Vonage Sucks !

It's great to be back online. I feel like I have so much bottled up inside that needs to be said.

First and foremost, thank you to all of my loyal readers for your patience. My biggest fear of not having the ability to be able to post on a regular basis is loss of readership. I'm sure I've lost several readers over the past few weeks, but I'll just have to try that much harder now.

And now, on to Vonage. If you're considering signing up for Vonage, please reconsider, or at least look a little further into it before signing your online and telephone life away. I blame myself for not doing more research on it. I should've known certain basic things, like the fact that DSL only works when you have an active phone line attached to it. Trying to set up Vonage on a DSL system is like trying to invent a perpetual motion machine...while drunk...and blindfolded...with both hands tied behind your back...and an elephant sitting on your chest.

And yes, I'm still desperately trying to think of a way to blame this whole Vonage experience on George W. Bush. No such luck, as of yet, but I haven't given up.

While I can say that the customer service reps at Vonage were very friendly and helpful, it was in dealing with their "tech support" that convinced me, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I absolutely did not want this service even if it was for free. They actually sent me out to the store to purchase a router. One night, after about an hour of futile "troubleshooting" the lightbulb above my head suddenly turned on and I explained to the "technician" that DSL does not work without a working phone line attached to it.....complete silence on the other end of the line. That was the turning point. I then quickly and purposefully decided to dig myself back out of the hole that I had dug, and called AT&T to sheepishly explain the error of my ways and asked to come back to the fold. Want to know what AT&T did? They gave me a $50.00 gift certificate for coming back.

One other interesting thing that I discovered while doing after-the-fact research is that there is a registered site under the domain name, vonagesucks.com. Go ahead and click on it. I guess they knew there'd be problems in starting a VOIP company without tech support.