Lost Credit On Account

[Thomas]

I registered with Dell Voice / Fongo a few months ago while I was living in Vancouver. I added a $5 or $10 credit (I don't remember what the value was) to my account at the time. Subsequently I got busy, moved to Calgary, yada yada yada, then received an email saying my account had been closed. No big deal I thought, I needed a new local Calgary number anyways. So I got my new number, but my balance disappeared. Following instructions I found on this forum which stated that account balances can be easily recovered, I contacted customer support. I spoke to a gentleman who did not seem to understand my issue even after I rephrased it multiple times. He went to speak to his supervisor - then the call was disconnected.

Anyways, how can I go about getting the credit added back to my account? It's only $5 or $10, but still, money shouldn't just disappear.

Thanks.

[TheHardy]

Do you remember the phone number of your previous (Vancouver) account? If so, this will be needed to be able for Fongo to look into this. The "best" way to deal with this is via a phone call to customer support (and hopefully you do not get disconnected again!), but ... unofficially here on the forums (as this is not an OFFICIAL support channel!) we do have several Level-3 support staff (the ones that your problem would likely get escalated to via the phone support staff anyways) --- you can try PM'ing directly to Steve, Mike or Neil with the details of your issue, along with your old & new numbers so that they can look into it for you. No guarantee that they will be able to resolve it, but I am sure that at least one of them will be able to look into it.

[Jake]

I thought I read that once your account was shut, then you would loose any money left on the account.

Personally I would have thought that it would only be fair that any account WITH a positive LD balance would remain open no matter what, then the problem of accounts getting shut when they still have money in them wouldn't exist - and so Fongo wouldn't get upset customers calling in. I understand why Fongo closes inactive accounts, but doesn't the fact that someone has put some money on it mean that they are probably not just testing things out?

Either way, I hope you get your credits back, the support staff are pretty good here and can usually perform all sorts of magic that other support staff claim is impossible!

I'm just wondering if you might have a bit of a problem showing that the old number was yours. I don't know what level of security checks would satisfy Fongo in a case like this.

[Thomas]

Thanks for your replies. I'll give them another call tomorrow and try again.

I'm trying to figure out what my old number is, but this proving to be a bit difficult. None of my emails from Fongo/Dell Voice have ever quoted the number. And I deleted my notes when I moved as I knew I would be changing the phone number anyways.

What I do not understand is why the entire account was closed. It would make a heck of a lot more sense if each number was associated with an account, and if the account becomes inactive then the phone number is simply released - but the account itself stays in tact (especially if it has a positive dollar balance).

[TheHardy]

That is a very valid suggestion.

If you paid by credit card (assuming you did), can you access your statements online? Account number may show up in the credit card statement ... ??? Not sure, have not bought credits, so I do not know how the billing appears.

Perhaps one of the L-3's on the forum here can help you --- I assume you remember which email address you used to sign up for the account, so they may be able to track it that way. Not sure how long they keep deleted account information archived for though ...

May be worth going back thru the T&C and seeing what it says about credits on expiring accounts ... I will see if I can dig something up on this as well....

[dom]

The email that you received when you originally purchased the credits has your account number.
Call in with that and we will try to look through see if we can salvage the credits. Can't make any promises on that, as, as has been stated, the account gets deleted.
you can PM me with the information you find and I'll see if I can find anything out for you.