With moving from Maryland to the District coming up in a couple of weeks I've been looking for a way to save my office phone number, which I've had for over 10 years. People around the world have it and I'm loathe to change it just because I'm moving into a new area code. So I thought I'd see about porting it to my cellular handset. With the advent of local number portability you'd think that was a good solution, right? And that it'd be relatively simple? You'd be wrong on both counts.
First, the run around: I looked on Cingular's Web site to find out what to do about porting. This page says:
Important Notice: Only wireless numbers can be transferred online. To transfer a landline (wireline) number, please visit one of our retail locations for assistance. Learn more about wireline transfers.So I visit the nearest store where, after waiting for 15 minutes, a
So home I went and placed the call. Do I even have to tell you that after wading though the menu maze the fellow on the other end apologized for the retail idiot's salesman's mistake? Of course it has to be done through the retail store.
Of course I wasn't going to go back to the same store, so I called another Cingular store and got an intelligent, knowledgeable and friendly salesman. I explained what I wanted to do and was pleasantly surprised when he said, "Sure, we can handle that. Just bring in a copy of your landline bill and we'll start the process." Great, thinks I. "About how long will the process take?" I ask. "Well the paperwork only takes a couple of minutes, but the actual transfer takes as long as 3 weeks or so." Then comes The Big Problem: "But you won't be able to use either number until the port is complete." Whoops.
"So let me make sure I understand," I said. "I won't be able to use my landline or my cellular phone until the port is complete? Neither one will work for either inbound or outbound calls for as long as 3 weeks?" Some solution this is, I'm thinking. "Yep, that's basically it. The local phone companies are just real slow about releasing numbers to the cellular companies," says the Cingular guy.
So it would appear that I can get the number ported but it will take weeks, during which time I'll have neither a working landline or working cell phone. Might as well change the damn office number and be done with it. I'm reasonably sure that this is not what the FCC had in mind when they forced the industry into portability.
But Gigi, who has Verizon as her cellular carrier, had been exploring porting our home number, which we've had for a long time, to her cell phone. "Sure, it's simple and quick to port a Verizon land line to a Verizon cell number," the Verizon cellular rep told her on the phone the other day. "Just bring a copy of your landline bill to any Verizon store and we'll make the switch right then and there. Should take about 30 minutes." So it turns out that Verizon will be quick about transferring a landline to a cellular account as long as it's their own cellular account. No wonder people hate the phone companies.
I called Cingular back and asked how long it would take to port a Verizon cellular number to my Cingular account. "It usually takes about 20 minutes, but I've seen it take as long as an day," said the same helpful Cingular guy I spoke to earlier.
So here's what I'm going to do: port my office landline to a new Verizon cellular account, then port that number to Cingular. I'll have to pay the Verizon Wireless startup fee, plus buy a cheap CDMA handset, plus pay the Verizon early termination fee and I'll probably have to pay Cingular to change my cellular number, since they're not getting a net add. But unless I hit a snag I'll get what I want without being out of touch. It'll end up costing me about $250 for something that is supposed to be free, but it will work (at least it works on paper).
I'm tempted to rant about Verizon for apparently doing their best to make it so difficult to port numbers off their network, but I'm not sure that BellSouth and SBC don't use similar tactics when this happens in their wireline territories.
Posted by Jack at February 26, 2005 04:50 PM | TrackBack