Frustration!

Well, I had my first ex-pat mini-meltdown today, the result of frustration over technology.

The day started well. I wasn't sleeping that well last night (residual jet lag I guess) so I slept in this morning. Got up, had some breakfast, got myself together, and around 12:30 headed out to the local Monoprix market, grocery list in hand.

I found everything on my list plus a few other food items that looked interesting to me, so I'm pretty well stocked up for a little while. Also on my list were the electrical accessories that I finally determined were needed for me to connect my Vonage modem and US telephone, so as to get my phone service going.

Let me take a step back: Vonage, if you aren't familiar, is what's known as a Voice-over-IP phone service, or VoIP. It uses the Internet technology, instead of traditional phone company lines or cell phone lines, to make telephone service available. I've been using it at home for a while now and really think it's great, not to mention affordable. For one low flat rate a month I get unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada, and now they've added 5 European countries to that plan including FRANCE!

When I realized I was moving here, one of the first things I did was contact Vonage to double check that I could just bring over my modem and phone with me to France, hook it up to any broadband Internet connection, and my New Jersey phone number would essentially "follow" me to France. Cheap and easy for me, my friends, my family and my clients. Sounds like a dream come true, right?

Yeah, well... bienvenue à mon cauchemar (welcome to my nightmare).

After examining the electrical set-up here at the apartment, I determined that I would need an extension cord and another power strip in order to connect my Vonage modem and my American phone, because there is only one outlet near the desk where I need to set this stuff up, and it's already got a full power strip/surge protector attached with every outlet already in use. It's not good to overload or "layer" surge protectors so that meant I'd have to do this as a workaround. Which was fine, really, and a small investment.

So while at the Monoprix, I looked, and found, the extension cord and power strip as well as another little gadget I figured I'd need because I have these voltage converters/adaptors I brought from home. I came back to the apartment, started setting it all up and it seemed like it was all going smoothly... seems like I bought all the right stuff.

Not so fast... what's this? Oh, shit. I was ready to plug in the Vonage modem when I realized it: the modem has a 3-prong grounded plug. And most travel converters only work with 2-prong appliances!

Crap. Dead in the water. I went online to research my options for a 3-prong converter, which I have learned is called a Step-Down Transformer. They make them in a variety of sizes and wattages, mainly to handle bigger appliances people might want to bring over from the States like a refridgerator or a computer printer or something. The one I need is about the size of a regular travel converter, it just has a 3-prong plug.

But where in Paris to buy such a thing? And what happens if I can't locate one? Brookstone makes one but they don't have stores here and don't seem to want to ship to France. Radio Shack doesn't have stores here either. I'm not even sure what kind of a store to LOOK for in France because so many stores are specialties stores, so would I look for a place that sells travel accessories or electrical appliances? Or even computer gadgets?

Not being able to come up with a quick answer, I thought about what kind of fallback plan I could create. Vonage also has a new, cool little USB device that plugs into your laptop, allows you to connect a headset (included) and you can send and receive all your calls that way. So, I proceeded to call Vonage to find out how this would work, could it work with my existing number, and what would it take to get them to sell it to me and ship it to France?

This is where the real nightmare began. I started with them on the phone around 3pm. And finished with them around 6:15pm. In that three hour timespan, I was transferred and/or put on hold no fewer than TWENTY times (I lost track after a while). I started with tech support, who transferred me to customer service, who transferred me to billing, who transferred me back to customer service where I finally got a senior person who seemed to know what she was talking about. She informed me that yes, I could get this little "VPhone" device, and yes, it could be programmed to work with my current number. And she was going to personally connect me to the person in BILLING (wasn't I already there?) who could facilitate this, and she was going to stay on the line with me until she connected me -- because by this time I was tired of telling the same story over and over, AND having to provide the same name, rank and serial number to each person I spoke with (apparently their internal systems do not automatically transfer that information when they transfer your call, so you have to start fresh with each new human being you speak to).

I was feeling relieved when I realized the good customer service rep had somehow lost my call and I was transferred back to the main voice mail system again! Another 15 minutes of trying to get back to her and waiting on hold. Then not getting her, but another person (also a senior level) who swore up and down she would not lose me. And she didn't.

