Cellphone Rant.... warning it's long

O

old medic

Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Joined
Jul 28, 2020
Messages
1,516
I can't believe what we have been through. If anything could go wrong, it did. Including a very near car accident. I have been without a phone since Dec 29th !!!!!
Back story, have been with Verizon for over 20 years, and have talked about changing to save some money. We cut the cord years ago, and use the hotspot for internet at home and travel. DW phone is nearly 8 years old, not 5 G capable, and no longer holds a charge all day. Ive needed to replace mine a few times (I'm rough on phones). On the 29th, my phone takes a dive off the roof... So it begins....
Ordered a replacement phone from Amazon, have used the same store before, and wait, On Wednesday afternoon 1/4 my new phone arrives... Pop in the Sim card fire it up, hook to mobile data, down load my backed up info. But it can't make or receive calls or Texts. Leave early Friday morning to have time to drop into Verizon, After spending an HOUR, with them making several calls, they tell me this new phone is LOCKED, can't be used, and try and sell me a new phone. Of course this starts a new contract. I call the Wife, give her the news, and she says lets change to another company.
That evening DW gets home and says, she had called T-Mobile, had spent over an hour on the phone setting up an account, 2 phones and a Tablet are on the way. Including Sim Cards and has the instructions printed to swap over our existing numbers.
I twittle my thumbs until 1/12...
UPS pull in late Thursday afternoon and I start working on setting up my new phone. Following their instructions, everything seemed to go smoothly. Again download my backed-up data, but service seemed a bit slow. When I try to change my number, LOW AND BEHOLD, it locks the phone up. I can send texts from the temp # but no calls. When DW gets home, use her Verizon phone to call T-Mobile customer service and told a 6 minute wait.... I hang up after listening to hold music after an hour and a half. Lets go to the store....
If you have read this far... Its fixing to get worse... FAR WORSE...
So Friday Morning its off to the T-Mobile store 27 miles away. Take 2 different vehicles since she needed to go on to Charlette, and I needed to get some building supplies. They start digging, Can't find the account that has been set up, and the Temp # on my phone is tied to a business in Lousanna. Once they redo the account, they can't get my old number moved... ITS LOCKED AS FRUAD ACCOUNT BY VERIZON. So its off to the Verizon store a 1/2 mile away. We spend almost 2 hours there before we get that issue fixed. We had talked about several options at this point and decide that I'll go back to T-Mobile, Set up a new account, get a phone from them, We can't split the phone they sent, but they can't take them either. So a trip to the UPS store is added. She heads off, I spend another hour at T-Mobile, and YIPPEE.. I'm back in the modern world. :dance:
OR SO I THOUGHT !!!
I get in my truck, call the wife to update her, Hit Lowes and head home. Call and chatting with a friend on the drive home, and not a problem till I hit a section of road where it dips down to the river... I excepted that. a minute later my phone rings and he called back.. Chatted the rest of the way home till about 1/4 mile away and said goodby... Backed in the drive to unload the truck. Grab the phone to call DW... Now keep in mind we left at 930- its now almost 5...
NO MOBILE DATA AVALIBLE! Can't even send a text!!!! :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:
So I drive back up the road maybe 150 yards, Have full 5G service pull up videos no problem... I call the store, They want me to return and they will test the phone for issues..
Saturday we head back to T-Mobile, go the other direction from the house and I continue to try calling the wifes phone... No service for nearly 10 miles.
I walk in and return the phone, They charge me a $40 restock fee, give me the transfer info to give to Verizon and we head over... Place is packed and we wait 45 minutes before they get to us.. We start discussing options and decide to just bite the bullet, new contract and phones... Now the can cut our bill nearly $100...
NOW THEY CAN"T GET MY # BACK FROM T-MOBILE !!!!!
So I now have to go back to T-Mobile, deal with them and get the transfer number, then go back to Verizon...
This is where an idiot pulls a U-Turn right in front of me.. I got stopped about 1 foot from hitting them... then the lady starts screaming at me.
As I get back to Verizon, they are just finishing getting the DW phone done, and start on mine...
As we leave the store, both with new working phones, we realize it has taken over 5 hours today... We have spent less time buying houses.
 
Thanks for sharing!

I don't want to pile on you, so please take this as a thank you for sharing and confirming some of my habits.

