Vonage going away? Some may hope.

A few of you know my "battle" with Vonage; I will explain it for the rest of you, then go on with this story (And no, that isn't me, just another "happy customer" of Vonage):

In a nutshell, I decided to discontinue my Vonage service on my one year anniversary date with them. I agreed to one year of service, and I fulfilled my end of it, rather begrudgingly. I never got their WiFi phone to work properly. Ever. Their tech support was shoddy at best, and continually tried to blame my ISP, no matter where I was at the time. Right... Hmm, could it have been non-functional equipment? Noooo.... at least not according to Vonage.

So, I called and told the customer service rep that I wanted to stop service on my one year anniversary date. Nope. Can't do it. Why not? Because they interpret their contract to mean one year + one day, which means a whole month of charges to them. So, in their world 12 months does not equal a year. 13 months does. I refused to pay it, and they THREATENED ME, stating that they would charge me an early termination fee of $150, and the extra month on top of that. Excuse me? No. So, as a member of the press, I decided to investigate this further. I found a lot of people who Vonage had done exactly what they threatened to do to me. Or who coughed up the 13th month and walked away. After learning about those users, I contacted Vonage throught their press liason, and explained that I was working up an article on complaints regarding their termination policy. Got a phone call the next day from a press liason, who proceeded to inform me that they worded their contract intentionally to make sure that all users coughed up 13 months of service at a minimum. Nice. She did credit me with one month of service, so that I could terminate service without additional charge. OK for me, not for others.

Now, fast forward to today. A judge in Alexandria, VA has ruled that Vonage may not sign up new customers while it continues to infringe on 3 patents that competitor Verizon happens to have. Is this good? Believe it or not, I am on the fence on this one. Clearly Vonage angered me, and they will never get my business again, especially since they were so sneaky with their tactics. However, they are competition to other VOIP services, including Verizon, and quashing competition results in higher prices, lousy service, and less jobs overall. Does this kill them? Well, they admit a loss rate of 2.5%. I think it may be higher than that, since they claim this would irrepairably harm their service. It might just kill them. Their stock has been dropping like a rock.

UPDATE: Apparently, Vonage got a stay of the order that barred them from signing up new customers. They can still snooker new customers.