Wireless Portability is a Flaming JOKE
Friday at approximately 7PM I went to the T Mobile store at Dulles Town Center and asked for my Sprint PCS number to be moved to my Sony Ericsson P900 phone on T Mobile. They said that was no problem, and it might take maybe 2 days or so to move the number, but most were up within 24 hours. That seemed a long time, but I said ok and the process began, or so I thought.
By Sunday nothing had happened, and calling the number still gave me my Sprint PCS voice mail. So I sent off email to T Mobile and to Sprint. Sprint said they never received any requests to move the number. T Mobile said they were confused, and did I really even send anything in? Needless to say, I was not very pleased and went zipping off to the FCC website about portability, which said the wireless industry had agreed to a 2 1/2 hour number switch, wireless to wireless. Armed with this information, off to T Mobile customer service hell.
Fifteen minutes on hold yielded a very confused person who had my paperwork saying there was indeed a request there, but I had to talk to another department that would make sure it went through TODAY. I thought this might be peachy keen. 20 more minutes on hold and the person I spoke to next said it would be 7 business days. Well that wasn't 2 1/2 hours by any stretch of the imagination. But maybe I could talk to someone in yet another department. ANOTHER 30 minutes on hold and I got someone who said that a "date error" stopped the process and apparently, nobody had done anything since then and it might indeed now be 7 business days. However, so that I would not be without service totally, I got a temporary activation and number so that I could at least use the damn phone pending this switch.
Moral of the story - don't expect anyone to keep their word.