I'd like to share a tale of horrific proportions, so frustrating, if I could reach through the line and strangle the cretin overseeing Vonage's customer service organization, you'd have to peel their neck out of my cold, dead hands. This is a tale of a conniving system designed to frustrate consumers into perpetual billing cycles, mildly retarded automated menus and customer service representatives, illogical procedures, half-hearted apologies and in the end...a complete lack of shame from a company that has seen their stock sink 84% since their IPO. Shame Vonage the Dog, shame on You!

Hey, way to go guys! Think this chart says something about your company?

So, after hearing it from my wife for months about the calls she made going to the wrong people and incoming calls never reaching us, I finally got around to signing up for the Comcast triple play, getting a DVR, the whole deal (Not to say Comcast has a record of terrific service, but my research indicated at least the phone service was a little more reliable and I'd end up saving some money by consolidating phone, internet and cable). I had previously been using Vonage since the conventional land line telecom deals were horrendous on pricing and we can't pull off the "I only use a cell phone" arrangement as a family. Since Comcast couldn't port my number for reasons they couldn't articulate well, I allowed for a brief transition period whereby Vonage remained active with a message relaying our new number while we started using the new Comcast network. Upon attempting to cancel the Vonage service, I encountered roadblock after roadblock and realized it was appropriate for me to spend an additional 30 minutes of my time tonight shaming them.

Business Week just dedicated its cover this week to "vigilante consumers" who are so fed up with abysmal customer service that they morph from frustrated consumers to outright vigilantes, posting their experiences on web and video logs, dedicating entire websites with slogans like, "Comanyxsucks.com", etc. Well, I've just joined the ranks.

It all started with my navigating the maze through the Vonage website to find out just how to go about canceling service. Of course, there's no button or registration form to cancel the service; you have to call. I would expect nothing less. You can sign up for the service online, you can activate credit cards via automated menus, you can even sign up for friggin mortgage in the same fashion, but noooahh - can't cancel Vonage without talking to a twit on the phone.

So, given my rather ridiculous schedule of classes multiple nights per week and conference calls to Asia during other nights for my job, I finally found a slot where I could cancel the account - My happening Friday night. I couldn't ask my wife to do this of course, because they will only allow the "actual account holder" to cancel the service. I saw this one coming and saved her hours of agony - that's what love is all about.

Anyway, I tried calling once or twice last week and after sitting on hold for 10-15 minutes with no answer, I had to attend to other things and had decided to pick a slot where I could wait them out. Knowing that the calling hours end at 8PM on weeknights, I called in at 7:00PM figuring an hour would be plenty of time to get through - to cancel my service! Ridiculous, but this is just the beginning.

First, I was tormented by the same moronic voice activated menu that that makes you yell "Cancel" into the phone multiple times instead of just offering a number to press to cancel your service. After that, the standard message of, "Your wait time is over 15 minutes. If you'd like to call back at another time, the wait time may be shorter. You can access Vonage via the internet..." - Yeah, a lot of help accessing it over the internet is since I just entered the CANCEL part of the menu which is not possible through the internet. Anway, after about 20 minutes, the inane music stopped playing and it seemed as though I was temporarily connected to an operator and bam! It hung up on me. Twenty minutes of my life GONE! At this point, I was fired up. I was already drafting my letter to the Better Business Bureau in my head as I redialed thinking if I get through to cancel, that will be much quicker than waiting the months it usually takes to resolve it through the BBB (sadly, I've had to resort to them several times to resolve disputes with abysmal customer service companies).

During the next call, I waited the requisite 20 minutes again and was finally connected with a nitwit of an operator. Instead of just cancelling my service like I requested (and I'm sure she's mandated to do this from her management), I had to endure a series of questions about why I was cancelling, whether I would reconsider, etc. and then put on hold again. The one notable question, which I think is worthy of imparting was the following: "Well sir, would you consider retaining Vonage as a backup for 14.99 per month?". Of course not! I already have another VOIP system which would go down along with Vonage if I lost my cable/internet. However, I'm not giving advice here, but existing customers can re-read that line and do with it what you will...

After sitting on hold for 10 minutes, at which point, I actually started to assume the system would just hang up on me again, the operator came back on and said, "OK sir, now that I've confirmed you want to cancel, I need to input this order into the computer and you'll need to bear with me." I asked why I have to continue to wait on the line and the reply was that I had to actively be on the phone in order to process a request related to my account. This is preposterous! It should be like flipping a switch. I say Cancel and bam, the actions are set in motion to cancel while I go about living my life. But no, not Vonage, I had to endure another 10 minute hold. When she returned I asked what the hell was going on. This is great - she said the computers were slow tonight and the status bar was stuck at 50%. Status bar. Is this like AOL with the 64K dialup days?! What kind of operation are they running over there? After multiple holds and feigned apologies, the mysterious computer system and status bar finally processed my request. In the process, 1 phone battery died on my, I didn't get to participate in seeing my kids on a Friday night, which is one of the few nights I would have seen them, and my blood pressure hit the ceiling.

I get it now. This is very sly. Vonage, in seeking to make it so damn frustrating for consumers to cancel their account, have figured out that in doing so, they can reap a continual revenue stream for months and months while providing no service, forgoing cancellations, etc., because for $25 a month, many consumers probably just don't get around to dealing with it, forget about it, etc. Many of us listened to the AOL vigilante endure a similar tact when the operator refused to cancel his service and he recorded the entire conversation and posted it. This was not quite the same magnitude, but certainly in the same genre.

So, on this topic, I'd like to ask two questions for readers to provide comments on.

• First, what's your worst customer service experience of late?

• Second, given that this type of thing seems to happen to me rather routinely, for all the techies out there, what's the best device/method for recording a phone conversation with the ability to post it later? I think I could have put some pretty fun commentary and music to this one and had a YouTube hit, but I'm relegated to blogging about it here tonight due to my lack of foresight in anticipating this train wreck of an experience.

For those of you that wish you could just get right to the operator and bypass those annoying automated prompts, your wish has come true. Gethuman.com has posted several shortcuts to bypass prompts for several large companies:

http://www.gethuman.com/databasetools.htm