[NA] VOIP (business) phones = zero slamming protection

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Dave Taylor
A colleague complained this week that his number was slammed and revenue has dropped sharply.
It is being looked into but sounds like there was no protections, anyone could have ported his number over to a different company and effectively stolen the phone number. (Not quite slamming as it may not have been a phone company; but I have not heard the correct term yet. Phone number theft maybe?)
So I called my voip provider and explained my concern with this example. After explaining what slamming was, the csr reassured, "no sir, your number could not be ported without your permission".
I asked what I would need, to call in and port my number over to a different provider and the csr said "you would need your service address and your account number" I said, well everyone and their dog (literally) has my address. I am not sure what my account number is though. I was told "It Is Your Phone Number"!!! Emphasis mine.
I said, "What? Everyone has my address, its on all my paperwork and everyone has my phone number, I give it out every day and its posted publicly - it would not take a scholar to figure this out and port my number w/o my permission" (bordering on apoplexy by now)
I was told, no one has ever slammed or stolen a voip phone number at (this company).
I have escalated the ticket.
 
Who is your carrier? That sounds like a good reason to change. I have worked with Verizon, XO and AT&T pretty extensively over the last 4 or 5 years and port requests are a lot more involved and often (always) take weeks to complete (sometimes months in the case of Verizon).
 
I've also never seen a carrier handle a port request on a simple knowledge of address and account number. All of mine require more documentation to cover their butts.
 
They can't port out until they get a request from the receiving carrier and authorization (this is usually a PIN, but may be something else to positively identify you). The names, addresses, and PIN must match to accomplish a port out.
 
The names, addresses, and PIN must match to accomplish a port out

This was my experience when I recently moved from Charter/Spectrum to Nextiva.
 
The only thing these two companies need to port a number is company name, address, and phone number. No details beyond that, no password, no EIN, no last 4 of a SSN.
 
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