Number porting to GV - my experience

[Rick]

After one week, still didn't port to Tmobile. Called Tmobile they said that they porting system currently not work, needs about 1-5 days to fix it. My landline not working, dsl works.

I suspect your issue is with T-Mobile and their current porting system problems.  You should pursue this with them.  All the porting info that users of OBiTalk have is already posted on these forums - how to check your number, etc.  It sounds like the database that Google is looking at is not showing things correctly.

[truelies]

After one week, still didn't port to Tmobile. Called Tmobile they said that they porting system currently not work, needs about 1-5 days to fix it. My landline not working, dsl works.

I suspect your issue is with T-Mobile and their current porting system problems.  You should pursue this with them.  All the porting info that users of OBiTalk have is already posted on these forums - how to check your number, etc.  It sounds like the database that Google is looking at is not showing things correctly.

Tmobile already ported my number to them, but GV can port to them because of area not support problem.

[jimates]

It is quite possible that a number can remain showing as a land line even after porting to a mobile provider. Perhaps google is still seeing it as a land line.

I don't know how to remedy it unless T-mobile can do something since they now own the number.

[truelies]

It is quite possible that a number can remain showing as a land line even after porting to a mobile provider. Perhaps google is still seeing it as a land line.

I don't know how to remedy it unless T-mobile can do something since they now own the number.

I am sure this not the case since it shows 'area' error instead of 'carrier' error.

[jimates]

It is quite possible that a number can remain showing as a land line even after porting to a mobile provider. Perhaps google is still seeing it as a land line.

I don't know how to remedy it unless T-mobile can do something since they now own the number.

I am sure this not the case since it shows 'area' error instead of 'carrier' error.

That is the generic error message.
You can put your number in here and see if it is already registered with T-Mobile
https://www.wirelessamberalerts.org/index.jsp.

[truelies]

Yes. It shows 'Wireless Telephone Number: 281-778-****'

Carrier: T-Mobile USA, Inc.

[CoalMinerRetired]

Is that correct?

Not exactly. When you do "2." to tmobile, it automatically does "4."  You will not have both the ported number to TMob and a landline number. Well, you will have both for about 24 or 48 hours, but that is temporary until your landline provider catches up with the automatic cancellation request from the port.

Correct, but it can't hurt to contact your landline provider and make sure that they have completely cancelled your account billing at stage 4 of the above list.  Call me distrusting, but I could easily see 'certain' landline providers continuing to bill for some service or another -- even after the number has been ported away.

pc44

I'll begrudgingly agree here.  I've successfully ported two landlines to Tmob then to GV. Both worked without any problems. However I was suspicious about the 'is everything really cancelled' part.

In both my cases it was, and the confirmation I used was to login to the online 'account access' for each cancelled line.

A few days after the cancellation the online account showed nothing different, a few more days it showed a credit (a few $$ the phone company owed me), another few days it couldn't find the current bill (I took this to mean the account was slowly disappearing from their computer systems). And again after a few more days I got an email (had previously signed up to 'get an email notification when a new bill is available') saying new bill is available with -$12.xx due. Which was confusing, the minus didn't register as a credit at first. Nor was it clear in the online bill. So I waited a few more days and a paper bill showed up, still showed -$12.xx as amount due, it did show 'do not pay', and had in small print "final bill". Then a week or so later got a paper check for $12.xx from the phone company, which was even more mysterious on the outside, because it showed 'treasury department' as the return address.  

On the second line, it was more or less the same, except I owed the ILEC about the same amount as they owed me for the cancellation from the first line, about $14.00.  It seems that for my local phone company some categories of monthly charges are billed afterwards (metered usage) and some are billed forward (some govt fees and taxes, and basic service?).  For the first cancellation, I did the move to TMob midway into the billing cycle, for the second one I did the move to Tmob one day after the billing cycle closed (timing was purely by accident, TMob took from a Friday night to following Tuesday evening to port).

EDIT: I did the porting/cancellation of the second line about three weeks after doing the first line.

