Cell phone contract or Wait, I'm supposed to lose my number?

FF

In my quest to get a new iPhone for the sane price (subsidized price) I thought that I would be able to cancel my current contract on my families plan, pay the early termination fee and then start a new contract on my girlfriends plan, thus obtaining an iPhone for the subsidized price.

When I brought this up to the local AT&T rep he told me that I could do that, however I wouldn't be able to keep my current phone number since the contracts are tied to the numbers. I can't quite believe that. I understand that you're supposed to be able to keep your phone number when transferring carriers (as the law states), shouldn't that apply in other in-carrier transfers? I can live with having to get a new number, if I must, but I'd rather avoid it if possible.

xThanatoSx

Either A) AT&T's system can't handle that [i.e. he's telling you the truth], it's really hard and he doesn't want to go through the effort, or C) it can be done but he hasn't been trained properly to know it can be done.

I'd be inclined to believe it's more option B or C than anything. But I don't work for AT&T, so I have no idea how their back-end systems work.

EliteLamer

Usually they don't want to deal with doing anything extra.

FF

See, that's what I'm thinking. They're getting the termination fee from me, so extra money from them. I think I'm just not a gruff enough person to "convince" the rep to do the work/effort.

Delzhand

Just tell the sales jockey that if he wants the commission, he'll make it happen. Number haven't been tied to carriers in the US for something like 2-3 years at least.

If I can transfer my phone number from one carrier to another, why not one account to another? You could buy a $10 tracfone and have your number transferred over, then get a new account with AT&T and transfer back. Your sales rep is jerking you around, and changing your phone number is too big an inconvenience to let some lazy register monkey push you around.

Iceman.USAF

Indeed, this is a federal law (though I cannot cite it specifically, anyone care to help?). Carriers cannot force you to drop a particular number while transferring carriers, I don't see why contracts would be any different.

DragonPup

The FCC's page on number portability

Cptn Pants

My AT&T rep told me that if you want to port a number you need to own the number, you don't own the number because its under your parents name... Seems legit to me... then again I don't work at the AT&T, I work at Radioshack.

Elin

You can port your number, the only odd issue is the family plans you'd be going from and too. You may have also confused him with the wording. If you cancel an account the number is lost. If you port your number to a new account it isn't. Yes, it's semantics, but don't blame the guy too hard if that was the issue. If you've talked to your 500th customer of the day already sometimes your brain shuts down. I don't work for ATT either, but I do work for a company that deals with ATT accounts and I've seen numbers move from family plans to their own plan.

illig

port your number to a disposable pay-as-you go phone (tracfone, virgin mobile, whatever is cheapest) and then go back to AT&T

cancelling a contract just to open a new contract with the same provider is generally very difficult... their systems are not designed for it, so you need a very knowledgeable agent to do it.... and finding one is based on chance... you stand a chance of losing your number if done incorrectly, and all you'll get is a "sorry"

FF

illig wrote: »

port your number to a disposable pay-as-you go phone (tracfone, virgin mobile, whatever is cheapest) and then go back to AT&T

cancelling a contract just to open a new contract with the same provider is generally very difficult... their systems are not designed for it, so you need a very knowledgeable agent to do it.... and finding one is based on chance... you stand a chance of losing your number if done incorrectly, and all you'll get is a "sorry"

This sounds like what I may have to do to keep my number.

It's sounding like the issue for myself/AT&T is that if I have them port my number from my family account to my girlfriends account is that I wouldn't be eligible for the subsidized price on the iPhone. I think I may be able to get my number ported AND get the subsidized price, however like you said, it depends on the rep.

At the moment all the AT&T stores around here are out of stock on the new phones anyway, so I'll probably just wait a bit for things to quiet down in the hopes of finding a more seasoned rep.

AresProphet

It isn't so much that their systems aren't designed for it, it's that they figure once you're a customer they're less likely to need to give you a lower phone price to keep your business. The sales rep probably doesn't have any leeway on price, because the store makes consideraby less money on an upgrade and therefore has no reason to subsidize the phone further. Ergo, his manager won't approve selling the phone at an extra subsidy.

They give the best deals to people switching from a competitor's service, because that makes them the most money. Once you have their service, they're just not that interested in throwing money at you. An accountant somewhere runs the numbers and decides that incentivizing a phone with an extra $100 off to new customers (and charging existing customers $100 more to upgrade) ends up being the point where they make the most money.

You can't threaten to change from AT&T in this case because it's the iPhone, it's AT&T or bust. The retention guys will be very apologetic, but they'll basically just be politely telling you to eat their shit and like it.

If you switch to a prepaid carrier and try to switch back you're going to run into their 90 day rule (I think it might have been 180 day, but that was years ago when I worked for them and I think they had to reduce it by law; I know it's still in effect to prevent exactly this kind of gaming of the system. It's not like they never thought anyone would try this). If that exact phone number has had active AT&T service in the last 90 (or whatever) days, it'll be treated as an existing account if it's reactivated. We had people try to be clever this way and the activation system would kick it back with an error, and then the rep we got on the phone would tell us they'd gladly reactivate the account for an upgrade fee and at the upgrade pricing. Meaning the customer was out the price of their rpepaid phone and got jack in return. They lost any kind of long-term customer benefits too, sometimes they'd offer to wave the up fee or offer early exceptional upgrades if they'd been around for so long but in these cases it'd have a brand spanking new activation date.

Don't try it. You're most likely stuck at the upgrade pricing and there's nothing you can legitimately do to get a brand-new iPhone through a store at anything less than AT&T's enforced pricing. Attempts to game the system will end up with you out extra money. It's a ruthlessly greedy company and there's a reason they're at the top of the most infamously cutthroat industry in the world today. Used car dealerships have nothing on the cell phone stores in this day and age.

Considering it's end-of-month coming up you might shop a few stores and see if you can smell one that's desperate to hit quota, the manager there might authorize a stupid discount to hit tier, but I somehow doubt that 3GS release month is a slow one for any stores that have the damn thing in stock. They're hot items, and very few stores are going to be willig to take a hit on the most popular phone in the world without getting that fat new-act payout.