Is Vonage the New AOL?

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A few weeks ago Tom Keating wrote about Vonage collateral in Amazon.com shipments. Earlier this month, Vonage inked a promotional deal with HP to offer new HP customers a special deal on Vonage service. We all know about their commercials, their hefty online spending, and the use of spyware/adware to promote their service. Vonage is in every major electronics retailer, both brick and mortar’s and online.

I thought I could escape Vonage’s marketing on-slaught by unplugging for a few minutes by sitting down to pay some bills….Boy was I wrong.

As I “eagerly” opened my latest gas bill I found it. Another Vonage promotional insert. I thought I had escaped them, but my attempt to seek refuge in my bills was futile.

Wait. It get’s worse.

After ripping the insert to shredd’s and personally escorting it outside of my house to the garabage I thought I was finally rid of Vonage for the night. Little did I know there was yet another insert lurking in an envelope.

That’s right, the very next bill I opened, my SEAR’S bill, contained a sweet little Vonage promotional insert. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

Gulp. So now that I have told you the event behind this post, I will get to the point of this point. Is Vonage the New AOL? Remember AOL? The company with the most annoying marketing ever.

You don’t? Wait, you do not remember those annoying AOL CD’s that were mailed to you monthly? The AOL CD’s that were annoyingly included in every magazine sold. Those annoying CD’s that every electronics retailer had on display, hard sold you on, then included them in your bag whether you wanted them or not. How about that new computer you bought? Pretty cool that AOL was already installed huh? Not really…

So when does marketing go from effective to annoying? I swear if one of those Orange boxes ends up hitting me in the head…