richmackey - the blog

I've been a Vonage customer since 2004 - and it served me well when I traveled internationally (softphone saved a LOT on int'l roaming charges) and was at home enough to, well, use a home phone.

But times have changed. I have 2 cell phones, one with totally unlimited minutes, text, web, etc. and rarely if at all use the Vonage service. So I called today to cancel.

After digging around their web site to figure out how to cancel (call our 800#! but we're not going to tell you what it is so you have to dig around to find it somewhere else), getting into their phone navigation (cancel service works on the voice prompts, though you just have to *know* that as they don't articulate it as an option) I finally got to a live rep.

I explained to her that I want to cancel service and allowed her to go through her first "save" technique - looking up and telling me how much I use it and how valuable it is to me.

• I've used 50 minutes. In the last 6 months.

She noted that wasn't a lot of usage, and that I could get more value out of the service if she upgraded me to unlimited - and then pitched unlimited. I had already told her I use my cell phone, which is unlimited, but apparently I need unlimited x2 phones.

• I politely declined. Restating that she herself told me I had only used 50 minutes, which were most likely calls to a wrong number. And asked her to please cancel my service.
  

She then said she could give me a few months free.

• I declined. And asked her to please cancel my service.

Her next move was to move me down to 100 minutes a month for $9.99 (instead of 500 minutes for $15.99). Considering her first instinct was that I needed unlimited, this suggestion was a bit surprising from her - though more valid.

• I declined. And asked her to please cancel my service.

She went on to talk about all the other great features and how I could just keep my Vonage number and service but forward to my cell phone - since I use that.

• I declined. Told her I'd rather just use my cell phone and not have an arbitrary number to give people that would forward (besides, GrandCentral does a nice job of that for free). And asked her to please cancel my service.

Finally, as she went into another speel, I interrupted her and said that for the last time, I wanted to just cancel my service. Done. No upsell. No cross sell. No free months. Just cancel it.

She said she could do that right away for me (but apparently not 10 minutes ago when I first told her what I wanted) and then had me verify once again, for the recording, who I was and that I truly wanted to cancel my service IMMEDIATELY. She also warned me she could not restart service or get my numbers back - but I would have to sign up all over again.

I confirmed and thought we were done, but she then went on to tell me that the Vonage box could be used as a router for my home Internet and should I want to start service again, I don't need to buy anything, but just call them and they'll re-activate that box - with a new number.

I hung up.