This sucks. A couple of months ago I prepaid for a year of Sunrocket VoIP service…. I noticed last night I got a weird signal when I tried to call my house, and today when I tried to call it it rang incessantly with no voice-mail pickup. As of today, it seems, they’re dead. I never saw it coming, or never saw the rumors about them struggling, and now I’m left with no home phone–though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You can read more about the shutdown in Wired.
I called the Sunrocket customer support line and get a pretty abrupt “We are no longer taking customer service or sales calls,” followed by a disconnect. That’s going to make getting $200 back a little tricky.
What really irks me is that there was no warning… we were never notified about the immediate shutoff. Would it have been a bad thing to let their 200,000 customers know that they were going to have to close their doors, and at least give us a few days to find new service? Let’s not forget the Sunrocket “Member Bill of Rights,” particularly the last, regarding “Integrity and Trust.”
- Integrity & Trust: We endeavor to fully inform you of available options so you can make timely and informed choices. We will never abuse your trust through deceit, exploitation, neglect, manipulation, or discrimination.
They forgot to fully inform me of available options, unless this doesn’t cover “Screw the customer and totally shut off service.”
So, what’s next? I decided to find out who runs the joint–because I’m not going to get burned by them again. It turns out, Sunrocket was founded by 3 people with lots of telecom experience: Joyce Dorris and Paul Erickson from MCI, and Robert Mainor from Bell Atlantic. In February of 2007, they left Sunrocket for then unspecified ventures. Enter Lisa Hook, current (as of yesterday) CEO of Sunrocket. Hook is an ex AOL’er, as are several of the new managers of Sunrocket (most from AOL as well). She worked in the AOL wireless division during her stint there, and she’s also served as legal advisor to the chairman of the FCC.
But, somewhere along the way she forgot about the little people. I don’t know where I’ll head next for my VoIP service, but you can bet it won’t have anything to do with anything associated with Lisa Hook. More research and rants to come…
UPDATE 7/18/07 INTERNAL EMAIL TO SUNROCKET EMPLOYEES
- Unfortunately this email contains very bad news. We have just been informed that any and all last ditch efforts to keep operations running as well as a potential sale of the company have not gone through and that SunRocket will cease operations at COB today. As such, today is my last day and everyone else you may have worked with at SunRocket. … Regarding outstanding and future invoices: Sherwood Partners out of Palo Alto will be handling the close down of all invoices, current and outstanding.
And of course, it’s never official until The Times reports it…
UPDATE 7/19/07 EMAIL TO SUNROCKET CUSTOMERS
- Dear Customers,
After significant effort by the Company to avoid this result, SunRocket is in the process of closing its operations and therefore will no longer be able to provide you with the phone service that you have been accustomed to. Â However, this email provides you with an opportunity to sign up with select service providers who we believe will offer outstanding replacement service
In order to assist you, we have entered into negotiations with a number of service providers. Â As a result of those negotiations, we have entered into agreements with 8×8, Inc., provider of the Packet8 service, and Unified Communications Corp., provider of Teleband service to offer you the best options and we are proud to recommend the following alternatives to you. Â Please make your decision to move to a new service provides immediately as future service is uncertain.
That’s it… no “if you paid a year in advance, we’ll be happy to refund a partial payment to you,” or even “if you paid a year in advance, we regret to inform you that you’re screwed, and we’ve taken the money and flown to Mexico.”
My favorite slogan from the Sunrocket website is still SunRocket, the “no gotchaâ€? phone company…
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