WTH is up with these christmas day horror emails? Do they think by telling the consumer on a generally happy holiday, that they'll be more likely to forgive??

pfffft, fat chance. I hold grudges.

Does this mean Vonage will lampoon itself when it lampoons the incumbent telcos for price creep?

They don't tell you if you pay up front for a full year you can get a discount, and they managed to add $5.26 per month more onto my $14.99 phone service charging me DOUBLE what the NY state sales tax rate is, plus every surcharge sorry excuse they can find to tack on to the bill. Disconnect your service and you'll get a 2 months free service if you come back e-mail...

That's odd - I never received this notice. I'm on the same plan so I will keep my eyes peeled.

I got this email a few weeks ago

I have had that same 500 minute plan for a couple of years. In the last few years we have switched to exclusively using our cell phones, so I finally decided to dump the house phone entirely. When I called to cancel, they really didn't want me to. After demonstrating that I really was canceling they told me about a special $4.99/month "Residential Hold" plan. I get unlimited incoming calling, and cal call emergency services for free. They don't advertise it, and the sales agents can't give it to you, but if you say you're canceling, they will send you to the retention staff, who can give it to you. Seems a nice cheap way for us to have a phone in the house to call back and check on babysitters and stuff like that.

I had the 500min/mo plan.

I got this email weeks ago too. I called them to tell them that I'm considering a triple-play from Comcast for Fios. I then asked them if they had any retention offers.

I got unlimited for the original 500min/month rate of $15/mo for a year, not prepaid.

Check out FatWallet forums for this any many other competitive retention deals offered by service providers. DirecTV is next on my list.

If you have a computer running most of the time then get magicJack for $40 for the first year and $20 each year after that.

complaining about a $3 increase after "several years"? seriously? this guy obviously doesn't have Comcast.

Good luck on the magic jack, I have one friend for whom it just plugged in and ran flawlessly and I have another for whom it wont work properly no matter what he does.
He even gave it it's own freshly installed XP pc as well as going through every hoop that the "tech support" (his quotes, not mine) at magic jack could provide.

Go figure.

We had the unlimited plan but the bill kept going up by just shy of a dollar each month. We eventually dumped them.

Vonage's $17.99 plan really comes out to $23.89 after fees for a measly 500 minutes. Even local calls aren't unlimited.

Monthly Service Charge
Monthly Service Charge $17.99
FUSF (VoIP) $1.52
State/Local Taxes and Fees $1.50
Regulatory Recovery Fee $0.99
Emergency 911 Cost Recovery $0.99
State 911 Fee $0.90
Total $23.89

I already switched to VoicePulse, another provider that's been around for 5+ years and has far better reviews on dslreports.com/gbu

Their $14.99 Local Unlimited plan has unlimited local calling and 200 minutes of long distance for $15.89 after taxes and fees. Their unlimited plan comes to $26.49, $5 less than Vonage's equivalent plan and only $3 more than Vonage's bare minimum plan.

@laserjobs: My dad is okay with MagicJack, but he hates that the software takes up two drive letters on his computer to run, which really screws with his CD burning software

Another alternative is Skype. Unlimited calls to landlines (and cell phones) are $3/month. If you want incoming calls, that's $30/year, so for $66/year you can get unlimited calls with incoming calls.

Call and tell them you are going to cancel. There is no way they'll let you leave them over the price increase. In fact, this is a good chance to tell them to pound sand and get on one of their $10 plans instead.

@theblackdog: MagicJack software is also notoriously difficult to uninstall, if the customer is so inclined.

Got this email on Dec 9th. I guess they are trickling them out.

My real issue is that I like the phone number that I've got on my vonage line better than the number that's on my cell phone.

I think the way to properly cancel is that I'll really just have to inform my cell carrier that I want to transfer the number and when the number transfers, vonage service will end.

I'd be perfectly happy with paying less for the vonage and only using it for incoming calls, or voice mail, I just feel wrong claiming I'm going to cancel if I don't get a lower rate.

