Re: Phone Outage Costs Fort Wayne Store to Lose Business

TELECOM Digest Editor noted as a preface to a message from Lisa Minter:

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The gentleman who passed this item > along to Lisa and the Digest said, in effect, "here is another > example of Vonage screwing up." I dunno, it seems more like Verizon > screwing up to me. Vonage said to Verizon, or (rather to Choice One > Communications, which owns U.S. Exchange) to disconnect _ONE_ line.

I'm not sure Verizon was at fault here, but I would agree it certainly isn't clear that Vonage was at fault either. Accidental disconnects have always happened.

The sharing of phone numbers and allowance of multiple carriers does indeed increase the risk of confusion and service interupts.

If I order a new car but tell the dealer to have someone else install the audio system (as many motorists do), I've increased the chance of confusion between the car dealer and audio dealer and risk of finger pointing.

I do want to share the experience of friend who repeatedly switched his phone service but had no disconnect troubles:

He tried a different company that advertised lower rates, but got upset when they added on a bunch of fees, so he switched back to Verizon. Then he decided the other was still a better deal so he switched back. Then he moved and wanted the same number serving both locations until things settled. The other company wouldn't do that, but Verizon did, so he switched back to Verizon, and had service in two locations under the same number for a month. I think he's still wtih Verizon. All of this happened in a short time without problem.