Small and meaningless victories over technology
Discussion
This is a bit of a cool starry bra, but I’m pleased it worked. I’m now interested to hear any other stories people might have of spending a lot of time and effort to achieve a small ‘win’, hence this thread.
I have a number with google voice. It’s a number that I’ve had for several years, with AT&T. It was previously used by a gentlemen by the name of Juan Valdez, as I discovered through the occasional call asking for him, or previous accounts at various places who found old entries on their systems.
Over time these decreased, until I rarely got spam on it. It did however have the CNAM entry of Juan Valdez associated with it, as I later discovered -following a corporate move, I ported the number to google voice, and still use it as my personal number, with google voice on my cell phone to make calls from that number. It comes up as ‘Juan Valdez’ on the recipients phone.
Two years on, I want to fix this. You can’t update the CNAM database through google voice directly. No way at all of changing it; there’s no customer service and google don’t have access to the CNAM database to update it. Google lock the number, so you have to unlock it if you want to port it, and there’s a delay before you can port in a number.
I work for a telecom re-seller, so we have a million dollar account with bandwidth, and google voice use bandwidth.
So, first step – raise a support ticket for bandwidth to update the CNAM database. Both my office phone number and the GV number are owned by bandwidth, so in theory, they should be able to take care of this. Nope. An exchange of emails basically shows that google have really limited what can be done (with their contract with bandwidth), and fixing the CNAM through the back door is out.
Step 2. Port the number out…then as soon as the port request is in, ask for the CNAM change to be made. Nada. Clearly google don’t want this played with at all.
Step 3, unlock the GV number, port out to bandwidth, amend the CNAM database. Try to port back…not permitted ‘we cannot port numbers from your carrier right now’. Well, crap. Should be allowed, but clearly they only want to take ‘proper’ cell numbers. At this point we have a couple of options, including porting the number out again to a different carrier, then back in again, but this is both a pain in the arse, and time consuming. Especially as google have an artificial delay of 24 hours before the port can start. We’ve got a forward on the number to my real cell number, so there’s no loss of service, but I’ll be missing any texts.
Step 4, pure brilliance – having ported the number out to bandwidth, made the change, and being unable to port back – we request bandwidth to do a snapback on the port and take the number back. There’s normally a $500 fee for this, buy hey, million dollar corporate account, we call up our rep and get them to cancel the charge. Two hours later, the number is back with google voice, on my account, and working with the correct CNAM.
This has taken an entire day, tied up the Technical Support Director and Billing Director of one company, along with three support staff, two accounts clerks, and a couple of fairly senior management of another, just to fix one very minor issue with one telephone number.
But I now have the right name when calling people.
As victories go, I’ll take it, but it took a lot more effort than it should have done for such a small accomplishment.
So, any other stories of idiotic determination in the face of technology?
I have a number with google voice. It’s a number that I’ve had for several years, with AT&T. It was previously used by a gentlemen by the name of Juan Valdez, as I discovered through the occasional call asking for him, or previous accounts at various places who found old entries on their systems.
Over time these decreased, until I rarely got spam on it. It did however have the CNAM entry of Juan Valdez associated with it, as I later discovered -following a corporate move, I ported the number to google voice, and still use it as my personal number, with google voice on my cell phone to make calls from that number. It comes up as ‘Juan Valdez’ on the recipients phone.
Two years on, I want to fix this. You can’t update the CNAM database through google voice directly. No way at all of changing it; there’s no customer service and google don’t have access to the CNAM database to update it. Google lock the number, so you have to unlock it if you want to port it, and there’s a delay before you can port in a number.
I work for a telecom re-seller, so we have a million dollar account with bandwidth, and google voice use bandwidth.
So, first step – raise a support ticket for bandwidth to update the CNAM database. Both my office phone number and the GV number are owned by bandwidth, so in theory, they should be able to take care of this. Nope. An exchange of emails basically shows that google have really limited what can be done (with their contract with bandwidth), and fixing the CNAM through the back door is out.
Step 2. Port the number out…then as soon as the port request is in, ask for the CNAM change to be made. Nada. Clearly google don’t want this played with at all.
Step 3, unlock the GV number, port out to bandwidth, amend the CNAM database. Try to port back…not permitted ‘we cannot port numbers from your carrier right now’. Well, crap. Should be allowed, but clearly they only want to take ‘proper’ cell numbers. At this point we have a couple of options, including porting the number out again to a different carrier, then back in again, but this is both a pain in the arse, and time consuming. Especially as google have an artificial delay of 24 hours before the port can start. We’ve got a forward on the number to my real cell number, so there’s no loss of service, but I’ll be missing any texts.
Step 4, pure brilliance – having ported the number out to bandwidth, made the change, and being unable to port back – we request bandwidth to do a snapback on the port and take the number back. There’s normally a $500 fee for this, buy hey, million dollar corporate account, we call up our rep and get them to cancel the charge. Two hours later, the number is back with google voice, on my account, and working with the correct CNAM.
This has taken an entire day, tied up the Technical Support Director and Billing Director of one company, along with three support staff, two accounts clerks, and a couple of fairly senior management of another, just to fix one very minor issue with one telephone number.
But I now have the right name when calling people.
As victories go, I’ll take it, but it took a lot more effort than it should have done for such a small accomplishment.
So, any other stories of idiotic determination in the face of technology?
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