So, I finally am able to experience this VoIP thing, as it is meant to be.

After 3 days of head banging frustration (more on that later) I was finally able to get my PAP2 up and running.

I’m in the middle of my first call right now, and what I am willing to say, so far, is that the sound quality is acceptable. It’s not wonderful, there is a static buzzing in the background, but I am cheating at using my cell phone, so that might have something to do with it. I am not sure yet. More on how I am using the cell phone later. =)

The installation was an absolute nightmare. Don’t get me wrong, the physical connections were simple enough. The included 6′ ethernet cable went from the back of the PAP2, straight into my D-Link Router. The RJ11 Telephone cable went from the back of the phone, straight into the device. Peachy Keen. Even the power cable fit properly.

There are four status indicator lights on the front of the device. The first is for power. It went blue, this is a good sign. The second, is for the ethernet connection. Again, blue is a good sign. Status lights 3 & 4 are to show if the telephones connected to the device are able to connect to the Vonage servers. This is where stuff got sticky.

I figured, no big deal, I did something wrong. Let’s be a responsible dealer (I sell this stuff, as well as use it. This was very much not only me trying to save cash, but me seeing if this is a service I can recommend to my customers.), and call tech support.

What. A. Fucking. Nightmare…

The first woman who gets on the phone, talks to me as if I am a three year old child. She gives me all the wrong directions, and answers none of the questions i ask her.

Her : “If you look at the very bottom left hand corner, you will see a button that is labeled ‘Start’. I need you to click on this button, and find the icon for Internet Explorer, do you know how to do this?”
Me : “I am sorry, my PC does not run windows, I do not have a start button, but I am sure that I should be able to do whatever it is that you want me to do using Mozilla Firefox instead?”
Her : “That is not possible sir, all PC’s run windows, unless you have a MacIntosh, but then you would not be able to run Windows anway.” (Hint. Bootcamp is apparently neat, not that I have any idea why you would want to run Windows on a Mac. I hear these Linux and BSD things are kind of cool too.)
Me : “OK, we can just pretend that I’m using IE, ok? What is it that you need me to do?”
Her : “Type http://192.168.0.180/ into the address bar and tell me what happens.”
Me : “Nothing at all.”
Her : “That is not possible, you are doing it wrong.”
Me : “I’ve logged into the configuration for my router, and the IP address for my PAP2 is 192.168.0.161. Not 192.168.0.180. Should I put that in the address bar instead?” (I’ve already done that)
Her : “NO! You are doing it wrong! You have to phone **** from your telephone, and reset the Vonage device to use 192.168.0.180 as a static IP! Then you have to set the device to be a DMZ on your router.”
Me : “That doesn’t make any sense, I can set the existing IP to be the DMZ, that is not a problem, but I would rather just know what TCP and UDP ports that I would need to forward to the Vonage device to make it work…but a DMZ will work, as a last resort….”

By this point in time, it become very clear to me that this woman is doing nothing more than reading off of a script, and has no real technical knowledge at all. She is getting frustrated with the fact that I am not blindly doing whatever she says (I *need* to know why, it’s a character flaw.) I relent a little bit, and start to follow her instructions blindly, 45 minutes later, I’m frustrated and losing my temper, and she is “Out of ideas”. I apologize for being difficult, and tell her that I will call back in the morning, after some rest, when I am hopefully a little less bitchy.

I called back the next day. I get a new rep, who just happens to have the same script that he is reading off of. I give up after 10 minutes and hang up on him. I let it go for the rest of the day, because I am still tired and grumpy, and I go lay down for a nap.

Tonight rolls around, and I have decided that tonight is the night, and I am going to get this figured out. I open up the Users Manual, looking for a method to perform a complete factory reset on the device. Thinking to myself, that now that I have DHCP assigning a static IP to the device using a MAC fliters, and the DMZ set up, chances are the default settings will work out of the box just fine.

One problem…

No. Fucking. Reset. Button…

I am completely baffled by this. How on earth can Linksys, one of the chief makers of Consumer Grade, cheap ass networking components, not include a manual way to perform a hard reset? I google it. It appears that there are at least two versions of the PAP2. An older one, that has a reset button, and the one that I have, with no way to hard reset the device.

The only way to reset it, is to do a soft resest, but the manual does not explain how you do this, so I brave my third call to tech support.

