Verizon FiOS Sucks

Date: December 18th, 2007

Time: 8:41 am

Vonage certainly has had some tough times recently. Between their falling stock price, numerous patent lawsuits, or past complaints about woeful customer service it can’t be a lot of fun being a Vonage employee these days. I personally have been a Vonage customer since December of 2004 and never experienced terrible problems nor had much of a reason to call for support. So, despite my desire for Verizon to have to fix the mess they caused, I finally broke down and called Vonage to see if they could help get my number back.

Initially technical support couldn’t help with my “number is disconnected” recording but they transferred my call to the “Local Number Portability” department and they were very helpful in a number of ways:

• The representative from Local Number Portability confirmed that Verizon (Carrier Code = 9211) had taken control of my home phone number. Remember, no one at Verizon FiOS Sales or Verizon FiOS Customer Support would ever confirm this.
• They told me because it had been switched less than 24 hours before they can going to process a “Snap-back.” Apparently this allows the carrier a phone number is switched from to quickly retrieve the number. The number will be transferred back to Vonage within 24-48 hours.

Maybe what I experienced was an unusual degree of service or perhaps a result of increased investment in customer support. Whatever the reason, Vonage treated me with respect as a customer and was effective in initiating a solution to my problem. For that, I say Thank You Vonage (and am a litte embarrassed about attempting to switch away).