Quote from: SteveInWA on January 26, 2016, 04:27:05 PMIn general: working, paid telephone numbers, located in rate centers within the 48 contiguous US States, from any of the major, traditional landline carriers (e.g. AT&T, Verizon, Frontier) or cable companies (Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, etc.), or any of the true mobile carriers (not the freebie VoIP hybrids) should be fine.
Except they aren't: Last week, I was unable to register a long term working paid telephone number located in a rate center within the contiguous US, from a major traditional landline carrier (AT&T). Moreover, GV initially appeared to accept this number and then did not say why the number wouldn't work, or even that it didn't work, only that "there has been a problem". This made it appear as if the problem was with the GV number I had selected, or was perhaps an internal error, as opposed to a rejection of the registering number.
Look, GV has been good to me and I appreciate the fact that it's free, but the implementation of this change has been botched: When Google rejects a registering number, they should explain what they are doing, not issue a screwy error message that hides the underlying problem and confuses the user. This change has not been made to Google's usual clear and well-documented programming standards, and it needs to be re-addressed.
And, Steve, you would be doing everyone a favor if you would reflect these concerns back to the people who can address them at Google. I would expect them, in addition to wanting to put the kibosh on GV abuse, to also want to address the perceived shortcomings in their product.