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What Has Number Portability Done For You?
Coldeagle writes "Number portability has been around for a few days now, I was wondering; have any of you fellow Slashdot readers switched carriers? How was your experience, and have you seen any price warring since it went into place?" Or is number portability so far more hype than happenin'?
...and it seems like the process is relatively painless.
One tip for those who are thinking of trying to port their number. Do *not* do the process online. I ordered my new phone that way and the number ported two days before my new phone arrived. As soon as your number ports, your old phone stops working for anything besides 911 calls. Needless to say, I was without a cell phone for two days while I waited for my new phone to arrive.
Other than that, everything went pretty smoothly.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
With my current carrier, I called them and told them I was thinking about switching and they chopped $15 off my bill if I would stay.
It can't hurt to ask!
..is that Sprint is charging me $2.20/month for it.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
I am with Sprint. Before last month or so I planned to switch to ATT; the total cost and cost per minute would have been less. But then Sprint brought out the big guns and allowed nights to start at 7pm. They officially say that you have to upgrade (i.e. pay more per month) and sign a two year contract to get the new nights time if you are an existing customer. I said I wouldn't accept that and I wanted the new time schedules or they would receive a number portability request from ATT *today*. Since I've been there for 5 years now already, they were happy to accommodate me.
sig
The law says that phone companies have to allow for number portability. The law does NOT say the phone companies have to make it easy for the consumer.
For instance, when switching from AT&T to Verizon (while keeping your number the same) in my area you are forced to carry both your old phone and your new phone until May 2004. You place calls on your new phone but you still receive them on your old phone.
Call me crazy but I'll wait a good year or so until it's at least a bit more customer friendly.
The only thing keeping them from making it worse is that no one wants to get the worst press. So it appears they're going to drag their feet and make things as difficult as possible for as long as possible, and they're going to do it just up to the point that they can't get slammed any worse than anyone else in the industry. Like some inverse version of competition.
Q-"How poorly can we comply?"
A-"What are our competitors getting away with?"
Operator, give me the number for 911!
I find myself thankful every day that the number "1" is still the number "1" no matter where I go.
Thank god for number portability.
"This law is going to shake up the industry. You may even see one or two wireless carriers going under as a result. They've been predicting for years that the 5 major carriers would eventually boil down to 3. This may be the catalyst to make that happen."
Until consumer rights laws which:
- Disallow SIM Locking on cellphones
- Disallow lengthly contracts
- Disallow Price fixing on handsets
- Disallow Price fixing on roaming
are passed, the cellular providers will all win. The above bulleted items are only allowed in north america, and only because of hard lobbying by the providers.
In any other continent, you go to a cell phone store and buy phones OUTRIGHT, no plans to go with it, no contracts, you simply BUY the phone (at usually half of US MSRP price), then you call up a carrier of your choice start service. They give you a SIM and you stick it in your phone, boom, instantly it works. if you don't like their service after a few months, switch providers. Swap your your SIM card with a prepaid card from another provider, go to another country? Buy a prepaid SIM from that country and pay 5-10c/minute insted of 2$/minute.
Around here, cellular providers lock the handsets to their SIM card so you cannot take a handset from one provider to another, even if they use the same exact handset. Don't be fooled by some salesperson's claims that "the radio is 'optimally tuned' to our frequency" because that is just a load of BS. if you are using a GSM phone in the United States, consumer rights laws basically say you will get assraped by your provider. If you go overseas with a GSM Phone purchased within the United States, you can be sure that it will be useless because of the SIM card lock in place on the phone. You will be required to pay $2+/minute roaming charges for usage on your US Provider's sim card.
Number portability isn't gonna do anything except give cellular providers more revenue (they add 2$ to everyone's bill, on top of all other fees and taxes already being charged) and more customers. People won't be switching cellular providers fast, they will simply stay loyal to the providers that have been assraping them for their entire cellular lives.
This whole number portability has been a joke, whoever wrote the law must be in the pockets of the big 5. Free revenue, with negligable costs added in database management. there is NO network upgrade requirement. They don't have to go to each tower and hang new transmitters. they simply add a few tables to a fucking database sitting in their corporate bunker. and it costs them $2/month to do that per customer? perpetually? until the end of time? Just wait until they pass laws which disallow SIM locking, is that gonna cost us another $2/month regulatory hidden fee?
note: this is a rant, but facts presented are true.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
On Saturday, November 22nd I went into a T-Mobile store and bought a new phone and activated service with a new phone number with an intent to port my old number over from AT&T Wireless Services on Monday the 24th.
On Monday I called T-Mobile to begin the porting process. It took a little over an hour on the phone and at the end of the call they said it would take 3 to 24 hours before the change would be effective.
24 hours later, nothing had happened yet. I called T-Mobile back and was told that the request had been rejected by AT&T because my name on the request didn't match my name in their system. I grabbed my AT&T bill and reconfirmed with T-Mobile that it had, in fact, been entered correctly the first time. They resubmitted the request and said to check back in another 5 hours if it hadn't gone through.
5 hours later I called back to learn that AT&T rejected the request again saying that the ZIP code didn't match. We double-checked and it was exactly as it was listed on the AT&T bill. They said to check back again on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, more of the same. We went through again to make sure that all of the information in the request was exactly as it was listed on my AT&T bill and resubmitted the request. They said that if it failed this time, I was stuck until Friday since they wouldn't be open on Thanksgiving.
On Friday, nothing had changed. I called T-Mobile again and was told that AT&T was having serious computer problems and that all requests were being rejected. They said there was nothing else they could do right now and that there was no ETA. We were all at the mercy of AT&T and were simply stuck.
I checked again on Saturday and Sunday and got the same answer both times.
On Sunday I sent an eMail to AT&T Wireless Services telling them that there was no excuse for their incompetence given the fact that they've had over seven years since the original FCC mandate to prepare for this.
On Monday I called T-Mobile again and talked to someone about the situation... specifically about my concerns regarding double-billing since I have an active T-Mobile account right now and I have to keep my AT&T service active until the conversion is complete or I forfeit my number. The T-Mobile rep was very sympathetic and said that she would take care of it by making sure I am not charged for my T-Mobile service until after the portability request is successfully completed.
It is now Wednesday. 9 days since I submitted my port request. Three days since I sent an eMail to AT&T Customer Care. I still haven't heard anything from AT&T regarding the eMail I sent them on Sunday except for an automated form letter stating that they received my eMail and would respond as quickly as possible. I'm not holding my breath.
I honestly believe that their problems may not be as severe as they claim and that this is, at least partially, an attempt by them to get their existing customers to "give up" on switching to another carrier. Many people who have requested number ports away from AT&T have done just that... after become so frustrated with the delays and excuses they've decided to just stick with AT&T rather than suffer through continued aggravation. If nothing else, AT&T is delaying the departure of dissatisfied customers, forcing them to continue paying for poor quality service until the alleged computer problems are corrected. In fact, a number of customers have reported in various Internet message boards (including AT&T's own support forums) incidents where they have called in to simply cancel their service and were told by the AT&T rep that they couldn't do it at that time because the system was down and that they would need to call back later.
I, personally, intend to continue my quest to move my number to T-Mobile if for no other reason than to make it clear to AT&T that they're not just losing a customer, they're losing a customer to one of their competitors. Number portab