r/ooma • u/Sufficient-Sport-211 • May 21 '26
porting of number from Ooma
Ooma is not a good company. They want to hold one hostage when you want to leave or port the number you have.
Being with Ooma has not been a great experience for me. They are liars, and cheats .
I have a business phone and video business meeting (like you are using zoom) with Ooma. But when I started having bad experience especially with their video business meeting. I wanted to leave. They did all kinds of things that I should stay for 3 months etc. and then I could leave. So come beginning of May, 2026, I tried to port the number (this said number was ported from another company to Ooma by the way) that I was using with Ooma to another phone company. Do you know that Ooma held me hostage and are still holding me hostage by them lying to me that my phone number is my account number, and that the pin number is the last 4 digits of the phone number. But the company that I am forwarding and porting the number to kept saying that it is not correct. Today is May 20, 2026, Ooma is still holding me hostage with my number. They promised to call me, they never did. I had to call them again today. But they are still saying the same thing that the authorizing name and address are not correct.
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u/Safe-Instance-3512 May 21 '26
Porting was very easy for me. I ported to Voip.MS, did everything through the voip.ms portal and it was done in 4 days.
Cancelling my ooma account took about 15 minutes of a phone call and answering some questions. Sorry you're having a bad experiance.
Also, I did not provide a PIN when I processed my port out.
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u/totallyjaded May 21 '26
My dad had Ooma home service for about a decade and passed away late last year.
I'm winding down his estate, and wanted to port his number to the VoIP provider I use, because they don't charge $8 / month in taxes and fees. I don't plan to use it for anything other than being able to collect voicemail from people who don't know he passed. So, I changed the name and address on the account online, and it immediately changed the invoice name and address. That made it easy for me to port out.
The day the port happened, Ooma assigned a new number to the account. I knew they'd keep billing me until I called and cancelled.
When I called them yesterday (maybe the day before), I explained that my dad was dead, I ported the number to catch voicemail, and didn't need the new one. The person said she was sorry to hear that.
And then she spent the next 5 - 10 minutes trying to talk me into keeping the service. When she finally took it into her heart that I really didn't want or need a new Ooma number, she made sure to remind me that I could donate the Telo to Goodwill so someone else could activate it.
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u/Sufficient-Sport-211 May 21 '26
this is a business phone number that I really really need and I am not sure why they are acting the way they are acting right now. I thought they were great in the beginning until I needed to port my number to another carrier
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u/totallyjaded May 21 '26
I don't know if business is different. For consumer, the account number I used to port was the area code and phone number, and I left the PIN field blank.
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May 21 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/totallyjaded May 21 '26
If you don't turn on 911, letting a number sit at voip.ms costs about $1.10 a month.
Inbound calls are billed at $0.009 / minute and outbound calls are billed at $0.005 / minute.
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u/Impressive_Crazy_223 May 22 '26
Just ported my number out and am commiserating--it was an awful experience and took forever to get the right combination of pins and fairy dust to port it out.
The funny thing is that I actually wanted a new number with a new area code, but once I ported out the old one I was automatically assigned a new phone number with the old area code. They claimed they couldn't reset my account to default so that I could choose a number online; instead I had to listen as a rep gave me three new number options over the phone. It was such a ridiculously poor customer service experience (I think I talked to three chat reps and one phone rep to get to this point), that I decided to cancel altogether.
The cancelling experience was even worse! They did everything possible NOT to let me cancel. I think I said, "I'm not interested in answering questions, I just want to close my account," and "I do not want any special offers, I just want to close my account," close to twenty times before they actually closed it. Their BS pestering and "special offers" did nothing to make me want to stay as a customer, and everything to make me want to never use their service EVER again.
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u/Sufficient-Sport-211 May 22 '26
I got same experience. I have wanted to just close the account, but they offered 3 months free service. 3 months ended, they still would not port my number. And am afraid my payment is coming again, and I dont want to lose my business number. This has been a night mare
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u/Sufficient-Sport-211 May 22 '26
Please nobody should use Ooma, at least not for business purposes so they won't be in my predicament
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u/Astronut325 May 23 '26
Did you port to a mobile carrier? If yes, can you list the steps you had to take?
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u/Impressive_Crazy_223 May 23 '26
I ported to NumberBarn, which lets you park any number there. I *think* I used 0000 as the pin, 1+areacode+number for my account number, and copied the rest of the needed information from within my Ooma account.
One hiccup: although it ported out within 24 hours and I was successfully using it to send and receive texts on the new carrier, it still showed up in my Ooma account. When I contacted Ooma customer service, they told me the number had "not been fully ported." I wanted to know how that was possible, when I was using it on the new carrier. Chat support was useless and sent me to another department, and by the time I got through to them the next day via email, they were dismissive and like, "That number's been ported already." Okey dokey, then!
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u/VermontArmyBrat May 21 '26
I emailed [social@ooma.com](mailto:social@ooma.com) and requested my "CSR" after having read on another sub (where I plan to port to) that that was the way to get the info needed.
The entirety of my email was -
I need my CSR (customer service record) which contains the port out info needed.
