Here, while I was filling out a form a for a local college, I encountered this little problem. After having typed in my phone number (which is in a valid format for a US phone number), I got the error show above. "Please enter a valid US phone number XXX-XXX-XXXX".
This is an example of a failure to be forgiving to your users; asking them to guess (because there was no indication of the format before I entered the numbers) what the proper format is annoying. Other valid formats include: (XXX) XXX-XXX or XXX.XXX.XXX or even XXX/XXX-XXX.
Instead of making the user fill in a field to fit your expectations, allow them instead to put in any format they desire; check for the 10 digits needed to be a valid phone number and then have the system reformat. That way, you're not annoying your user and you can still get consistency in your data (and it's under your control).
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