That is funny. I always wondered how Vonage and the Cell phones would be able to tell the difference between a country code and an area code. One thing is bothering me; did anyone not ask why there were all these calls to Algeria?

I guess it's just luck of the draw if the area code (or the first two digits of it) you're using in the transfer happens to also be a valid country code.

I've had Vonage for years, use the transfer function all the time to all kinds of area codes, and I've never had this happen to me.

i dont get this glitch. inorder to dial out of country from USA you have to dial 011+country code+number so how come vonage system does not know that 011 has to be infront of country code. probably this is just another rip of scheme.

Sounds like their CDR parser is messed up.

@scoosdad: In this case, the luck of the draw is pretty heavily stacked against you, if you look up a list of country codes. Most numbers start off with a valid international dialing code of 1, 2, or 3 digits.

Vonage is quickly turning into the worst possible choice in VOIP.

They forgot that they are up against the big bad phone company, because they themselves turned into one :(

Vonage has never been known as a good company. Their customer service sucks, their policies suck, their equipment sucks... and they try to rip off their customers all the time.

Do your homework and choose another company, even if they don't have annoying tv ads with jingles that get stuck in your head.

@scoosdad: Almost all area codes are going to fall under some valid country code (which can be 1, 2, or 3 digits long). The issue is whether there's a 1 prefix (most of North America) or 011 prefix (international). Somewhere in the Vonage billing process numbers aren't getting the correct prefix in some cases.

I've heard so many horror stories about Vonage, but I guess their incessant advertising must sucker people in. Everyone seems to know about them.

I have used Lingo (a Vonage competitor) since 2004. Their customer service is in India, but the people are exceptionally well trained and the few times I've had issues they have been quick to resolve them. They're also a few bucks cheaper than Vonage.

I love Vonage and didn't even know this feature existed. Nice to know it's there if I ever need to get out the door I can transfer it to my cell but I'm so used to dialing a 1 before an area code I doubt I will ever have this problem.

For every horror story one hears about Vonage there are plenty of us who are more than happy with Vonage and I've been with them for over two years and have no plans at all of dropping them.

I was going to sign up with Vonage once... Then when I went through the signup process, the very last page before submitting my order showed an extra $19.99 fee that was not listed anywhere on their website. When I called them up, the customer support people didn't see any problem with having a fee that wasn't disclosed until the very end of the process. That's when I decided they weren't a reputable company.

I think this is a very reasonable mistake on vonage's behalf. Why would someone be making calls to LA, anyway?

Geez. Why would anyone stick with a company like that anyhow for international at those rates? (Speaking on their International rate).

I used Skype to phone to call Oz and Fiji several times last week and it was almost free.

I'm curious as to why people think Vonage is such a great deal. It's the AOL of VoIP. Sub-par product, HUGE advertising campaign, larger-than-industry norm pricing, proprietary interface, hidden charges, and useless technical support. There's plenty of others out there who provide a far better product for far less money. There's even a few traditional landline telcos that are close in price to Vonage.

Some of the alternative providers are a 1:1 copy of Vonage and will provide that hand-holding inexperienced (impatient) users crave. Others have a top-notch product but expect the end-user to have a brain and understand how things work. I'm averaging about $8-10/mo for my home phone service.

Some Vonage alternatives:
Large list including reviews:
[www.dslreports.com]

Drop-in replacements:
Callcentric.com
Viatalk.com (all US support)
Voicepulse.com

Less expensive providers but requires some knowledge:
Voip.ms
Aretta.com
Vitelity.com
Bandwidth.com (business customers w/high-volume or need SLAs)

Ha.. Funny since when I put a 1 in front of my 10 digit numbers the call never goes through... Just dead silence...

I was under the assumption you had to dial an international and country code to go international.

For instance, if I call Australia, I have to dial 011 + 61 + Area Code + Tel #

Vonage sucks. Get a real VoIP provider.

Sounds like Vonage has a hell of an operation going on there.

@NotYou007: AOL still has customers, too.

It's an eerily similar situation to AOl & the net, around '98. Stretch your legs to another provider, even just to try them in parallel. You'll never look back. The features, price, and "standardness" are not in Vonage's version of VoIP.

Hmm.. That's an awfully convenient error. Seeing how they are aware of this problem, does it not constitute criminal fraud?

Magic Jack

Well finally, took you long enough to post it Consumerist ;)

@vastrightwing:

I seriously hope you're not serious lmfao, 2 of them broke on me within 1 month of use each, so that's a no. Anything that's required to be plugged into a USB port for my 'home' phone isn't worth it.

@KernelM:

x2, transfering with a 1+NPA+NUMBER bills fine, but if I transfer to a 10 digit number or 7 digit local number without putting 1+NPA, it gets billed @ international rate for the country code associated with the Area Code or prefix if a 7 digit prefix dialed without an areacode.

@Batwaffel:

You do, the call was just billed at an international rate because the billing didn't see a 1, for instance if I had transfered to a Boston number by dialing 617-867-5309, it would bill me as if it was Australia since the billing only sees the '61' and no '1' in front of it for a US number.

@TEW: Cell phones recognize country codes by the preceeding "011" dialed before it. Vonage should do likewise.

I'm wondering, how is it that Vonage is able to correctly complete the call, yet bills it wrong? The call made it to LA, right? So their switches recognize the number correctly, yet billing does not?

@NotATool: sloppy programming. Most likely the call routing system is separate from the billing system.

Some large businesses and most telcos use multiple carriers and hand off the calls to the carrier who will give them the lowest rate for a particular route. Just on my office PBX alone (~50 users) we have 4 separate carriers.

For Vonage, the system then has to re-bill the customer for the usage + profit which comes off another table. The billing system goes off the call detail records as a separate process. If it fails to standardize the CDR records in a uniform fashion (ie: adding area codes to local calls, making sure all of the records are 11 digits for domestic calls, etc) then bad things can happen. Amateur error, really.

@kc2idf: Actually 011 is specific to only North America. In Europe it's 00 for international. For cell phones, safest thing to do is dial a + then country code and number.

It's just a coincidence that the U.S. country code is 1 and the U.S. happens to use 1 as a lead-in for toll calls in most places.

@FLConsumer:

Would not call it sub-par, it is probably one of the most consistent as far as quality is concerned. Never had a problem with Vonage in two years. Additionally, unlike most, Vonage has E911 service, a necessity for your primary phone.

In choosing your VOIP, you should expect about a penny a minute - or less, plus taxes for the maximum allowable minutes on your plan. Vonage (even though it says "unlimited"), is capped at 2,500 minutes per month ($24.95 plan).

If you talk a lot less, find a pay as you go plan like future-nine.