Number porting to GV - my experience
mozof2:
Wow, this is all so very complicated. Not sure I would have went this route (purchasing an OBi, then transferring my home number of 25 years to google voice,) had I known there would be so much hassle involved. Thanks for this forum, though :)
Rick:
Quote from: mozof2 on March 22, 2013, 06:18:52 am
I have been on the phone with tracfone all morning. Both people I have talked with tell me that they (tracfone) will not allow you to use their phones with another provider. One representative even told me that tracfone does not "lock" their phones.
How in the world do you all make it look so easy?
In short - people do their research ahead of time. There are literally hundreds of posts on the web on how to port a number to Google Voice (which has nothing to do with an OBi, since an OBi is just the device you can use to get your GV number to ring on your house phone). Nearly all of them tell you to buy a cheap AT&T phone and port to it, then to GV. Some posts tell you that you can cheap out and buy (or get free) a T-Mobile SIM and put that into an UNLOCKED COMPATIBLE phone. Upon reading that, one would assume you need to gain an understanding of what that means and how you go about doing it. I don't recall ever reading that a Tracfone or a Net10 phone would work, but then again I never looked for those solutions. A Samsung Go Phone with ATT costs $14.99 from Best Buy. If it doesn't come with minutes, you might have to spend $10 or $15 to get a small number of minutes. Figure $30 in total.
You've spent the morning on the phone trying to get a free SIM card to work in a non-compatible phone. I'd suggest you either restart the process the easy way - or find a friend that has a T-Mobile or AT&T UNLOCKED phone that would allow you to borrow it for a day or two.
dircom:
This is similar to a hypothetical road trip
You live in Kansas and decide you want to drive to Canada. You just pick a random direction and starting driving south but eventually find yourself in Mexico, and say to yourself....
"I didn't realize this was going to be such a long hard trip."
mozof2:
thanks rick. Actually I have done lots of research, unfortunately just not prior to getting myself into this :)
Upon research I found lots of sites on how to unlock other cell phones.(http://www.ehow.com/how_7260780_unlock-tracfone-phones.html)
That would be my first step, since I own so many net 10 and tracfones.
Since, this does not seem to be working out, I have looked on ebay as well as local freecycle sites to look for a used T-mobile device. I have looked at every post in this forum, so I am not just asking a random, already answered question and wasting anyones time.
Thank YOU for taking the time to address my concerns. I will just purchase another phone. However, I have read conflicting reports on if AT&T pay as you go actually works with this whole process. Regardless, I will figure it out, just didn't think it would be quite so complicated.
Rick:
Quote from: mozof2 on March 22, 2013, 08:33:36 am
thanks rick. Actually I have done lots of research, unfortunately just not prior to getting myself into this :)
Upon research I found lots of sites on how to unlock other cell phones.(http://www.ehow.com/how_7260780_unlock-tracfone-phones.html)
That would be my first step, since I own so many net 10 and tracfones.
Since, this does not seem to be working out, I have looked on ebay as well as local freecycle sites to look for a used T-mobile device. I have looked at every post in this forum, so I am not just asking a random, already answered question and wasting anyones time.
Thank YOU for taking the time to address my concerns. I will just purchase another phone. However, I have read conflicting reports on if AT&T pay as you go actually works with this whole process. Regardless, I will figure it out, just didn't think it would be quite so complicated.
AT&T Go Phones will work fine, just don't use your T-Mobile SIM, use the Go Phone as is.
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