I get a seemingly nice guy on the phone, I explain to him that I want to do a factory reset on the device, because I have a gut feeling that all of the custom settings that I was told to put on the device, which I now do not remember, are why my VoIP line is not working.

He immediately tells me to unplug my PAP2, my D-Link router, and my Motorola Cable Modem. In that order. Then, to wait two minutes before I plug the modem back in. Then wait an additional two minutes, before I plug the router back in. Then wait two minutes before I plug the PAP2 in. I’m left cursing crappy consumer grade electronics, as this moron is reading off a script, and not even answer the question that I have asked, which is “How do I factory reset this device?”

After explaining to him, over and over again, that all I want to do is perform a factory restore on the PAP2, he finally gives me the wrong instructions. I tell him to forget about it, that I am fed up with how useless and inept that Vonage Tech Support is proving to be to me, and that I am just going to return the equipment in the morning, get my money back, and cancel the account within the 30 day money back period. Immediately, I hear this paniced voice on the other end saying “Please Mr Roscoe, let me transfer you through to a Level 2 support technician, please.”

I humor him, he puts me on hold for about 5 minutes while I tinker with the device, googling for instructions on how to reset it.

The Level 2 guy comes on the phone, asks for all my credentials again, which I supply. When he asks how he can help me, I explain to him what is going on, what I think the problem is, and what steps I have taken to trouble shoot it. I explain the my network is set up, with the router assigning static IP address’s via MAC filters, using DHCP. I explain to him that his counterpart on the first night that I called it, had me configure the PAP2 to use a static IP address, rather than DHCP. I explain to him, that all I want to do is perform a factory reset on the device, so that I can start from scratch, with all of the custom settings erased, and with the DHCP and DMZ settings restored, I am confident that I will be able to get it to work on my own.

He proceeds to tell me to unplug my PAP2, my D-Link router, and my Motorola Cable Modem.

I fucking lost it on him.

“The problem is not my network. My network is working just fine. It’s worked just fine for the last few years, with no issues at all. The problem is with the Vonage equipment that I purchased. Please, do not treat me like a god damn child, do not read off of a script to me. Answer the question that I have asked you, which is how do I perform a factory restore on the hardware that I purchased. Put me on hold if you need to, if you do not know how, I will wait, just please, answer the god damn question.”

He puts me on hold for a few minutes, and comes back with a reset sequence. You have to phone the Vonage device (****) then enter the following key sequence “#877778#” then, you have to listen for the voice to ask you to press “1″ to confirm. The device power cycled, rebooted itself, and came up with a positive on the land line phone being connected to the Vonage system.

The guy on the other end of the phone asks if that resolved the problem. I pick up my second cell phone, and call my Vonage number. Success. I pick up the cordless phone that I purchased to use with the Vonage set up, and I cannot make outgoing calls. There is no dial tone. I plug in an old desk phone that I had kicking around, pick up the handset, and get a womans voice telling me “We are sorry, it appears that you have your telephone plugged into the wrong port. Please try the other one.” I try the other one, and get the same fucking error.

By this time, I am getting really frustrated, and ready to throw a complete and total hissy fit.

The guy on the phone, says that I am obviously doing something wrong. I ask him a few simple questions, such as do I need to dial a 7, 10, or 11 digit number? He goes off on a completely and totally different random tangent, which caused me to completely lose my mind on him.

I went up one side, and down the other side of him, explaining to him, that I am not only a Vonage customer, who is incredibly unhappy and looking to cancel his service, but that I am also a Vonage dealer as well, who is in a position to hopefully move a dozen or so of their units out of my store per month. I then also explain to him that I am also a dealer for Primus, as well as Rogers Home Phone, and based on how my personal account has been handled, I know that of the three that I carry, Vonage will be the least likely to move units out of my store. I explain to him, how incredibly god damn frustrating it was for me, as a customer, to have 4 different support reps ignore what I was saying to them, and read blindly off of a script, and how it made me lose all faith and confidence in this service, within 72 hours. Then, I said goodbye, and I hung up.

Less than 5 minutes later, my cell phone rang, and it was a level three support rep, who understood that I was having some problems with new equipment that I had purchased. I explained to him that there was not a problem with the equipment, it was a problem with how inept and incompetent the support reps that I had to deal with were. How the problem was that no matter what information I was asking for, I was condescended to, and told that the easiest way to fix it was to just unplug all my equipment, because it was obviously my fault that it wasn’t working.

