Won’t other phone companies get you a number for less than $50?

[I wrote this post as the answer to an email that I received today mentioning that ring central only charges $30 to request a vanity number.] Yes, you can get a number for $30 from Ringcentral [the company they were emailing about]. You can get numbers for free from regular phone companies too. But no matter what they say, you’re not getting indepdent proof of ownership. I don’t care if you only wanted a random number, that independent proof of ownership is worth it’s weight in gold when you have a problem.

You may like a particular carrier now, but phone companies change and your needs will change too. And once you put a number in print it’s often very hard to change it. So the more you advertise the number, the more dependent on that number you become. And if you use a number your provider got you, what are you going to do if they say that they provided that number as part of their service and you can cancel their service if you want to but you can’t take THEIR number with you if you want to leave.

Even if they tell you now, or say it’s their policy that it’s your number and you can transfer it, if you have a dispute with them you might find out that there’s very little that you can do if they don’t want to release it. (see: http://www.tollfreenumbers.com/blogs/dont-believe-everything-you-read.html) I’ve also seen at least one provider recently change their policy and refuse to release numbers, including numbers that were activated before the policy change.

There are other things I could say about how fast or efficient they are at searching for or activating numbers and whether they charge you up front even if they aren’t able to get that number in time. Ringcentral in particular has repeatedly taken almost two weeks just to activate numbers AFTER the number has been released to them. (most companies only take a couple hours or a day or two at the most, to activate a number after it’s released to them). But the bottom line is that your ability to transfer the number is what keeps them honest. And no matter what they say up front when they’re trying to sell you the service, you really don’t want to rely on the people who have an incentive to keep you using their service for your ability to transfer it away from them.

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    1 Comment »

    Ben Shoshan Itzhak says:
    October 23, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    Definitely agree on the slow activation, it took them 7-14 days to get the numbers activated after you guys released them, plus a couple fax snafus along the way. Your new number manual is also fantastic, if I ever have another 800 number need, I know where I’m going. ;)

    Ethan
    (the customer the email was sent to)

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