I have had 3 different friends report to me that when they have tried to cancel their Vonage accounts that Vonage pulls an AOL and not only refuses to close the account, opens up a new one and charges them for that one also.

I've recommended that they file complaints with the FCC and FTC

With that kind of shenanigans I withdraw all sympathy for Vonage.

its not every day you get sued by a company that does not exist any more

It took letters to the FTC & Attorney General of New Jersey before they would admit the account had been closed.

At first we closed via email, as we had done with an earlier account (one set up for Dad). Then, after getting tired of the automated email replies, we call, only to be told the "system was down" and we needed to call back later.

Moved away from Vonage in April after 3 more or less satisfied years (so long as customer service was never involved) due to fears of their patent problems and potentially losing the home number we've had for 25 years.

Buddha must have been playing tricks that day, as we unwisely chose Sunrocket as the new carrier.

Our numbers didn't get ported over to Sunrocket until June, which effectively meant we could not use their service, as while we could call out, we had no inbound service through them. Oh, the reason the numbers finally got ported? We called Vonage customer service to see what was taking so long. The very next day we were off Vonage's network - but lost all inbound service for a week. Funny thing is, Vonage claimed they'd released the numbers a full week before, even though people outside their network could still call us. They must have majical phone lines, these Vonage people.

A month later, Sunrocket was kaput. Now we're still waiting for the numbers to be ported to the new provider, and honestly I don't know whether or not to believe them when they say the delay is on Sunrocket's side.

What are we supposed to do, go through our phone book and call *everyone*, giving out some crap temporary number? It's not like DNS, there's no propagation. Your software flips a proverbial switch, and you're with the new provider. It's not done physically anymore, there's no guy having to punch down a new set of pairs back in the CO. Honestly don't see the need for more than an hour or two's delay while the software gets queued to run.

So far as trouble getting off their service, Vonage's claim is that if you don't call in to cancel your account, it remains in an "active" state, and is thus billable. To this we replied that we were paying for a dial tone, not an account number, and asked that, having moved to a new carrier, exactly what service was Vonage still providing for which we should pay. Somehow, in all the automated email replies, that answer never came.

Sometimes I wish ATT had *never* been forced to divest!

When we lost service, I signed up with voip.com. Two days later I got the offer for Teleblend and cancelled voip and signed up with them. Teleblend NEVER worked, and I made three attempts to cancel. After two months I finally got that done. I went back to voip, but could not get their service working either. After continually being told, "just unplug the phone router for an hour and it will be ok", I cancelled with them again. We went with Vonag. They had the router here in two days, and it worked right away. They called a week later to make sure ther were no problems.

From my perspective, Vonage has been excellent. I waited two minutes for an agent on the phone instead of an hour. The agent was helpful and us signed up and the order shipped in about ten minutes. I don't know about 8x8, but I definitely consider Teleblend to be a scam. They refuse to refund my original payment even though I never had a working service.

Finally a phone in Kentucky