Changing On the Fly

Escaping Ooma with your Phone Number. Good luck with that..

Over the past 2+ years I have really liked Ooma’s phone service. Once setup it was mostly hassle free and provided clear calls on a consistent basis with the exception of when calling another VOIP service. VOIP to VOIP calls to/from my office or to any Time Warner Digital Phone were distant sounding and had a slight delay or echo. This wasn’t enough to give me any pause in telling friends about how great I believed Ooma to be as a replacement for the traditional landline. The features are numerous and useful and the Premier upgrade was worth the additional expense in my opinion.

What have I learned to hate about Ooma? As I decided to return to Time Warner’s Digital Phone service as part of the Signature Home package, I no longer had a need for the service. However, I wanted to keep my phone number. Typically, this would not be a problem but it seems that porting away from Ooma is made unusually difficult compared to porting out of wireless providers. I can’t say whether it is intentional obstruction or massive incompetence on the part of Ooma but over a two month period multiple port requests have failed from both TW and then AT&T Wireless as I attempted to move my number to TW Digital phone and then AT&T. Not only do the requests fail but they fail for varying reasons ranging from incorrect information (multiple times the CSRs seem to have given incorrect information) and then phantom pending work orders on the account. Several calls to Ooma phone and online support have been unable to allow me to port the number. At this point, I’ve been told the issue is being escalated to level 3 support and that I should receive a response in 24-48 hours. I have no real expectation that I will make any further progress at all or be contacted with a resolution.

My experience doesn’t appear to be unique and it might be something to consider before you take your number to Ooma. It is difficult to believe that incompetence alone on Ooma’s part is making this a difficult task. Leaving a customer with goodwill toward a company should be a priority if referrals and potential repeat business are desired. 

Overall, Ooma is good VOIP service until you realize you checked your phone number into Hotel California where “you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.” I wish their customer service was as good as their phone service. I might have returned as a customer once the promotional rate for Time Warner’s Signature Home has expired. I will not be returning or recommending others use the the service after this experience.