SunRocket Sues Vonage For Stealing (Abandoned) Customers

Remember when SunRocket, that US-based VoIP company, left the market without any advanced notice whatsoever? All those frustrated customers, forced to move to new service providers with nary a grace period in which to do so. Good times, eh?

Yeah, right. Well, despite fleeing the scene abruptly in mid-July and failing to offer to do so much as a press event to apologize for their complete and utter douchebagishness, SunRocket’s making news once again. Why, you ask? Well, because the company – well, actually, the party “in charge of selling SunRocket’s assets” if we’re to be technical about it – has decided to sue Vonage, it’s chief competitor on the American telecom landscape (back when it was a competitor, that is) because, and here’s the kicker, Vonage “obtained and used (its) customer list without permission.”

SunRocket might’ve scurried off without much more than a peep and drawn the ire of many a VoIP devotee and user (roughly 200,000), but its proprietors will be damned if they let another party recruit the folks it held under its roof without getting the official OK to do so. Vonage is daft if they think they’ll get away with this!

Clearly, SunRocket’s holders aren’t happy with what’s been happening in the time it’s been AWOL (despite the company having been the catalyst of the mayhem itself), but something tells me its argument won’t hold in court – a court hopefully presided over by a judge with sound sense and reason.

The details to the suit are pretty simple and straightforward. SunRocket claims it was in talks with Vonage exploring possible business arrangements involving the sale of its subscriber base (or what’s left of it, anyhow) and “other assets”. But those talks failed, according to the plaintiff, after which SunRocket states the defendant “broke a confidentiality agreement by using SunRocket’s customer list to solicit its former subscribers.” SunRocket went onto describe its customer list as “one of its single most valuable remaining assets” and said that Vonage’s actions had caused “immediate and irreparable harm and injury.”

To which I say: If the judge looking over the case exercises some logic, he/she will question why, if its customer list is one of the “most valuable” assets in its possession, it still chose to leave those customers out in the cold, and will conclude that if anyone had been harmed in the last month or so, it’d been those names on that list.

It’s too early to tell which way the verdict will blow, but maybe, just maybe, reason will win in the end, and SunRocket will be forced to confront the reality that it’s customer list ceased to be its own the moment company took itself offline without prior warning.