eFax j2 Global Lies about fax/phone number portability. Won't allow you to port number out. Local number not really local. Nationwide

My business partner, who's not technically inclined, signed up for both eVoice and eFax (j2 Global is the parent company) when we launched our business last year. They provided us with "Local" numbers and the service actually worked fairly well. However a few months in, we started getting complaints from locals, calling from their landlines, that we were actually a long distance number. Turns out so long as the number is in the same area code, j2 Global considers it local.

Second, we quickly exceeded the allotted faxing capacity of our eFax plan and our bill exploded. I wasn't privy to the details of the plan when she subscribed but it turns out you pay $16.95/month for up to 150 pages in & out. Beyond that, it's 10c/page. You can imagine how fast that adds up in a medical practice.

I eventually built up the knowledge to launch my own phone and fax server and we acquired new, actually local, numbers. I then attempted to port my eVoice/eFax numbers over to my new provider, only to discover that they DO NOT allow porting of numbers. Not even for an outrageous fee. No porting period. This is not what they told us at sign up time. They said numbers can be ported out. When we went to actually do it, however, we were told that only numbers we had ported in to their service could be ported out. It is simlpy lying by omission. Of course this is all buried deep in the service agreement that no one ever fully reads.

Unfortunately for us, our old fax and phone numbers are plastered throughout our professional network and getting everyone updated to the point where we can cancel the services is going to take many months.

I've never encountered a service provider that didn't allow porting. Perhaps I'm just naive but I feel like this is a huge slap in the face and completely unethical. j2 Global's entire business model is to prey on the uninformed buyer with slick marketing and then trap them into outrageously overpriced service. They ought to be ashamed of themselves but I'm sure they won't be.

To top it off, a customer service representative was completely rude to me when I complained and hung up on me.

Anyone looking for new VOIP service would be advised to shop around and find out if a number will be portable before signing up for anything.