RANT: VOIP provider with 24 hour TELEPHONE support and no online chat!!

[Voixdelion]

This is seriously pissing me off atm.  My Vonage router is "not registering" my phone line all of a sudden and I am getting a recording when I pick up the phone saying "telephone line is not provisioned for use."  I would not find this half as infuriating except for the fact that my only avenue available to any help from Vonage appears to be via the ****ing TELEPHONE.  Now is it just me, or am I wrong to expect that any reasonably responsible VOIP provider would have some help available via, oh.. I dunno...  maybe, IP!?

Not to mention that the online help pages has a 7-step flow chart which directs me to step 8 (yes, really!)  or has me trapped in a never-ending "wash, rinse, repeat" cycle before having the audacity to ask me for feedback on the page and whether I will be "calling customer support".   Am I wrong to feel like they just told me to go **** myself?  

I have put up with a constant barrage of pre-recorded robocalls from a company that will shortly be incurring my wrath because Vonage refuses to implement a selective block for incoming calls, but this is so utterly asinine that I am reconsidering the value of this.  I think the last time I was this mad at a company for such poor service was when I had called Comcast to install my cable internet about 10 years ago.

[audioave10]

That's like me having Cox telephone and cable and internet. If one goes out, they are all out of service. Yet, in their wisdom, I'm supposed to CALL them for service. I'm semi-retired and don't want a cellphone. Should I send them a letter? LOL

[Voixdelion]

Okay something really weird going on ... My mom says that while she tried to call us during the phone outage, she got a message/answering machine which she swears is my Dad's (who has a 5$/month landline with att here.)  This makes no logical sense to me though since the vonage number is, of course, voip.  How could she be getting the landline here?  (She said this once before too while our phone was doing something hinkey - I think she would know my Dad's voice, but is it possible its just some other guy named Joe with a deep timbre?  HOW could it physically be connected to the landline upstairs?  We have a DSL line - which is the "dry-loop" service without home phone with ATT which is the ISP but that isn't even a phone number.  Dad's phone is an account that is totally separate from ours.  Even if it was a crossed line of physical wiring, how would the voip service connect to his phone without a phone adapter?  Is my mom smoking pot and not telling me? WTF?)

[D-EJ915]

It could be forwarding to the land line?

[Voixdelion]

Nope - If anything it should forward to my cell phone.  I don't answer Dad's line at all; its primarily there just for keeping the line alive for when he's in the States.  But that at least is a plausible explanation of how it could physically occur.  I don't think Vonage even has that number though... but I guess I could check it out.

EDIT>> Thank you - well done!  There is a forwarding number "in case the network is down" section that was filled in LOOOONG ago which is different than the regular forwarding number listed.  I found it with a bit of poking around and changed that to my cell number too.  Whew!  At least our phone lines aren't haunted or anything... that was too weird!

[Lanx]

lol did you apologize to your mom for thinking she was crazy? =D

[xargos]

I've never used Vonage, but I've been using Callcentric for a couple of years now.  I've yet to have an outage (at least that I know of) short of my Internet access or electricity going out.

I definitely love having the selective call blocking that you want.  It came in handing when I canceled my Sirius Satellite Radio subscription only to start getting daily calls wanting me back a week later.  I simply had their calls sent to a message saying that the number wasn't active.

[Voixdelion]

lol did you apologize to your mom for thinking she was crazy? =D

I plan to tell her what happened but haven't spoken to her yet.  All I can think of its a good thing I didn't have the number forwarding to HER landline or SHE would have thought she was crazy! LOL!