911 setup will not accept my address

Posts: 122 · Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 7:19 pm Post subject: 911 Address Confirmation

Hi, everyone, this is my first post to Vonage-Forum.com. I signed up with Vonage the first of this month and so far I've been VERY IMPRESSED and PLEASED!!! Ever since I signed up, I've been trying ever combination I could think of for Vonage's system to accept my address for 911, but nothing would work. I started thinking, "This is absolutely ridiculous!!!", until I came across VonageTPA's post saying to get your address from the usps.com website and copy that into Vonage's form. Well, I did that, and within a couple of hours, my address was confirmed for 911 activation!!! I couldn't believe it! I was so happy! What did I have to do, well, because the usps.com website had my address as a single line (when it's actually 2 lines (street name and apt number)), I went ahead and put in the number part in Vonage's number box, the street name (with Street spelled ST) in the street box and my apt number in the Street box. It didn't make any sense and didn't match the format they listed on their website, but that's what their system wanted and now I'm good to go!
So for what it's worth, I hope this information helps others out there who are having this same problem as I DID.

Mr_Sorento
Very Happy

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 12:16 am Post subject:

It does make me wonder...if we can do the address verification on USPS...why can't Vonage or Vonage's 911 provider? I haven't found any situation where the USPS address hasn't gone through in 24 hours or less.

Posts: 67 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jul 08, 2005 Posts: 67

Welcome to the club...

The whole Vonage/911 thing is a endless morass of BS that works depending on what time of the day it is, what your favorite color is and whether or not you sacrifice a goat while you enter it in.

There is no rhyme or reason to it. Just keep trying!

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Apr 27, 2005 Posts: 6

Did you ever get this resolved?

Posts: 10 · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 12:13 pm Post subject:

ok....seeing as how it's already rejected me twice and you apparently have limited chances to attempt this before having to contact CS to do it.......i'm in a culdesac, the street "suffix" is Place which of course the USPS has as PL. now, do i put the PL after the street name in the "Street Name" box, or do i actually put it in the "Street Suffix" box???

Posts: 14

MichaelG wrote:

I have set up my phone service and it is working properly, but when I try to set up the 911 service I get the following in my email:

Unfortunately the address you provided failed our 911 Address Matching Test.

I had an identical problem several months ago when Vonage was updating their database. They kept sending me "unable to verify" "911 not activated" emails. (Actually my 911 was still working, and I had not changed my 911 address info for over a year.)

In my case, I think I figured out what was going on - I live in the city of Northville, MI. The city of Northville and Northville Township, MI (an entirely different municipality) had combined their independent 911 emergency dispatch operations into a single dispatch point, actually being operated by the Northville Township police.

I believe Vonage, in attempting to create an E911 compatible database, must have removed "Northville" (city, i.e.) as a valid address in the database because weeks later, when someone at Vonage changed my 911 address to "Northville, Township of", I suddenly received a "911 activated" email!

Could something like this be the cause of your problems?

In any case, be sure to test 911 once it is set up - mine still does not go to the correct dispatch point, for whatever reason!