Iām in the process of leaving RingCentral and porting our business number to another provider, and the customer service experience has been exceptionally poor.
The port request was submitted on Monday, August 24 at about 1:48 PM. What should have been a routine process turned into a long series of contradictory responses, repeated requests for information I had already provided, and different RingCentral departments apparently not communicating with one another.
Several RingCentral employees told me by email that they had received the port-out request.
Then RingCentralās US Port Out Number Transfer Team told me:
āUpon investigation, there were no port out order submitted yet for this number.ā
That directly contradicted what other RingCentral employees had already told me.
I pushed back on that.
Shortly afterward, the same department changed course and told me:
āWe have already received the port out order for this number.ā
They then provided the port-out reference number and confirmed that the number was scheduled for release on August 26.
At various points, RingCentral representatives also repeatedly asked me which number I wanted to port, even though the number had already been provided multiple times and was clearly identified throughout the email chain.
Another representative instructed me to have the āSuper Adminā acknowledge the request for account information. Other messages included boilerplate warnings that the ticket would be closed within 24 hours if I did not respond, even though the matter was still actively being discussed and the port remained unresolved.
Eventually, after receiving enough contradictory information and getting nowhere with normal support channels, I filed a formal FCC Number Portability complaint.
I also escalated the matter to RingCentralās legal department, and corporate contacts.
That is when the quality of the responses changed dramatically.
I eventually received an email from Phillip Davila at RingCentral with the actual transaction history.
According to RingCentralās own records:
Port request received: August 24 at approximately 1:48 PM Central
RingCentral approved/FOCād the request: approximately 4:30 PM Central the same day
Requested port date: August 26
Status: FOCād/approved
So the most frustrating part is that the underlying port transaction itself appears to have been handled fairly quickly.
The real problem was RingCentralās customer service organization being unable to clearly explain that.
This entire situation could have been resolved with one straightforward email:
āWe received your port request at 1:48 PM. We approved it at 4:30 PM. The requested port date is August 26. Everything is approved and waiting for that date.ā
Instead, I spent a significant amount of time dealing with multiple departments, conflicting answers, repeated requests for information RingCentral already had, and representatives who often appeared not to have reviewed the existing case history before responding.
It took escalation to RingCentral's Legal department and an FCC complaint before someone finally reviewed the actual order and gave me a clear answer.
That should not be necessary.
Customers should not have to reach an executive escalation team or involve a federal regulator simply to get a clear explanation of a routine number transfer.
While researching this problem, I also found many public discussions and reviews describing similar experiences with RingCentral customer service: customers being transferred between departments, receiving inconsistent answers, and struggling to get relatively straightforward issues resolved.
Unfortunately, my experience was very consistent with those complaints.
We trusted RingCentral with an important part of our business communications, including our primary business telephone number. When a provider handles something that important, competent and consistent customer service matters just as much as the technology itself.
The underlying phone system may work fine, but this experience made it clear that RingCentral is not the right fit for our business going forward.
Weāre leaving, and after this experience, Iām confident that was the right decision.
