Resubmission and Expediting... and SBC/Austin, TX

Posts: 50 · Full Forum Member Joined: Apr 04, 2005 Posts: 50

Naaaah ...... it the fact Vonage's partner carriers are getting their asses kicked by Vonage. Vonage has gone from 200,000 lines to 640,000 lines in around 6 months and the carriers are getting blasted with our ports. Vonage has too little control of the carriers but is trying to put the pressure on them. It seems these ports come in "bunches." They are processed in large batches by the carriers when they can (they have their own customers to deal with as well). What probably happened was the carrier in your area just did a large batch and they are starting to show up. Presently this is a 90% manual process. It is going to gradually become more automated over the next few months and ultimately be fully automated. My guess is by the end of the year there will be very few delays and the process will take days instead of months.

vtex wrote:

I have noticed via this forum that SBC Texas seems to have become much more responsive in regards to LNPs within the last two weeks. You have to believe that this turnaround is related to the legal squabbling going on between Vonage, SBC and Texas. No doubt the SBC higher ups have sent down marching orders that they need to clean up their own house so as not to give Vonage anything to squak about. I'm not a black helicopter type but the timing is just too compelling,

Seems like now is a great time to port numbers from SBC Texas. I cringe to think what will happen to LNP's if Vonage prevails in the legal actions with SBC. Cry

State to sue Net phone company (Vonage forum)
Vonage, SBC spar over U.S. emergency calls (Reuters)

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 18, 2005 Posts: 3

Here's some additional info that you may or may not know. This is coming right from a Vonage LNP employee. Take it to mean as much or as little as you will.

Transferring numbers to Vonage sometimes takes forever. There are people right now that have been waiting over a year. Conversely, there are some people whose transfer was fully completed in less than a week. Those are obviously extremes. The great majority of transfers take 25 - 75 days.

Why does this happen? As you know, phone companies are legally required to allow you to transfer your phone number to another company. Vonage is not legally a phone company. Your phone company is not legally required to transfer your number to Vonage. So, Vonage uses these local partner companies. The problem with these local companies is, their primary focus is their own customers... and their ever-increasing number of port requests from Vonage has them rather backed up of late.

And to make matters worse, major landline telephone companies have little reason to move fast. They're probably not acting in a calculated manner, but really, they are never held to any strict legal timeframe for carrying out the transfer, so they have very little incentive to hire more people to make the process of losing customers more efficient. Also, based on what small carrier is requesting the transfer, they pretty much know that it's being done on behalf of a Voip company.

As someone here has stated, Vonage gets thousands of transfer requests a day. They are sent out in large batches to different partner companies. Every now and then, some of these transfers get lost in the shuffle. But more often, people who got their transfer in right at the end of a batch wind up getting a quick transfer, whereas people whose transfer request came in at the beginning of a new batch will wind up waiting longer. Keep in mind, though, that these batches are not specifically planned, and the way that orders are divided into batches is basically the responsibility of the partner company, not Vonage.

When Vonage sends you that form letter saying that they are "expediting" the request, that means one thing... they are resubmitting the request to the particular local partner that is handling that transfer (Vonage has different partners for different local areas). That really is all that Vonage can do, because remember, Vonage cannot directly contact SBC or Verizon or Qwest, or whoever else. They have to go through this 3rd party. And furthermore, even if you get very frustrated about it, Vonage is contractually obligated not to give you their contact information for these partner companies. That's why the Vonage employee you talk to on the phone does not even know this information (and their supervisor does not know this information either). The only people who know this information are people who do not work the phones, and spend their whole day researching number transfer problems.

For the person who found a strange new "order" on his SBC account... when a number transfer is in progress, adding new features to the line risks screwing up the transfer. It has happened more than once that sometime during the transfer process a land-line company will add some arcane feature to a customer's line, which screws up the transfer process, and it has to be restarted. By this point, the customer might just get frustrated and go back to the land-line carrier. However, this mysterious order might actually be the transfer, so who knows.

Also, even if a new feature is not added, if you have a bunch of features like Distinctive Ring and DSL, the transfer rejection notice will only state one of those things... then will be resubmitted, and be rejected again and come back with the next error. And best of all, if you're trying to transfer a number that used to have DSL, but has not had DSL in 2 years, DSL may still appear on your official "Customer Service Record"... and will cause the transfer to be rejected until you can get it removed.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Hope it helps.