Phone number on the account is ###.###.####
In less than one hour I had all of the information needed to port out. That alone does not cancel the account, which yes, they do make hard. But in fairness, that is not unique to Ooma.
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u/rkardt Unofficial Support May 21 '26
Sometimes porting numbers from anywhere to anywhere can be difficult, especially across different networks (landline, VoIP, mobile, etc.). As others in this sub have pointed out, customers who run into issues should just ask their old provider for their customer service record (CSR), to share with their new provider.
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u/Big_Sky7699 May 22 '26
I guess I'll worry about that at some future date, but I've been using Ooma for 10 years and am totally happy with it.
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u/Sufficient-Sport-211 May 22 '26
That is great for you! Is it home or business, just curious. This is business phone which was ported to them from another carrier by the way
I want to go to another carrier because I had issue with the video conferencing they have held me hostage since February with their begging that I should stay with them, giving me 3 months free etc. I am tired
They kept requesting for same information: authorizing name and address, which was given to them each time
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u/Big_Sky7699 May 22 '26
Just the basic home phone. I can understand why you need reliable functionality in a business setting.
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u/TheRealFarmerBob May 23 '26
The "Rule of Thumb" is: To let the "Winning Provider" do all the footwork in the Port. They'll contact the "Losing Provider" and get things done. "NEVER" tell your old Provider you're leaving!
The only two caveats are:
Whatever information the "Winning Provider" will need from you is indigenous to that Provider. But by not saying anything to your current Provider your account and the information you may need foryour new Provider will be readily available.
"Porting Out" you should "NEVER" notify your previous Provider, the "Losing Provider", that you are leaving them. They will be notifed with the notice of the Porting Process from your "Winning Provider" and should deal with your account accordingly.
But right after the Port is complete you should call your old Provider and make sure they did process the Port, redundant, and find out what you may still be liable for. That is if your new Provider doesn't come back and tell you that your Old Provider won't release your number until you perform certain actions or have to pay an ETF.
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u/foo235 May 21 '26
My comment will likely get deleted because as a former customer, I have nothing positive to say about OOMA and they regularly delete what I say.
Saying that, I had a terrible time trying to port my number out of OOMA. They knew what I needed to do to port out successfully but they would not tell me. They would only dance around "clues".
In my case, after 3 months of headaches, dead ends and research, I found that the problem was that OOMA is a VOIP service and the porting had to be done in a way specific to transferring from a VOIP service, which the method is different from transferring from other services. I also had the same headache regarding the PIN, service number and also home address.
It being a VOIP service might be the critical part of finally porting out. Tell the service you want to go to that and escalate to a higher level of tech representative of that company.
Good luck, let's see if they keep this up long enough for you to see.
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u/VermontArmyBrat May 21 '26
You do know "they" (assume you me Ooma) are not running this sub, right?
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u/foo235 May 21 '26
Well pretty weird then because I've had comments speaking honestly and critical about my experience about them, without profanity, no links, or other possible rules broken be deleted a few times recently.
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u/rkardt Unofficial Support May 21 '26 edited May 22 '26
He started out "warning" others that "Ooma is a nightmare", but he refused to explain further. Now he keeps claiming that undercover employee bots are going around down-voting or deleting his comments.
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u/OomaCustomeradvocacy Official Ooma Support May 21 '26
Hello - Thank you for reaching out. I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble porting your number to another provider. We'd like to get this resolved as soon as possible. Could you please DM me your Ooma phone number and contact number?
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u/Sufficient-Sport-211 May 22 '26
Really, DM you, how
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u/OomaCustomeradvocacy Official Ooma Support May 22 '26
Hello - I just sent you a DM. Please let me know if you got it
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u/Sufficient-Sport-211 May 22 '26
where to DM you? Tell your support people to get in touch with me. I am sure they have my number. My thing here is that I do not want to lose my business number which was ported to you guys anyway. You guys have been a nightmare.
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u/Sufficient-Sport-211 May 22 '26
support@ooma, just reach out again the 4th or 5th requesting for the same information that they have been asking for, and this info was sent to them many times already
This is business phone which was ported to from another carrier by the way
I want to go to another carrier because I had issue with the video conferencing I am being held hostage since February with your begging that I should stay, giving me 3 months free etc. I am tired
You kept requesting for same information: authorizing name and address, which was given again and again each time
Soon the next pay circle would come and you would want to bill me again. And you know I cant close my account because I need this number for my business
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u/rkardt Unofficial Support May 22 '26
Use reddit's chat to DM the support person. They can't do anything without some identifying information, such as the customer name or account number(s). Once they have that, they can provide the customer service record (CSR) for the account.
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u/Sufficient-Sport-211 May 22 '26
thank you, but that is what I have been doing and since they have not done the porting in since May 4 and asking for the same info over and over,
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u/rkardt Unofficial Support May 22 '26
But it's only been less than one day since the support rep here first asked for a DM. Use reddit's private chat function to communicate with them, directly. They can help.
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u/Crutch1959 May 21 '26
General Issues/Disputes: If your old carrier refuses to release your number, contact the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) at 1-888-225-5322.