Vote for MAXroam in the Crunchies
MAXroam (run by blogger and telecoms-disruptor Pat Phelan) are up for the Crunchies, TechCrunch‘s annual voted awards.
I’ve been using MAXroam for about a year now, and it’s great. Saved me a huge wodge of cash when I was in the US for the Presidential Election earlier this month. Also enables me to have a US number that rings through to my Irish mobile where ever I am.
November 24th, 2008 at
17:50 in
Technology | tags: crunchies, foreign mobile number, maxroam, mobile phone, pat phelan, roaming, techcrunch, us election, vote
Thanks Keith
Sound man
A WORD OF WARNING – MAXROAM NUMBERS NOT FOR BUSINESS USE
About a year ago, I purchased a US Maxroam number with a really nice ring to it (please excuse the unintended pun) , the number is (area code) 929-0100.
I am based in Sweden but have a significant portion of the business in the U.S. Since it is a great advantage for US customers to call a local number rather than having to dial international to make contact, this number has been put on business cards and has been spread and communicated to many customers and other important business contacts. Having a cellphone with a local US number has been of particular value when I have been on longer business trips in the US.
Since we made such an investment in communicating the number, I even contacted Maxroam and asked them to verify that we would keep this number and got such assurances in writing from the customer services representative Sean Halpin.
But in November this number, without any previous warning, suddenly ceased to work and only after a fairly long time Maxroam got back to me and told me that the “number provider” had decided to take this particular number back and that there was nothing they could do about it. They also pointed to one of the clauses in their user contract with states that they have the right to replace subscriber numbers without any reason. One month after taking the number away from me I was presented with a random list of numbers, none of the with the slightest “ring” to it (see above).
I write this blog entry because I want to warn other users, particularly business users that the Maxroam subscriber numbers are only to be considered as temporary and can be replaced at any time without Maxroam having to give you any warning, reason or compensation for this.
To me, this haphazard approach to phone numbers is totally unacceptable and today I am considering legal action for the damage caused – I would also like to argue that today, the cellphone number is a very important asset and a part of the identity, both for individuals and for businesses.
Hi,
Unfortunately in this particular case your number was removed by our provider, and they have only recently confirmed the error was a manual one on their part. The numbers you get assigned with MAXRoam are permanent, but in some extreme cases they may need to be removed. We try our utmost to make sure that this does not happen, as it makes no sense for us to leave our customers unreachable and unable to use our service. However I know this is of small consolation to you right now, but we will try our best to replace you with a more adequate number.
Sean