Brad Feld

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Vonage 911

Feb 20, 2006
Category Technology

I got an email from Vonage today that they had completed 911 Dialing activation for my Vonage line.  That’s good, I guess.  However, even though my phone number is a (303) number (Colorado), they had my Alaska address on the 911 alert.  I have no idea how they picked this address since both my Billing Address and Shipping Address on Vonage are Colorado addresses (not my home address – a PO Box.)

Fortunately, I read the email and was able to change my 911 address. It would be a real bummer if someone was trying to axe murder me at my house in Colorado, I dialed 911, and the police showed up in Homer. 

I searched around my entire Vonage account for any place where my Alaska address had been entered and couldn’t find it anywhere.  I did use my Vonage phone last summer in Alaska so it’s conceivable that the address is in their system somewhere, but it’s not on any of my account pages. 

Sounds like a database issue to me.  I love databases.

I just got another email – after receiving my confirmation that the 911 address was changed, that “Unfortunately, due to the follow error, we were not able to accurately verify the address you provided for 911 Dialing.  There was an unidentified problem with the information you provided.  Please re-enter your address.”

Ok – re-entering my address now.  Oh – and if someone at Vonage happens to notice, your error message has an error – how about changing “… due to the follow error …” to “… due to the following error…”