Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for Vonage, it does |
Vonage (VG) stock closed at a paltry $3.00 today but dipped as low as $2.98 (almost 25% drop) in response to a judge giving them two weeks to stop using Verizon technology:
[District Court Judge] Hilton agreed with Verizon (up $0.20 to $38.21, Charts) that it would suffer irreparable harm if he allowed continued infringement of the voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies that allow consumers to make calls over the Internet.
This comes after the judge had already ruled against Vonage, ordering a $58 million dollar judgement. The Vonage muted response was that it wouldn’t affect normal operations and they were appealing the decision. I’m not sure whether or not next week we’ll be hearing the same thing or if they even can appeal this two week decision. Are they already using different technology that does not violate Verizon’s patents?
What a mess. We still are holding onto one business account with fax with Vonage and are hopeful this doesn’t cause the company to go out of business. We’ve looked around and considered other alternatives but none seemed any more reliable than Vonage without an increase in price. We don’t want to go back to the telephone company and our experience with Skype has been “ok” at best. I don’t feel any better about the VoIP competition for Vonage and a couple calls out in past posts here haven’t yielded any suitable Vonage replacements.
Worth asking again, can you recommend a good VoIP replacement for Vonage for a small business additional line and dedicated fax besides Skype? We’re paying around $50/month, I believe, for these services from Vonage now.
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Vonage was a hurting duck before this lawsuit, now? Lets see, Vonage is going up against huge companies with huge bank accounts, they offer 1 product against their competitors 4 (voice, video, internet, wireless), their entire network is controlled by their competitors, their primary product is trending to zero, they face regulatory issues, legal issues and have never shown a profit.
They did have some kind of funny commercials though.
IPO at $17, current price $3. Well, at least the founders of Vonage made a ton of dough.
Comment by RandomThoughts — March 23, 2007 @ 8:09 pm PST
Vonage saved us a lot of money, for that I’ll always be grateful to them, RandomThoughts. When we switched most our lines away from the local telco we saved like 75% of our bill. Very significant.
However, I’m glad I did not buy the minimum 100 shares being offered at the IPO. VG stock has done one thing very well since launching: go downhill. I’m not sure how or even if it rebounds from here. At the rate it’s dropping it might be delisted by this time next year.
Comment by TDavid — March 24, 2007 @ 12:21 am PST
Yeah. I agree with TD. Actually, their profit line has been hurt by the television commercials. But realistically from end user perspective, I’ve been a customer of theirs since 2004, and they’ve still beat out all prices and came through on their product. I think that since I’ve been a customer however, I can think of all sorts of things they could have done to improve features that haven’t. (SMS messaging perhaps? voice to text translation? etc.)
I have also saved like 75% of our bill.
I’m guessing that if they do bite the dust, they’ll at least push their customers over to someone like Packet8 or similar. Not too worried about it, but I’d like to see them get their heads outta their butts and do something about it.
Comment by darkmoon — March 24, 2007 @ 10:05 am PST
[…] awhile since we’ve checked in on the Vonage misery, the end of March to be more precise when the stock had dipped beneath $3. For the last four […]
Pingback by The Vonage stock freefall continues, now under two bucks » Make You Go Hmm — August 2, 2007 @ 8:56 am PST
Gentlemen,
I was taken in by marketing offered by Vonage, a digital replacement to my typical land phone service; so I established an account over the phone with them. The Vonage representative assured me that I would be able to continue to use the phone number I have had for the last 20 years, and that if I decided to cancel – for any reason – I could do so within one month without penalty.
I extended my credit card for the initial charges to receive necessary hardware to activate the service – about $50. After the equipment arrived I phoned Vonage to verify that my phone number would be transferred to their service. After sitting through a matrix of various representatives - a process that had me waiting on the phone for about 40 minutes – I was finally told that my number would not be available for transfer.
I decided to cancel the service and get out while I was ahead; unfortunately Vonage operates their cancellation division on eastern standard time (their new accounts arm works 24/7). Being on the west coast, and working until long after the Vonage cancellation office is closed presented a problem. I attempted to cancel by internet but there is no facility to do so on their website (lots of places to sign up though). I actually lost track of how long it had been since I set up the account by the time I finally had a day I could actually speak to someone. As it turns out, I was attempting to cancel on the 3rd of June and I set up the account on the 3rd of May. As I see it, I was within my one month grace period, as they saw it; I was one day over. The one day cost me an additional $130.00 in fees and charges. Understand that I never even plugged in a phone, just wanted to return their items and be done with it.
You could argue that I had plenty of time to cancel – but Vonage narrowed the available opportunities for west coast residents, and they do not take cancellations on the weekends, so instead of thirty days to cancel; you really only have 20.
I set up the account in good faith, and would have kept it if Vonage would have delivered on their promises – what I discovered through all this was that Vonage is using a veneer of deceptive advertising to lure in customers, and failing to disclose hidden charges during initial conversations. Further, I found that their customer service staff was all smiles until I attempted to cancel the account – then I was treated like a rented mule. One individual laughed openly when I asked to speak with a supervisor.
To add insult to injury, I was told that Vonage would send me an email that included a mailing label and a “Return Authorization” … silly me, I thought that the authorization would cover the return shipping charges – which is what practically every reputable company dose to preserve good will. Vonage; guess again.
If you are seriously considering getting into a contract with these people, head over to one of their many websites and see how long it takes you to figure out how to cancel the service. You’d be better off with a couple of tin cans and a string.
Comment by John — June 6, 2008 @ 5:24 pm PST
Personally, I don’t think that the above comment by John is technically correct. The whole 20 days if you take out weekends thing applies to many other businesses, since there’s always a policy about during “business hours”. While I agree that it’s not convenient, when you partake in a service, that’s just what comes … the good, the bad, and the ugly. And amusingly, the whole “reputable company” comment makes me laugh. I’ve had Fortune 100 companies make me pay shipping on all sorts of things. That also comes with the package.
I have had a business line with these guys since 2004, and have turned on and canceled service (mostly residential) for a couple people here and there. Never had an issue.
Hate to be a spoil sport, but it sounds like procrastination didn’t pay off above. If you’ve decided not to use the service, take half hour out of your day, and call to cancel. It sucks, but it’s no different than trying to cancel a credit card, or trying to cancel your television service, or your cellular phone. Call me a cynic, but it’s just the reality of it all.
Comment by darkmoon — June 7, 2008 @ 7:50 am PST