Vonage service issue
I noticed that, about 1 1/2 hours ago, I was unable to connect to my Vonage dashboard. I tried connecting on both my laptop (Wi-Fi) as well as my Desktop (Wired) yet I was still unable to connect. I decided to call Vonage to ask about this: The first time I called, I was transferred to a Technical Support agent who hung up on me as I was talking to her. The second time I called, I was told that they (Vonage) were performing an emergency upgrade and to try back in 2 hours. The third time I called (to verify what the 2nd Rep told me) I was once again told that they (Vonage) were performing an emergency upgrade and to try again in 1 hour.
By this time, I knew I was getting the royal runaround so I decided to put my 20+ years of I.T. expereince to work for me: I called Vonage one last time and, when the Rep came on the line, I told him that I not only work in the I.T. Industry but that I also know that Call Center Rep’s routinely use pre-generated scripts, given to them by their Supervisors, and are told never to deviate from them no matter what the circumstances. I then proceeded to tell him that I knew the “emergency upgrade” excuse was a standard answer used by the Vonage Rep’s whenever any part of the Vonage service was not working. I finally asked him directly if the “emergency upgrade” answer I had been given by the last 3 Reps was legitimate or was it an excuse ie. a blatant lie on Vonage’s part?
I noticed immediately that this particular Vonage Rep had become quite uncomfortable in talking to me because he then started to stammer and fumble his words while he was responding to me, he coudn’t even complete a sentence without uttering “um” several times. After he had gained a bit of his composure back, he stated that the Vonage Rep’s are initially told to “dumb down” their technical support responses so that their “non-technical” customers will be able to understand what is going on. It was clearly obvious to me that, during the phone call, he (the Vonage Rep) was caught completely off guard by the fact that he was speaking with someone (me) who knew the “tricks of the trade” and was not willing to accept his script responses at face value.
While I certainly don’t take any pleasure in other people’s discomfort, it did give me a certain sense of satisfaction knowing that I was finally able to get a straight answer out of Vonage about this.
