Well, we have been running on Verizon/PhoneGnome for about a month now and I am pretty happy with it, overall sound quality has been great and everything is working well. It looks like Verizon charges will total to about $25 a month (they have hefty fees and charges) and VocalNet $15 a month, which works out to about $12 more than what I was paying for Vonage.

When I got my bill from Verizon, I found a line connection and order processing charges for over $40. When I had ordered the service the representative specifically said that because I was a returning customer (porting from Vonage), there would be no installation or connection charges. I called Verizon, they apologized for the mistake but said there was nothing they could do about it and I would have to pay the charges, I asked for a supervisor and was told the same thing. I think that if a representative of a company states something and the company agrees that a mistake is made they should do their best to resolve it. I decided to quickly file a complaint online apprising the SCC, FCC and BBB of what had happened (thank God for online forms and copy/paste).

I have to give credit to the SCC (Virginia State Corporation Commission), they emailed a personal response to me 15 minutes later and assigned my case to an investigator. A couple of days later I got a voicemail from a Verizon representative apologizing for what had happened and asking me to call back and discuss a resolution. When I called she offered to credit all the install charges. I am very impressed with the quick turnaround and resolution.

The BBB replied a week later saying they can’t help and the FCC never replied, looks like the SCC is the way to go when it comes to resolving complaint with the local utilities.

We are going to stick to this combination of service for now, it seems to be working well and give us the redundancy we need.