[portingout]

The following is important information for anyone attempting to port out their phone number(s) out of Vonage and have changed their mailing address at any time after they first opened their Vonage account / ported in a phone number / requested a new phone number.

Here's how to avoid a Port Out request being rejected for an "address mismatch" :

Vonage gives their partner telecom firms responsible for parceling out new phone numbers (and porting in number s) your mailing address AT THE TIME YOU REQUEST A NEW VONAGE PHONE NUMBER -- or AT THE TIME YOU PORT IN A NEW VONAGE PHONE NUMBER. They do NOT update your mailing address with their partner firms, regardless of how many times you may update the current address on your Vonage Account.

THEREFORE: when you are porting out of Vonage and you are asked by the porting in / "winning" carrier for your "current address", you must in fact give them your exact address that was on file with Vonage AT THE TIME THE PHONE NUMBER WAS FIRST REQUESTED OR WAS PORTED INTO Vonage. In other words, the third party telecom firms that Vonage uses to handle the porting out request, consider the original customer mailing address at the time the number was first assigned to the customer to be the "current address."

Vonage uses multiple third party partner telecom firms to parcel out numbers in different area codes for their customers. These external telecom partners are the ones who actually handle the port out requests of Vonage numbers.

I confirmed this with a senior level Vonage Customer Relations manager on 2/27/06.

I wrote this message to help other Vonage customers avoid the delays that I've experienced given that this irregularity in the handling of addresses / and that the use of external third party telecom firms is not disclosed by Vonage to their customers.