Vonage gets an infusion of cash, changes in the boardroom

VOIP provider Vonage is doing a bit of reshuffling at the top, while putting the finishing touches on a $215 million infusion of cash from Silver Point Finance LLC. Dry enough? Perhaps, but we're sure Jeffery Citron, CEO and current interim chief executive of the recently embattled company will be pleased to get the helping hand. Citron is currently preparing for a swap of duties as well, taking a step back from the day-to-day -- which will probably provide a welcome respite from the flurry of legal hits the provider has taken. Enjoy your vacation, Jeff.

[avester @ Jul 25th 2008 12:02PM]

Huh? Am I the only one who hasn't ever heard about this company?

[DSeaver @ Jul 25th 2008 12:13PM]

Yes.

[Striker @ Jul 25th 2008 12:16PM]

Have you ever watched TV or read Engadget?

[CraigJ @ Jul 25th 2008 12:27PM]

Igneous, Sedimentary, or Metamorphic?

[projectpete19 @ Jul 25th 2008 12:35PM]

here is a clue "woo hoo woo hoo hoo!"

[Bob @ Jul 25th 2008 12:45PM]

That and think of a commercial where a guy is sawing down a tree and it falls on his car... I'm surprised that an Engadget user would have never heard of Vonage...

[Steven @ Jul 25th 2008 1:49PM]

Do I have to hit you in the head with a Vonage box?

[Bob Jones @ Jul 25th 2008 4:31PM]

Yea, if you want good customer service you need to pick a smaller company like http://www.oneredbooth.com they are flexible, more options and are also affordable. They've been great for us. Vonage is too corporatized to give a crap about your little problem!

[roro2210 @ Jul 25th 2008 4:42PM]

Good, you don't want to hear about them.

[Snitch @ Jul 25th 2008 6:29PM]

roro2210 is right, you don't wanna hear about them, this company is a total rip off, call quality is worst, i had to unplug and plug in adapter everyday, first thing they will do is blame your ISP, but hey i had verizon wing and never had a problem with them before, so what's the big deal i told them

[Pumping_Iron @ Jul 25th 2008 12:20PM]

Count me in too....never heard of it .....

[pditty @ Jul 25th 2008 12:25PM]

I hope Vonage crashes and burns. Had them for years, had crummy service. Cancelled it 4 times and they kept billing me. Finally had to file a credit fraud report to block the auto charges. Then they called me up and told me my card must have expired because they couldn't charge it. I told them to look at my account notes. They said "I see you've requested this account closed several times. If you'll just give me an updated credit card number, I'll go ahead and close if properly for you."

Yeah...... right.

[CraigJ @ Jul 25th 2008 12:33PM]

I had the opposite experience. I've has them since early 2004. Excellent service, no problems, handful of dropped calls in over 4 years. They actually lowered the price of the service sometime in 2005.

The only problem is that the calls get a little garbled when I'm seeding torrents...

[Ed @ Jul 25th 2008 1:58PM]

I had no problem closing my Vonage account.

[Eric Warnke @ Jul 25th 2008 2:24PM]

Same here, but I only have to fight twice to get the account closed. Neither time would they fulfill their end of the contract and unlock my cisco VoIP. $0 minutes one time to over an hour the next trying to close the account.

I've had them for years and the cost kept going up, but the "price" magically stayed the same.

[Richard S. @ Jul 25th 2008 3:46PM]

Had the account with them in my ex-girlfriend's name but it was automatically deducted from my credit card. We broke up. Vonage would not let me cancel the account because it wasn't in my name. They were billing my credit card, but I couldn't cancel the account? Ended up canceling the card to get away from them.

[CaptCaveman @ Jul 25th 2008 5:00PM]

I had them for about 4 years. I had no problems.
The trick however is to never call for any type of customer service and you will love them. All that love goes out the window as soon as you need to talk to someone there.

Trying to cancel the service was also pretty pain free. With the exception of what seemed like the CSR begging me not to cancel. Honestly, I spent more time on that call telling her: no, I really don't need the service any more" then she spent canceling the account.

[Joe Frazier @ Jul 25th 2008 12:33PM]

Use them for all local & long distance. Get service & call quality for 25 a month including calls to England with my brother.

Don't know all their legal issues but I hope they stay afloat. Hard to beat the deal.

[Frank Furter @ Jul 25th 2008 12:40PM]

Same here - what comes around......

I had them for a few months, and could never seem to get an intelligible English speaking person on the phone when I called customer service (and if you sign up for Vonage, you -will- be talking to customer service). I have nothing against any race or creed, but you gotta speak the language of your customers......

Outsource THIS.

[CraigJ @ Jul 25th 2008 1:00PM]

This is true. I've had great service from Vonage. My definition of great service is not needing to call customer service.

Even if they do speak proper English they're still generally a bunch of monkeys reading resolutions from their knowledgebase, which I can do for myself...

[David @ Jul 25th 2008 1:02PM]

I have had vonage for two years. Not a single issue.
My issues lie with ATT's DSL service. New fiber lines were installed in my old neighborhood this week so hopefully they will get those up and running smoothly soon!

[NHAnimator @ Jul 25th 2008 1:18PM]

Let's hope that if you do choose Vonage, you never need to dial 911.

[CraigJ @ Jul 25th 2008 1:33PM]

why?

[Ed @ Jul 25th 2008 1:57PM]

Because the 911 operator will think the address you call from is the one that the owner of the phone number registered on the Vonage website. If they move the box to another house and forget to update their Vonage info, the police/fire/ambulance would go to their old address.

