Month: June 2024

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Porting gone wrong!

Well that was an EPIC Fail!

I decided that I wanted to get a cheaper cellular plan. I’ve been with T-mobile for years and well, recently there have been some issues that have put me off on them.

$80 a month seems excessive even though I have multiple devices.

I’m also less and less impressed with their customer service.

Anyway, I found a plan, that was probably going to be workable and signed up. After an hour or two I got a notification on my phone that a new esim was available for installation.

That’s where it all went to hell!

I wanted to keep my phone number so there was supposed to be what they call a port of the old number to the new carrier. After a really long time I got a message saying that the esim activation failed.

Immediately after that I got a message from TMobile saying that there had been changes to my account and it appears that they deleted my phone number from their systems and in the process they took away my access to the account that still has my watch and iPad connected. 

Oh and my phone can no longer make or receive phone calls. Since this is my only voice line it leaves me in an interesting situation. I can’t call customer service to ask for them to help me out.

Don’t laugh! IT’S NOT FUNNY!!!!

(Okay, yes it is kind of funny.)

So then I write the new carrier an email and explain that something has gone horribly wrong. I’m still waiting for an answer.

I’ve also found that I cannot log into the new carrier’s web site as I was told I could do. So something else has gone terribly awry. 

I will get all of this sorted out eventually.

What remains to be seen is will I still have my phone number or will there be a new number?

There is a temptation to just not have a phone number at all. I can still dial 911 from my phone. Is that all I need?

I’ve been looking into getting phone service of any kind so that I can call the new carrier. I thought, “Hey maybe I can just purchase a new plan with a new number from them, then use that number to call custom support to clear up the first problem, then cancel the plan with the new number. 

I was thinking that would make everything contained in just one phone call. 

They won’t allow me to do that. Probably something to do with the pending stuff that isn’t working in their system. 

I’m thinking that I’m going to have to buy a burner phone or at least a burner esim to get voice communications up & running again.

Thus far I’m only mildly annoyed and / or amused.

This is why I was a good Software QA person. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong on my stuff.

I wonder if VOIP is an option. I’ve got 1GB fiber. Ughhh Google Voice! I hate Google.

Anyway, I thought I’d send up this flare to let anyone who might have been trying to call me the 1 or 2 folks that is, That I’m alive and well and just having some technical difficulties.

Well it only took 4.5 hours!

I now have my phone working again and My Apple Watch is online too. Oh and I’m able to log into the customer portal.

I’m now using the new carrier to kill the rest of Tmobile

Then I need to figure out how to wipe the google talk account. But I’m wondering if it might not be a good idea to keep it just in the event that I end up in a similar situation in the future.

The devil is in the details isn’t it?

Voice mail
SMS
MMS

I haven’t had to set up these things for years! I mean decades. Migrating phones on the same carrier is pretty dang seamless in the Apple Ecosystem. So easy that you can forget the little things completely.

Since I haven’t switched carriers in a very very long time, I’d forgotten about all the settings that I’d customized. 

It’s taken me a while and I hope that my voicemail is set up correctly now! Boy, the setup is very different than I remember.