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Comment by richardjordan | Hacker News Reader

I moved to Verizon on my birthday on the 8th of this month. Finally ditched T-mobile to get an iPhone. I have been using Google Voice as my sole number for years now. It's very important to me. I even explained this when buying. Turns out that unannounced Verizon has started blocking Google Voice verifying your number do I cannot use it. At first I thought it was a blip but lots of Googling has discovered this appears to be a change as it's hitting everyone. If anyone can show me a fix and where I'm wrong I will happily stand corrected. But to this date every attempt to get my phone added to Google Voice has failed and blocking appears to be going on. I would not be surprised if existing iPhone Google Voice users are fine if they've already verified their number. I have no idea.

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> Turns out that unannounced Verizon has started blocking Google Voice verifying your number do I cannot use it.

How exactly do they block it? According to the verification instructions[0], Google Voice calls you and asks you to enter a verification code. How can this be blocked? It would be like any other DTMF service. Also, isn't it illegal to block this?

0: http://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...

Oh, I know how it works :-) ...it just doesn't any more. I don't know of any legality blocking such a call but I can assure you no matter how many times I trigger the verification process I get nothing but an error message and no call or text from Mr Google.

I successfully verified my new Verizon number last month

Right. So I understand. People seem to have started reporting issues since early December. I know you COULD do it on Verizon ...I wouldn't have considered them otherwise. It's just disappointing that they appear to have made a recent decision to change that.

Comments like yours kept me trying.... so, for completeness after a month of trying it's now verifying - so maybe it was a blip, maybe they tried something and thought better of it.

I don't know about Verizon but I was unable to verify myself to craigslist using my Google Voice number earlier this year.

A lot of Google Voice numbers appear in a number pool marked for prepaid cellphone plans and a number of services will blacklist such numbers for use for identity verification. Sad but true.

Um, this makes complete sense. The point of number verification in this case is that phone numbers are expensive to acquire so banning has real consequence. GV and prepaid numbers are cheap to acquire so they're no use for verification.

You still have your cell phone provider's number and you should just use that to verify.

My cell phone provider is Virgin Mobile, so still screwed on that front.

While there is a certain logic to this system historically, I don't think it makes a lot of sense anymore as prepaid cellular is quite popular and getting more and more so.

As I've commented elsewhere today, I thought I should return and make the note - to be fair all around - that today, finally after trying since early December (so for at least three weeks), it verified. I don't know whether this means Verizon had a problem, or a policy they tried and backed off from... but it will work now :-) ...well, today at least.

On one hand I want to try. On the other hand I'll be furious if VZW actively attempts to keep me from having that functionality.

Why would they care?

I've been trying to fathom that myself. It could be Apple pressure; it could be their intention to bring out a competing service; it could be they feel this competes with an existing service. It may just be a way to push more people into porting numbers in some misguided attempt at raising the hassle factor of leaving Vz in the future. Whatever the reasoning I think it's short sighted and I find it very frustrating.

For completeness after a month of trying it's now verifying - so maybe it was a blip, maybe they tried something and thought better of it.

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