Sometimes, I can understand why people freak out about the use of new technology.
We're thinking about buying the Vonage phone service. That's the deal where you switch your phone service to a Voice Over IP service that's run through your Internet connection. The primary advantage is cost, which became of interest to me when I realized that we pay about $60 a month for local and long distance service. Actually, the cost didn't bother me as much as seeing the sly little statements in the phone bill from the phone company, saying things like 'this is the fee we charge you because otherwise we'd have to pay it ourselves, which we don't want to do, and since we can force you to pay it, we will'. (Okay, thats not exactly what it says, but thats what it feels like.) So the Vonage service, which starts at about $15 a month, looked good.
I went to their web site and was almost immediately flummoxed.
The site looks like it was just thrown together -- well, I guess we should say, like, what our service is, and, um, maybe something about the kinds of modems or something -- and oh, yeah, some scrolling text, and we gotta have a picture of a happy user -- without much thought to order (why do they list the users guide first, and only then say what it is that they do?). They have a cute little 'ask us' service, but what that is is simply a link to a database that looks for keywords, and then says well, golly, we couldn't quite figure out what you wanted, but you know, you can always call us. (My question was: does your service work with Lifeline (one of those 'I've fallen and I can't get up' emergency responder deals) which I don't think we're the first to ever ask.) They have a section about what modems work with their service, but its backwards -- if your modem isn't listed, then, they say, it works. That may be true, but somehow I don't trust it -- I can see myself calling them and them saying oh, yeah, we forgot to add your modem to the list, sorry, click. And they didn't say anything about 'what if you have two phone lines, what then', which I also can't believe we'd be the first to ask.
So we likely will default to staying where we are. Wonder if AT&T built Vonage's site?
2 comments:
I know a number of people in my area that use Vonage and are very happy with it, but it does seem odd in this day and age for a website for this type of business to be so unhelpful.
We have cable phone, which I love. It's part of a bundle package with our cable modem and cable tv. 911 does work with it, except if the electricity is out. I keep our cell phone charged and have the local police station in my contact list, just in case. It's really not anything I worry about though.
I must say, it is wonderfully nice to talk as long as I want, any time of day or night and not worry about long distance charges, especially with all of my family so spread out.
So how come you never call us? [g]
I'm still going to pursue getting it, I think. Sixty bucks a month, average, down to perhaps twenty-five or so is nothing to sneeze at. And doing just a bit to tick off AT&T doesn't hurt, either. I don't care if they did just change their name back to that.
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