telnyx.com

I needed to order a local Italian phone number. What should have been a straightforward process turn

I needed to order a local Italian phone number. What should have been a straightforward process turned into a week-long nightmare thanks to Telnyx's utterly incompetent support system.

No human support, just bots.

First of all, there is no real human support. You can't talk to anyone. Everything goes through an AI chatbot that gives generic, scripted answers. When the bot can't help (which is most of the time), your ticket gets "escalated" — meaning it goes into a black hole where you wait 24-48 hours for a one-line email response. There's no live chat with a real person, no phone support, nothing. For a telecom infrastructure provider, this is embarrassing.

Their own team gave me wrong instructions.

Here's what happened:

1. I filled out all 16 compliance fields for Italy, uploaded every required document (proof of address, ID copy, company registration certificate), and tried to place the order via API. Got error 10027 with zero useful explanation.

2. I contacted support. Two days later, their agent told me to make specific changes: put my personal tax code (codice fiscale — VNZ****, 16 alphanumeric characters) in the "Company Tax Code" field, and remove the "IT" prefix from the VAT number. I did exactly as instructed.

3. Orders still failed. I reported back. The agent casually told me "just place the order, requirements are reviewed after", completely contradicting the error I was getting.

4. I tried again. Both orders failed immediately. Another day passes. The agent finally responds and tells me the orders failed because... the Company Tax Code has 16 characters instead of 11 digits. THE EXACT VALUE THEY TOLD ME TO PUT THERE.

So let me get this straight: your own support agent explicitly instructed me to enter the wrong value in the wrong field, I wasted days waiting for 1-line responses, and now you're telling me to undo what YOU told me to do?

Summary:
- Support is bot-only with no way to reach a real human
- When you finally get a human response, it takes 24-48 hours
- The instructions they give you are flat-out wrong
- Then they blame YOU for following their own wrong instructions
- Error messages are completely useless — no actionable information
- Their compliance system is so confusing that even their own team doesn't understand which values go in which fields

This is beyond incompetent — it's a complete waste of your customers' time. I'm actively evaluating alternative providers because building a product on infrastructure backed by this level of "support" is simply not viable.

Avoid if you need Italian numbers. Or frankly, if you value your time at all.

Date of experience: Mar 13, 2026