@William C Bonner: Watch out for porting your number from Vonage. We had Vonage service for a very short amount of time and had nothing but a terrible experience, both with the service and the customer support. We finally elected to cancel and port our Vonage-issued number to Time Warner. This went through just fine, but about six months later we started receiving phone calls from angry people stating that I had called them and hung up, and they knew it was me because my name and phone number showed up on their caller ID. Even changing our number to private did not stop the calls. We spent over a year trying to figure out what was going on, and during that time I dealt with upwards of 20 calls a DAY at times from random angry people.

I finally got a call from a woman one day who had actually answered the call and spoken at length to the caller, and then called back out of curiosity that the Caller ID did not match the person on the phone. Turns out, six months after I ported my number - which I was using on a daily basis, mind you - Vonage reassigned it to a local business. So they could call out on their 123-456-7890 line just fine, but anyone who CALLED that number would be connected to me. Don't ask me how it worked, all I know was that it did. The nice woman gave me the company's information, I called them, and it took angry calls from them and me to Vonage to get the problem straightened out.

My only regret is that I didn't prosecute Vonage for enabling over a year's worth of harassment. Not only did I get calls at all hours of the day and night, I also received several death threats over it.

@William C Bonner:

I recently did that. Decided to go cell-only, but wanted to keep the number that was on Vonage, which I'd transfered from the local phone company a few years ago. Transfered it to AT&T. While cell-phone number ports will take only a few hours, it took a week to transfer the number from Vonage to AT&T. And when I called AT&T they told me they were just waiting for the response from Vonage. I'm not sure if the hang up was Vonage, or the local phone company where the number had originally been allocated.

Thankfully Vonage no longer requires that you call them up and cancel your account after you transfer the number from them (That's what the support pages said a while ago when I first started looking into this.) Once the number was transferred the account was rather painlessly cancelled.

I got my email on Dec 9th.

The Christmas email is just a coincidence.

Everything costs more, moving from $14.99 to $17.99, is it really that much of a big deal or story? And Vongage is right, they are still a great bargain. What is wrong with them charging what the market will bear?

If you practically don't use your line at all, I found a rather inexpensive way to go was through Callcentric. You have to sign up for a separate incoming and outgoing plan (admittedly, somewhat odd) and also pay to port your number. However, my phone line costs $3.95 per month; much better than the $14.99 I was paying for a Vonage line I hardly used.

I pay on top of this about 2 cents each outgoing minute, and a bit less than 2 cents each incoming minute. Since I only use ~10-50 minutes a month combined, it's a good value.

I disagree though that $17.99 is a "great bargain" for the 500 minute package; it's pretty over priced. You can find comparable VOIP services for less.

DSLreports has a good forum for Voip, it's where I found my provider. A quick rifle through should find good options depending on your usage pattern:

[www.dslreports.com]

Looks like VOIPo is a newish provider by HostGator that offers good priced VOIP as an alternative.

I used Vonage for almost 3 years, on the unlimited residential plan. I was generally happy with the service but a new job had me out of the house for 4 days a week, and the economics just didn't make sense to keep it anymore, decided to downgrade to NO landline, and cellphone only. Calling to cancel reminded me so much of that "Cancel my account" AOL video from a couple years back. I had to forcefully tell them to CANCEL MY ACCOUNT at least five or six times, the gal on the retention line kept trying to get me to either pass my account to someone else, or go for the 5buck a month "hold" account. Really kind of got my attention, considering the whole AOL video was "viral" at the time. I had a couple of years of great service with them, so I'm torn about weather to re-sign with them or not when the time comes that I need a landline, but for now, sticking with my cell.

I've had that cheapest Vonage plan for the past 3 years, and have been surprised in that time that there hasn't been any price creep each year. So I'm not too upset about this $3 increase this year. You can't get a cheaper plan. Just local service in my area, without long distance, would be at least $35/month.

I learned the hard way how to get screwed by Vonage. Apparently, I somehow got into a 2 year contract and if I cancel, it'll cost me a $100 ETF. I was told I had 2 months to try the service and I could cancel anytime. I tried to cancel a month and 2 days after getting the service. Got told nope. Your "trial" is only 30 days. Even though I was told 2 months. I'm thinking about just reporting my debit card stolen and getting a new one just so I can cancel vonage and they won't be able to get the $100 ETF from my new card because they don't have THAT number.

