's big selling point and for many that's enough. | |
|  CylonRedPremium,MVM
join:2000-07-06
Bloom County | I am just glad with 2 small kids... I have pots that costs me less than $40.00/month and has been down once in the ohhhhhhhh - 20 years.
--
Brian
Free health care is 100% a misnomer - it is not free and never will be free. | |
| | | hmm I've never had an outage with Vonage in 3 years - that wasn't ISP related. | |
| |
2 edits | Re: hmm Plus - if I really want to talk to somebody in the family I just load up Skype - I get Video and Voice from 7,000 miles away.
Vonage is around for convienience - $25 a month - unlimited stateside calls - can't beat that deal period. Use vonage instead of cell phone means I use less minutes.
I don't think landline connections to phone users that far away would be any higher quality than that of a VOIP user meeting minimal bandwidth requirements. | |
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