But the guy she transferred me to had a horrible connection (he blamed it on me being in France, but I think it was him being in India or someplace because I had no problems hearing the people in the US customer service group). So next it was a full HOUR of "what?", "say that again please?", and "Hello, hello?" as we tried to communicate and get my situation resolved.

It was somewhere around this time that I started to completely lose it. I could feel my blood pressure rising and my voice getting angrier and all quivery like it does when I'm ready to put someone through the friggin' wall (which happens maybe once a year because I'm not an angry person by nature). I just have no patience with badly designed systems and companies that claim they offer "service" but have incompetent people working for them who know nothing, and force the customer to bear the brunt of the problem. When you bill yourself as an "international" company that allows customers to make their phone number "portable" then you should be set up to support those customers that want to do exactly that. This was nothing but a waste of my entire afternoon, when I would have preferred to be museum-hopping or something.

The long and short of it is: I am going on the hunt tomorrow for the step-down transformer. But I'm not relying solely on that. I ordered this Vonage VPhone stick (which also doubles as a data storage device - handy). And after I get it I can get someone to program it with my current number, and one way or the other I should be back in business, literally (without this phone access I'm in real trouble especially with business callers).

But: Vonage can't ship it to me directly. They can ship it to my New Jersey address. They won't pay for the overnight shipping I'm requesting because I can't afford to lose any more time waiting. They comp'd me some amount of money towards the cost of the device (it costs $40, a one-time fee) or the first month of service, but I'm not entirely sure about that because the connection was so bad I couldn't hear everything he was telling me. Then I'm going to have to pay to have my family speed-ship it over to me here. It will still probably take a week to get here even with all this "overnight" service. And I'm paying through the nose for the privilege, and I'm not even 100% sure it's going to work.

At this point, I have little choice. Vonage, while a good service, has a lot to learn about good CUSTOMER service. For one thing, when I first called to confirm that yes, I could take my Vonage modem to Paris, they never ONCE informed me I would need to buy a step-down transformer. Wouldn't that have been a good thing to tell a valued customer?

And they won't ship to France. I can't even forward my calls to my French number because they're not set up to do that, either (I tried that days ago and they can only forward to a 10 or 11 digit number, and with the international dialing and country codes, my temporary Paris number is just too long). They wouldn't even give me free overnight shipping, considering I'm going to have to pay another shipping fee to get it to France.

Would I recommend Vonage to others? Yes, and no. Yes, in that if you're in the US and you make a lot of long distance calls including to Canada, the UK, France, Ireland, Spain or Italy, it's a flipping GREAT deal and the call quality is normally very good (there's an occasional glitch but it's not bad). If your cable TV service goes out, your phone service won't work either (found that out the hard way about two weeks ago). And their customer service process clearly leaves a lot to be desired.

Still, if I can get the damned thing to work through one of these methods, I'll be satisfied, because it will represent the least amount of long-term cost or inconvenience for everyone I know, and for me, too. The Internet is a wonderful thing, and the fact that it now allows companies like Vonage (there are others) to offer affordable domestic AND international phone service is a good thing for consumers (although I'm sure Ma Bell and France Telecom are pretty upset about it).

I'll post an update when I know how this all turns out. Suffice to say, I'm going to go crack open a beer or something. It's been a long, hard, day here.

And I can't even blame France.

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UPDATE 15 NOVEMBRE: Problem solved!

Darty had what I needed, a two-way voltage converter that can handle a variety of sizes and shapes of input plugs, with a switch on the back you can change to 110 (if you're in the States) or 220 (if you're elsewhere). Word to the wise: that switch is to set the voltage NOT of the appliance you're plugging in, but of the electrical current used wherever you're at. The instructions, in French and English, were a bit vague on that. So in France you set it on 220 and in the US on 110. Unfortunately I set it the wrong way and fried the thing up! (Fortunately I had not yet plugged my Vonage modem into it!)

But I got another one today and it seems to be working. The only thing is, it's not meant to be used non-stop so I'll periodically have to unplug it and let it rest a bit. But that's what voice mail is for, n'est-ce pas? I guess that's one way to ensure I won't be awoken by after-hours calls from the West Coast.

Thanks for all your good suggestions and sharing your experiences with all of us travelers. I do use Skype to communicate with one or two clients who also use it but didn't think it was practical for most of what I'd need it for. But it sounds to me like it can do more than I thought. Good to know.