Posts: 50 · Full Forum Member Joined: Apr 04, 2005 Posts: 50

Cyclonus, although what you say is what I have posted numerous times, you are pretty much right on the money.

However, this comment That's why the Vonage employee you talk to on the phone does not even know this information (and their supervisor does not know this information either). The only people who know this information are people who do not work the phones, and spend their whole day researching number transfer problems. is not completely correct. I do mostly agree on the "supervisor" (LOL) part but there are SOME NON-LNP department employees who know a lot more then you give them credit for and probably a LOT more the 2/3rds of the people who consider themselves in the "LNP department." I've heard from people I am very close to on how they "research" some of these issues. The only thing that will solve these problems is when it becomes fully automated and they get 99% of their hands out of the pot.

My favorite "stupid LNP trick" story is about the lady who faxed in her loa/bill 5 times and they kept rejecting her transfer as "LOA not being received". Where did they go? Then this close friend of mine, out of total frustration, had it faxed to the CC fax machine on the floor and gave it directly to one of the heads of the LNP department (who then dumped it in "the box" to be processed). Then the very next day the customer recieved an email from the "LNP department" that they still didn't get their phone bill. Rolling Eyes

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 18, 2005 Posts: 3

Quote:

I do mostly agree on the "supervisor" (LOL) part but there are SOME NON-LNP department employees who know a lot more then you give them credit for and probably a LOT more the 2/3rds of the people who consider themselves in the "LNP department."

Sure, there's the "LNP Department", then there's the real LNP Department. There's the LNP phone call answerers who can check spreadsheets and the transfer fax database, but in general, the only people who contact CLEC's are dedicated LNP employees who do not take incoming calls, and receive tickets from phone employees.

Quote:

I've heard from people I am very close to on how they "research" some of these issues. The only thing that will solve these problems is when it becomes fully automated and they get 99% of their hands out of the pot.

Absolutely.

Quote:

My favorite "stupid LNP trick" story is about the lady who faxed in her loa/bill 5 times and they kept rejecting her transfer as "LOA not being received". Where did they go? Then this close friend of mine, out of total frustration, had it faxed to the CC fax machine on the floor and gave it directly to one of the heads of the LNP department (who then dumped it in "the box" to be processed). Then the very next day the customer recieved an email from the "LNP department" that they still didn't get their phone bill.

Heh, at least they got an e-mail... often people don't even get an e-mail indicatiing non-receipt of LOA or phone bill. Anytime I've ever tried to get anyone to fax anything to the CC floor fax machine it doesn't even come through (probably due to high traffic). I've had the best results telling people to fax back to both the regular and rejection numbers, as late at night as possible. Even so, I know at least 2 *Vonage employees* who have not been able to successfully submit an LOA. You're definitely right, though,if this system can be properly automated, these problems will become much less common.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 17, 2005 Posts: 2

Yup, the order at SBC was my LNP order... it is done! Only 15 days since the day I faxed the LOA to Vonage. Very Happy

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 08, 2005 Posts: 3

I pinged SBC Texas customer service about the order placed on my account which I hoped was a disconnect and transfer to Vonage, here is their reply:

Thank you for your recent email. The order in question is to disconnect your service from SBC. Most likely to change the service to another local service provider. For more information please call 1 800 585-7928.

Thank you for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty.

Loyalty! Thats a good one!

Anyway, since I did not request the disconnect this must be the transfer.

Posts: 51 · Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 12:31 pm Post subject:

As I noted above the SBC website had a mystery order placed for my phone that had a scheduled completion date of 4/19. My landline was working when I went to bed last night and was dead this morning!

No email from Vonage (yet) even telling me that the LNP is scheduled never mind done. Also my Vonage webpage shows no new LNP status. I guess that it is in fact done!?!

LNP took nine weeks but I got a one month credit. Vonage customer service was a good experience for me. As I also mentioned above and still maintain, I think that SBC is getting much more responsive to Vonage LNPs because of the pending litigation between the two companies. I think I will gamble and go ahead and switch my other SBC landline over to Vonage. Wish me luck.