If you’re absolutely sure that phone number is set to required in your PayPal account then it would have to be getting included. We don’t have any other reports of this not working, and that’s something that PayPal’s system handles with that option enabled, of course.
Do you have logging enabled in the Express Checkout settings? If so, it would be good for us to get a look at the log to verify whether or not the phone is being returned as expected. If you want to check for yourself you can do a find in the log file for “GetExpressCheckoutDetails Response”. In the data below that you’ll see all of the info about the buyer, and you should see a phone number included within that. This would verify that the phone number is being returned by PayPal.
So then if that’s the case, but you still aren’t seeing a phone number included in the Woo order details, we can look into that. As I mentioned, though, we are not getting any other reports of this.
Please check that log and let me know and then we can work from there. Thanks!