This paper is devoted to the study of uniform energy decay rates of solutions to the wave equation with Cauchy-Ventcel boundary conditions:where is a bounded domain of R n (n ≥ 2) having a smooth boundary := ∂ , such that = 0 ∪ 1 with 0 , 1 being closed and disjoint. It is known that if a(x) = 0 then the uniform exponential stability never holds even if a linear frictional feedback is applied to the entire boundary of the domain [see, for instance, Hemmina (ESAIM, Control Optim Calc Var 5:591-622, 2000, Thm. 3.1)]. Let f : → R be a smooth function; define ω 1 to be a neighbourhood of 1 , and subdivide the boundary 0 into two parts: * 0 = {x ∈ 0 ; ∂ ν f > 0} and 0 \ * 0 . Now, let ω 0 be a neighbourhood of * 0 . We prove that if a(x) ≥ a 0 > 0 on the open subset ω = ω 0 ∪ ω 1 and if g is a monotone increasing function satisfying k|s| ≤ |g(s)| ≤ K |s| for all |s| ≥ 1, then the energy of the system decays uniformly at the rate quantified by the solution to a certain nonlinear ODE dependent on the damping [as in Lasiecka and Tataru (Differ Integral Equ 6:507-533, 1993)].