@bohemian: Yeah Vonage went through a period awhile back when they started lumping on all kinds of additional 'fees' and state taxes that weren't there in the beginning, sort of a "fee of the month club". That's when I looked at my call usage and downgraded to the 500 minute a month plan.

Some of the fees were legitimage govt-mandated fees that they were finally forced to start collecting, and some were, well, because they could.

@allstarecho: na... they'll screw you by setting collections to hunt you and put it on your credit report... i guess try harder or EECB?

I left Vonage years ago after their $14.99 plan ended up charging me $19/month ( now with more taxes and fees ).

I went straight to Voice Pulse and short of Vonage screwing up my port and then failing to allow me to cancel, everything has been smooth sailing ever since. $15/month without the added surcharges and fees that Vonage is so fond of.

Just be firm with the "Retention" department. I spoke to this woman for close to a half an hour saying "No", "that is none of your business", "please cancel", and "are you authorized to close my account".

@allstarecho: By usng the CC interface the "legitimate" reoccuring charge will find it's way to your account. When I tried to leave Vonage I mad sure to "change" my credit card number, expiration date, and CV2 code and still they continued to try and change me! They are lying cheating bastards.

@jaya9581: What was the company calling about that could possibly have caused a death threat?

Oh, and you probabaly owuldnt have been able to sue them for anything. It was a simple mistake in how they configured their phone system. At my company, I can configure the phone system to show what ever I want on peoples caller ID. We figured this out, becasue when people at the office would call my cell phone, it would only show their extension. Info on the caller ID is no directly connected to the outbound connection the call connects from, it is added information for the sake of being able to Identify the caller.

Vonage $25/month.
DiamondCard $24/YEAR(!)

This is a no-brainer.
Zero!

LinkSys (Cisco) SPA3102 POTS to VoIP router (< $60 at Amazon).

Naked DSL from your Telco, priceless.

I agree with laserjobs about the MagicJack. I have had it for some time and love it. Just plug a phone into it, then plug MagicJack into your computer, and if you have a high speed connection you can call any telephone in the US and Canada for free.

If you are in another country, you can call back to the US and Canada for free. People who have the MagicJack anywhere in the world can call each other any time for free.

I think eventually all calls will be made by something like this. The Magic Jack is only 3" X 1.5" X 0.6" so you can easily take it with you anywhere. I am guessing you should take a phone along with you. I don't know how foreign phones work with it.

@laserjobs:
I agree with you about the MagicJack. I have had it for some time and love it. Just plug a phone into it, then plug MagicJack into your computer, and if you have a high speed connection you can call any telephone in the US and Canada for free.

If you are in another country, you can call back to the US and Canada for free. People who have the MagicJack anywhere in the world can call each other any time for free.

I think eventually all calls will be made by something like this. You can save money on trips this way. I am guessing you should take a phone along with you. I don't know how foreign phones work with it.

@JohnAllison: I agree. I got the email well before Christmas, and my thought was: "Oh well, at least they're trying to be profitable."

I passed on the IPO because their numbers were so horrible, and they clearly had no business plan to turn it around. I will be bummed if they go out of business, but maybe then I'll take the leap to skype. (Their business plan in the IPO was to basically advertise more and get more customers, even though they were already losing money on each customer.) Plus I was concerned that when vonage had to start assessing 911 fees and phone taxes that the other telcos have to, they might lose a lot of customers.
And all of you griping about the taxes and fees, you can thank the gov't for that. They're standard on phone service, and while it was nice to avoid them for a while, the laws have caught up with the new fangled phone service.

@Smorgasbord: astroturfing?

The price may be creeping up, but it's still the cheapest you can get anywhere. This isn't a big deal. Netflix and Gamefly both raised their prices last year. $3 isn't a huge deal.

@Marc Schelske: I got the same thing. You have to survive the 5 or 6 waves of other offers before they get to that one though. First it is a month free, then 2 months free, then a $9.99 plan with a month free, and then two months free, and then the $4.99 plan, and then that plan with a month or two free. I finally accepted just so I could get off the phone (I know, bad consumer).