Over the weekend Google updated backlinks and PR. Our sites for Tiffany Lamps & Patio Heaters dropped in PR a bit while our Fireplace Screens site got bumped up. The really good thing is revenue is rising!

I have been ruminating lately about the state of a Vonage Support call we have had open since September 2004. In short Vonage technical support really stinks. My interest in newer technologies like VOIP are very keen and we save a considerable amount of money over conventional landlines but this issue has given me cold feet. Especially since it has affected our Fireplace Screens & Patio Heater business and therefore our income.

The technical issue has todo with the Vonage voicemail system. The problem we are experiencing is customers will attempt to leave a voicemail on the system and they will almost immediately hear a beep indicating they are out of time. Other times customers hear the voicemail system telling them they have 10 seconds to leave a message. At times the outgoing message is also garbled.

We have deduced the problem only occurs when customers call our Vonage Toll Free number. The response from Vonage tech support was less than stellar as you can see in the excerpt below.

“At this point it looks like this issue could be caused by the calling carrier maybe due to a bad connection.”

So their voicemail system problems are caused by a bad connection? What a bunch of baloney. There can’t be that many bad connections from all points across the country. It is unbelievable the VOIP market leader doesn’t have better engineers under their roof.

At one point in the early September 2004 I was prepared to purchase additional lines of service from Vonage. Good thing I didn’t.

Anybody else out there having the same problems? Send me an email. I am also open to considering other VOIP providers.

Recently I had the unfortunate need to contact the good folks at Google about an issue with one of our websites. I attempted to contact them through e-mail as I have always done. The automated response I received was a surprise…

“Thank you for writing to Google. We’d like to assist you, but we only
respond to messages submitted through our online contact form. Please
visit http://www.google.com/support/ to submit your message, and we’ll get
back to you soon. We apologize for any inconvenience, and we look forward
to hearing from you. Regards, The Google Team”

When I then submitted my question/problem via the webform, I received a canned response and no encouragement to correspond further if the information in the response did not solve my problem.

So it appears G has gone deaf. And what’s more it seems to have been by choice. Is this the end of the Google we have all known and loved? My estimation is it’s a sign of the beginning of the end of Google truly listening to it’s customers. Maybe they haven’t gone deaf, maybe they have a new algorithm to filter out everything but sounds emanating from Wall Street.