I've got one more addition to add to the payment/refund thing with the cancellation of my second line.

Just this week I got another paper bill for the cancelled second line, and on the same day also received a refund check in the mail from ILEC.  This time they paid me $9 and some change.

Why they earlier had me pay $14 was not explained, other than some line items on the bill showed a negative amount, the total off which was $9 + change. This latest bill showed "Revised Final Bill".  Why they could not have figured this out when they send the earlier 'final bill' and reduced the amount owed by  $9 + change is a big mystery. And it goes to show that no one really knows what all these vague and ambiguous sounding charges on traditional land-line phone bill carriers really are or how they are billed or metered. Gross Receipts Tax Surcharge, Carrier Cost Recovery Fee, Subscriber Line and Access Recovery Fee, and on and on.

Only in the land of regulated telephone providers much too cozy with state and federal regulators do you get surcharges on taxes paid, and purposely vague line items on bills in small, unassuming amounts, purpose-built to be insignificant so that consumers don't question the charges each month.  If the ILECs devoted as much time and effort to product and technical innovations as they do to "lawyering up" on the management of regulations and lobbying the regulators, then the ILECs would be where the VoIP providers are today.

[prflat]

Upon getting Error Code:  Your phone number's carrier has rejected your port request. Please contact your carrier to proceed with this port

I quickly did like it asks, and contacted T-Mobile.  After spending many hours (now days) on the phone with every imaginable department on every Continent.  Double checking, re-entering, quadrillion checking, cancelling and re-porting many times... they conclude that it is something on the Google Voice side.  They say everything is perfect and ready to port.  So wadda I do?  Any suggestions? 

Thanks in advance!
- prflat

[jimates]

http://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1065667&topic=1708418&ctx=topic

Try the google voice help forum
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/voice/porting-a-number-to-google-voice

[jimates]

I saw this posted on the google help forum

How to get the billing account PIN for a TMOBILE prepaid account

1. Use your phone to call 611.
2. Say manage my account.
3. Create bill account PIN.
4. Enter 4 digit for your PIN.
5. Verify your PIN

[prflat]

I saw this posted on the google help forum

How to get the billing account PIN for a TMOBILE prepaid account

1. Use your phone to call 611.
2. Say manage my account.
3. Create bill account PIN.
4. Enter 4 digit for your PIN.
5. Verify your PIN

Thanks Jimates,  I already had a PIN setup before I tried to port the first time.  Since then, among many many many other things I have tried, I had reset and confirmed the pin more than once.   Not sure what else to try at this point.  Maybe re-charging the T-Mobile account with the min $ amount?

[prflat]

[QBZappy]

prflat,

They may not allow you to port until you have settled their account in full.

[prflat]

prflat,

They may not allow you to port until you have settled their account in full.

Yea, I just keep trying again every day, but I'm about to run out of pre-paid minutes.  Like I said, I spent hours and hours on the phone with many departments in TM, but mostly talking to their porting department specialists.  Everyone (including the billing folks) said that everything was in "perfect order" on my TM account and there is no reason that they could see why this would happening.  We even re entered every bit of information on the account, even the unnecessary stuff.  No go... they where convinced it was something on GV side.  On the GV side I have even cancelled and re-initiated the port several times... still no go...  but on the bright side,  I LOVE our OBi, great product!!!

Any Ideas?

[CoalMinerRetired]

If it really is an issue on the GV side, you'll have better luck posting on the GV forums listed above. Note that GV does not have a customer service phone number where you can talk to a live person, the only way to interact with them in via the forums.

[prflat]

If it really is an issue on the GV side, you'll have better luck posting on the GV forums listed above. Note that GV does not have a customer service phone number where you can talk to a live person, the only way to interact with them in via the forums.

Yea, I posted it there first... no replies, so I figured maybe someone else here had seen a similar issue/fix.

[prflat]

FIXED... WhooHoo!!! 

