Some of you may have seen the new Vonage phone service commercial lately. It talks about "bundled services" with your existing phone company, and that sometimes you don't know what those bundled services are. Then the people claim it's the last bill they are paying to their old phone company, and they wad it up and through it on a pile of other wadded up phone bills. This commercial has bugged me from the start, and I just figured out why. Bundled services usually means that you have multiple services that a company offers, bundled together for a better rate. For example; you may have Comcast Cable, Comcast Digital Voice, and Comcast High Speed Internet. You could have any one of these, but if you have more than one, it's a bundle, and you pay less for the total than what the sum of all the services individually would cost. One of the beauties of this concept is that you get one bill. So, lets go back to our commercial here. You have multiple people, who have been established as having bundled services with their phone company. They have made the switch to Vonage, who offers only phone service; and now they are wadding up their old bill and throwing it away. So, they are no longer paying for their Internet and cable service, which will soon be cut off for lack of payment. Then their Vonage service, which requires an existing high speed Internet connection, will no longer work. Perhaps a disclaimer should be posted at the bottom of the screen stating that you still have to pay for other bundled services, or at least find another provider.