I explained to him, that I was not only a customer, but that I was a dealer as well, and that I have come to expect technical support services to be considerable more capable than what I had experienced in the last 72 hours, and that I was going to box up the equipment first thing in the morning and return it to the place of purchase, taking a personal loss of income on my commission. He asked if I had packed any of the equipment up yet, and I said that I had not. He asked if I had reset the device to factory specifications, and I said that I had, but only after having to argue with the previous reps for 45 minutes in order to get them. He apologized, and had me reset the device again. While the device was power cycling, he asked me a few questions about how my network was set up. He asked what kind of equipment I used, including model numbers for the modem and router. He asked how many PC’s were on the network, and I explained to him that there are two, but they are on a different switched subnet. He asked about what Operating System I was running on my PC’s. All of his questions were excellent probing questions that allowed him to find out as much information as he could, without being a condescending prick. Most importantly though, he never once asked me to unplug the rest of my gear.

20 minutes later, I was up and running, and able to make and take calls with no problems at all, and I have decided that I will keep the equipment for at the very least two weeks, before I decide to return it or not. I’ve gone from being a very disgruntled customer, to someone who is at least willing to give this company a real chance.

So…

Let’s talk about some of the stupid cool features that Vonage provides me.

International Calling, for free.
I can call anyone, anywhere that I would be interested in calling someone, for free. I can even do this from my cell phone, using a loophole I discovered.

Multiple phones numbers.
I have a local Calgary phone number. Let’s say that I wanted my big sister who lives in Ontario to be able to call me whenever she wanted. I could get an additional Ontario number, for $8 a month. BeLinda calls this local to her number, and my phone in Calgary rings.

International Call Forwarding.
This, is fucking cool. I can set up my Vonage system to forward all incoming calls, to a phone number of my choice, anywhere in the world that Vonage offers service, for free. Meaning, if I am at my parents house, and I need to call Kerri, who lives in London England, I can log into the Vonage website, and forward my calls to my home phone number, to Kerri’s place in England. I phone home number, either from my cell phone, or from mom and dad’s land line, and Kerri’s phone rings. Free International calling, from any phone.
I was wrong on this, after attempting to try it out earlier today, I found out that you can only forward to a 10 digit [(***) ***-****] number. My bad, sorry about that.

SimulRing:
Call forwarding on steroids. I can set up to 5 phone numbers to ring, when ever someone calls my Vonage set up. This means, BeLinda calls my Virtual Ontario number, my home phone, my cell phone, and my parents phone, can all ring at the same time.

Voice Mail.
I can check it from the web, using a browser. I hate voice mail and have it completely disabled, but, still a cool feature.

Call Tracking.
Using the Vonage portal, I can see who called me, who I have called, and who’s calls I have missed.

Call Waiting.
Hate it, disabled it. It’s nice to know that it is free though.

I’ve tested the call forwarding thing with a call from my cell phone to Angela, in PA. It worked flawlessly, once the system was up and running. Before I was able to get the actual land line part of the service working, it would only forward to a local number, but it works now. The call quality left a little to be desired on my end, but, it was GSM packets being routed over the net via VoIP, I can let it slide. For comparison sake, it was about the same as using a calling card. There was a noticeable about of white noise in the background, a low level hum. I will try it tomorrow evening from a remote landline, as well as from the desk phone that I have at home to see if there is a noticeable difference.

I am incredibly excited about what this technology can do, in theory. I just want to find out if the implementation is as solid as the theory, which is why I will give it a two week trial. If it goes smoothly, I will definitely keep the package, without reservations. If it does not work as intended, I will return the hardware and cancel the account. Pretty simple really.

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Disclaimer:
I work for a Vonage Dealer. I have a financial interest in making this company succeed. The opinions expressed in this review are in no way, shape, or form at all relevant to my employer’s point of view on Vonage, or the services that they offer. Everything mentioned in this article is based on my personal experience with them, during a three day period of my life where my temper was short, and my mood was not the best to begin with, so everything said should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Meaning, a grain of sale the size of a Buick. I will revisit this post with a follow up within a month, that will in all likelihood be more positive in nature.