The problem, as I suspected, was on the T-Mobile side. But man, they (T-Mobile) where no help at all, very friendly, but absolutely no help.  After another 2 weeks of phone calls and trouble shooting, suspecting something was goofed on my T-Mobile account;

• I finally just purchased another $0.99 T-Mobile pre-paid activation sim. 
• Activated it using one their pre-assigned phone numbers.  (not choosing to port my number at this point)
• Then called and canceled  my other pre-paid account (it confused them too much if it was still active and I was trying to port a number from one pre-paid to another), the one with the phone number I wanted.
• initiated a T-Mobile to T-Mobile port, and after a few more hickups and more days with support, finally got my old number on the new per-paid card.
• Once that was settled, I changed my pin (calling 611) and made my GV port request and Voila, worked like a champ!

Like someone said,  it's a lot of work being this cheap... err frugal 

3 weeks of torture but it is all worth it!!!

[OBeABearr]

I'll add my experience. Moving from landline to Google Voice took 9 days from start to finish. The main issue I had was with Google Wallet.

I ported my landline to T-Mobile on the afternoon of Thursday, October 11th. I could dial out on the T-Mobile phone starting the morning of Saturday the 13th, but phone calls in still went to the landline. The service stayed "dual-homed" like this until Tuesday the 16th. T-Mobile support was sympathetic but said that they were waiting on my landline carrier to complete the port.

Tuesday night I created a new Google account to use with my phone, and set up Google Wallet. I then walked through the porting procedure in Google Voice. When I went to pay with Google Wallet, I got the following error:

Uh oh. There was a problem. We couldn't complete your purchase because of a technical issue.

I tried several more times over the next day but had the same problem. Wednesday night I called Google Wallet support. I was told that the account was under review and that I should be able to use the Google Wallet account after 24 hours. However, by Friday night the account was still under review, and the review was not expected to be completed until after the weekend.

What I eventually learned is that because I had previously used the same credit card on a different Google account that the account had been flagged for review. I was told by multiple Google Wallet support staff that the account was under review, not the card; adding a different credit card to the Google Wallet account would not expedite the process. Google Wallet support gave me conflicting information on how long the review should take, varying from a few hours, to 24 hours, to 72 hours, to an unknown length of time.

Fortunately, I had another credit card that I could use, and so Friday night I abandoned the Google account that I had planned to use and created a new Google account. I set up Google Wallet on this account using my second credit card. I was able to pay for the number port to this new account, and within 24 hours (the afternoon of October 20) the port was complete.

tl;dr: Set up your Google Wallet using a credit card that has never been used with another Google Wallet account, or be prepared to wait at least 72 hours for the card to be able to be used with the new account to pay for the port.

[Daugpack]

OK, I've looked through 7 pages of this thread to make sure it hasn't already been answered...

I'm hoping to port my "landline" number (which is currently on MagicJack).  GV won't take it from them, so I was hoping to port to a cell phone and then to GV.

Has anyone used Verizon Wireless to run the number through? I'm sure I've got some flip phone around here that I can set up with a prepaid plan, and then port to it, then port it to Obi.

Does anyone see any obvious issues I'm overlooking - before I start the process?

Thanks so much.  If this works, I'll be THRILLED.

(Not so thrilled with MJ.)

Kathi

[Rick]

OK, I've looked through 7 pages of this thread to make sure it hasn't already been answered...

I'm hoping to port my "landline" number (which is currently on MagicJack).  GV won't take it from them, so I was hoping to port to a cell phone and then to GV.

Has anyone used Verizon Wireless to run the number through? I'm sure I've got some flip phone around here that I can set up with a prepaid plan, and then port to it, then port it to Obi.

Does anyone see any obvious issues I'm overlooking - before I start the process?

Thanks so much.  If this works, I'll be THRILLED.

(Not so thrilled with MJ.)

Kathi

Cost.  I bought an ATT flip phone, with SIM card, for $5 last year.  The 10 minutes of service it came with was sufficient.

T-Mobile SIM cards are often free, or $.99, worse case $4.99.  If you know someone with a T-Mobile phone you can go that route.