netTALK Appears To Be Refusing To Port Phone Numbers Out Of Their Service
Over the last year and a half or so, I’ve been tracking an issue where netTALK seems unable or unwilling to release phone numbers to be ported to another service. Over the weekend, I had someone by the name of Laura Vogel reach out to me on Twitter:
Bullshit. You value our money but not us. I’ve been trying for three weeks to get my numbers back and all I get are lies.
— post.news/ThinkOutLoud (@ThinkItLoudly) February 10, 2018
I reached out to her and she sent over some communications between her and netTALK. I have to admit that I’ve seen some bad and brutal customer service, but this is the worst that I have ever seen. Based on the emails that I read, netTALK goes long periods of time without responding to queries. And it seems that she had to complain to the FCC to get any response.
The problem is that she seems not to be alone. A quick perusal of Twitter shows that this problem has existed for at least a year a half. Here are some examples:
Over a month now, and still won't port out my deceased mom's # that I still need for estate purposes. #NetTALK #ScamAlert
— Unusually Unusual (@UnusuallyFab) April 24, 2017
Terrible customer service, I requested my information a month ago to port out . Still nothing
— C Ashmine (@CashElix) April 18, 2017
@netTALK can you please port my number over by Friday? I have been speaking to Edison for help and I am at a loss.
— Lucian Lucia (@WolfPackBark) December 27, 2016
I finally got my duo and now I'm trying to port my current number @netTALK is really difficult to contact
— Iain MacDonald (@Iainmac1979) October 13, 2016
https://twitter.com/baqaveli/status/780474721913622528
Now why would they be basically holding phone numbers hostage? Well, I think that this highlights something that I said here. netTALK has never, ever made money. Thus you could make an argument that they’re trying to lock their customers into their service by holding their numbers hostage. After all, your phone number is often part of your identity. So if you can’t port your number off their service, you keep paying them. If that’s true, that’s pretty cynical. There may be other reasons behind this as well, but when I reached out to netTALK on Twitter to find out what their side of the story is, they chose not to respond. I think that tells you all you need to know about netTALK.
Here’s the bottom line. There’s a reason why netTALK is one of two companies that I pulled my recommendation of their products in the history of this blog. In short, this company doesn’t pass the smell test. The fact that they aren’t letting people port their numbers off their service should be a major red flag for anyone thinking of doing business with them. Now, if you’re one of the people that are in this situation, I would recommend filing an FCC complaint if you’re in the US, or a complaint with the CRTC if you are in Canada. Why go this route? It’s simple. netTALK doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt and deserves to have a very uncomfortable light shown on their behavior.
I will continue to follow this story and report on any developments.
February 23, 2018 at 10:19 am
I’m trying to port my Nettalk wireless number to Sprint. I used the account number and pin that I found online. Sprint’s number porting department said that the number is blocked from transfer by T-mobile. I’ve contact Nettalk but as you know they are very slow to respond and haven’t heard back from them. Anyone have advice on how I can get my number? This is a number that I had transferred to Nettalk when I first started service with them.
March 7, 2018 at 9:00 am
[…] frustration of their customer base. When I last wrote about netTALK, I wrote about the fact that netTALK wasn’t porting numbers out of their service when people wanted to change phone compani…. It’s now been brought to my attention that their problems seem to go deeper than that. […]
June 6, 2018 at 8:31 am
Nettalk is hiding everything. Their latest doc about finding account number is a joke. It doesn’t match with anything I see in my account.
Just emailed nettalk asking for account and pin number so I can transfer the number to Tmobil. I transferred to nettalk in 2012 and been with them since, now its time for me to try something else because their service is more expensive now with all the fees added. Lets see how it goes. If they give me the run around, I will file a complain with the FCC.
June 29, 2018 at 11:31 pm
Good look. I filed an FCC complaint and still nothing got done
January 31, 2020 at 2:37 pm
Id like to clarify some details in this article that keep fear-mongering netTALK customers when it comes to porting out. It seems every time theres a port out issue with netTALK, users like to reference this article as proof that netTALK does not release phone numbers. This however could not be further from the truth. While the CS team has had issues in the past which has led to misinformation, the team has greatly improved over the years and netTALK does not block any outgoing ports in any way. It would be illegal by FCC standards to do so, so the accusation in this article doesn’t make much sense.
So what does happen?
As with many telecom companies, phone numbers are often routed through underlying carriers that work with the main telecom provider. When a port request gets made to port out and the user says their service provider is netTALK, the port request is then made incorrectly to netTALK or another carrier rather than the underlying carrier for that phone number. This is something you would think other telecom companies would learn to process correctly however they end up creating a bad port request and this causes the number to not be released.
The follow through is users then see this article and think “netTALK doesn’t release phone numbers” which is a complete lie. The examples shown here are all from 2016-2018 yet here in 2020 customers read this article and become enraged over an issue that doesn’t even exist.
I would just like to clarify the process for everyone in case someone else finds this article and is having a hard time porting out their number. Contact the netTALK team and they will assist in getting your number’s information so a proper port request can be made.