There's a really low likelihood of this happening.

[CraigJ @ Jul 25th 2008 1:59PM]

So, in other words, don't be stupid.

[Michael @ Jul 25th 2008 2:04PM]

I've had Vonage for over two years now, I can only recall two times when the service went down, each for an hour or two. Other than that it's worked great. Never had to call CS either. It's just to inexpensive and convenient to pass up. I can take my Vonage router with me when ever I'm away on a business trip too. Talk about number portability!! ;-)

[TMI72 @ Jul 25th 2008 3:48PM]

Agreed, Vonage is TERRIBLE w/CS. I tried 3 times to disconnect the service after shoddy connections, echos and random disconnects during calls got to the point of being par instead of an occasional annoyance.

All 3 times was told it was canceled...all 3 times, another bill.

I was told the last time I called... "Well, I see in the notes that you asked for the service to be disconnected...that won't stop the billing, you have to ask for that to be "terminated". HUNH????

Thanks to a lovely woman at Visa Fraud, I was able to get the charges reversed and the billing "terminated" going forward.

Total joke of a company and surprised that someone didn't do some better due diligence of this company before investing. How many charges are pending chargebacks on the books, that look like a solid A/R entry??? Bet Silver Point Finance LLC will wish they'd found out.

[Rae Whitlock @ Jul 25th 2008 4:25PM]

A working link to the WSJ.com story . . .
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121693533498482457.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[error411 @ Jul 25th 2008 6:00PM]

Try Phone.com. Better all around.

[Darren Tilley @ Jul 25th 2008 7:06PM]

I think half of the Vonage complainers are the same people who complain about Vista even though they've never tried it.

I've had Vonage for easily over 3 years and I've had nothing but great things to say about it. Then they went ahead and added free calling to a bunch of European countries over a year ago (my family is in the UK) which made things even better value for me.

[Cscamp20 @ Jul 25th 2008 10:00PM]

People who complain about Vonage are the one's who bought Vonage knowing that they have dial-up, crappy DSL upload line, or have an either internet connection that wont work with Vonage in the FIrst place.

TO say that that Vonage has the worst call quality ever is bull. I say go to my house i go have a try or yourself.

Their customer may not be great but their Voip itself is great! I've saved so much money from this serivce and would not even go back using old POTS.

Do you self a favor. By the way some ISPs have been known to block SIP ports.

[MrSweetDeal @ Jul 26th 2008 1:52AM]

Vonage is AWESOME!!!

I once had a billing issue when they cancelled one of my accounts because my credit card associated with it had expired and the credits I was to recieve for referals did not get applied as I had expected. Not only did my call to their customer service result in all four of the missing credits being applied but they took both of my $25 monthly unlimited plans and converted them to $10 monthly unlimited plans. Now I pay aproximately $26 after taxes and fees for two unlimited lines for as long as I remain a customer. I've saved a bundle with them over the years. This infusion of money into their company is great. Let's hope they learn not to burn through it so darn fast with dumb commercials and end up broke and out of business.

Two vonage user request however. Give your current users access to the vonage soft phone app on their computer and set it up so that it integrates with their existing plan. If you need to charge for this then consider it an add on feature and charge in the neighborhood of $5 monthly for it. Secondly, I'd like to see the click-2-call app updated and integrating with Office 2007.

[mywiiwii @ Jul 26th 2008 11:15PM]

I agree... Vonage has never giving me ANY problems at all with connection and the prices are far better than any POTS service (POTS = Plain Old Telephone System)!!

I even had it connected to ADSL 700k connection that I was paying $10 per month! No problems at all when make phone calls however I could not download or surf the web but that is to be expected since the upload/download was capped.

I also subscribe to Skype. Granted $30 per year instead of $30 per month is quite a difference but I have to say, the quality is there on Vonage! I've talked to people on Skype that complain about echos that I cannot hear. And this is now on my Road Runner connection which maxes out at 15 Megs!! I can have both phone running calls and streaming video with no problems what so ever!

Vonage IS a good company. I hope they do not fall since that would just give ATT less competition! Having to pay extra for 3-way / caller ID / call waiting plus other services is flat out robbery!

I need to look into it more...there is a new feature for T-Mobile users... Some thing about $10 per month for a land line??? That would be bliss but I'm sure there's a down side! Anyone know about this new feature?

[mywiiwii @ Aug 25th 2008 10:09PM]

I agree... Vonage has never giving me ANY problems at all with connection and the prices are far better than any POTS service (POTS = Plain Old Telephone System)!!

I even had it connected to ADSL 700k connection that I was paying $10 per month! No problems at all when make phone calls however I could not download or surf the web but that is to be expected since the upload/download was capped.

I also subscribe to Skype. Granted $30 per year instead of $30 per month is quite a difference but I have to say, the quality is there on Vonage! I've talked to people on Skype that complain about echos that I cannot hear. And this is now on my Road Runner connection which maxes out at 15 Megs!! I can have both phone running calls and streaming video with no problems what so ever!

Vonage IS a good company. I hope they do not fall since that would just give ATT less competition! Having to pay extra for 3-way / caller ID / call waiting plus other services is flat out robbery!

I need to look into it more...there is a new feature for T-Mobile users... Some thing about $10 per month for a land line??? That would be bliss but I'm sure there's a down side! Anyone know about this new feature?

[Ashley @ Sep 11th 2008 1:09PM]

To the people talking about vista.....

ABSOLUTELY HATE HATE HATE VIST

LOVE LOVE LOVE VONAGE!