You confirmed to me:
- Don't buy from Amazon
- Unlocked phones from the local Best Buy may cost a few more bucks, but are easy to deal with. They will swap a proven defective phone out with a new one with no stocking fee if done within 14 days.
- Stick with completely unlocked plans
- Stick with my MVNO (Consumer Cellular). "They Try Harder"
 
This story makes me appreciate Consumer Cellular. New discounted phone arrives in the mail, swap SIM cards and all done. If you do need assistance, someone answers promptly and speaks English. No waiting in lines, driving around waiting in more lines.

Medic - glad you are back in business with your phones. What an ordeal!
 
This is one reason I like Google FI.

We pay about $30 a month. We both got new 5G phones for $80 each in November, shipped to us in a few days. We got our prior phones maybe 2 years ago? (and i use a cheapy case to help when I drop mine). No sim cards, same number, easy.
 
It’s pretty hard to draw conclusions when you’ve chosen to not share what kind of phone(s) you bought. Over more than 15 years we’ve been with three different mobile companies with ZERO issues including Verizon and T-Mobile, but we’ve bought the phones from them (same prices anyway). Bringing your own phone, especially if it’s not mainstream, is going to cause more problems. We’re all about saving money, but your story confirms the risks in buying phone from a third party.
 
Last edited:
I don't think the OP has done anything to cause this. Porting out your phone # is a problem with most cell operators. My son and his wife have been trying to port out their numbers from Redpocket to ATT for over 2 weeks now. They and DW and I have spent numerous hours on calls, texts, emails to both Redpocket and ATT and have gotten nowhere.
DIL's phone number is being held up since Redpocket can't figure out how to remove her phone from our family plan, and we can't do it online. Keep getting an error.
As simple as cell operators make it seem to port your number it is a nightmare. And both the portee and porter don't know how to work together to get it done!
 
wow, what a headache! Glad you finally got phones that work for you.
 
Aerides said:
This is one reason I like Google FI.

We pay about $30 a month. We both got new 5G phones for $80 each in November, shipped to us in a few days. We got our prior phones maybe 2 years ago? (and i use a cheapy case to help when I drop mine). No sim cards, same number, easy.
Click to expand...

My wife used Google Fi. We ended up dropping it. For our area, the quality was so poor. Voice sounded like someone was playing a guitar, an elongated twang distortion of your voice. Dropped calls. Lots of fuzziness. She was using it for work and customers complained about the quality. We switched to T Mobile. We use a family plan - me Apple, her Android. We pay about $70 a month. Quality is so much better.
 
We've had nothing but good luck over the years buying unlocked phones on Amazon ($200ish Motorola's, Samsung's, and a $350 Google Pixel6). Well, DS bought a higher end $500ish Samsung there too without any problems.

We deal with T-Mobile over the phone to activate them. Never a problem. We did go to the store once to activate and they charged us $20, so that was the last time we did that.

[edit - we're careful not to buy unlocked phones from Amazon marketplace vendors since I have read the occasional horror story review.]
 
Last edited:
I used to buy unlocked phones on amazon - never had a problem (our carrier forever has been T-Mobile). Recently though, We've been buying Google Pixel phones (again unlocked and no problems hooking them up with TMobile). I have 5 phones to manage.
 
We generally buy our phones from Apple - DH gets the 10% military/veteran discount. And T-Mobile which uses unlocked iPhones anyway.

I once took advantage of a T-Mobile deal on a new iPhone where you could pay over 12 months no interest. But of course there was a gotcha - additional monthly taxes and fees. No thanks, paid it right off. So I just don’t bother with cell phone company deals to buy a new phone as there is always something…….

I ported my number from Verizon to T-Mobile way back. It worked well - very quickly. I had all my codes for porting. I’m hoping we don’t have to port in the future because we’ve been quite happy.
 
Last edited:
F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-I-O-N !!
I feel for you buddy!



My phone died a few months ago, went into a Verizon store, paid $300 for a new phone. They handed me a box and said thanks. I said you're not going to set it up. Nope. I changed to AT&T with their $300 a year plan saving over $240 a year vs Verizon. It all works great.
I do have one problem, I get a text every month asking me to pay my $300 bill. I ignore it as well as the one my wife gets for her phone, same plan. It's been months like that, so I guess they don't really want me to pay $300 every month. :blush:
I did have a little trouble porting, but it was just the sequencing. Get the port code number from your existing company, before you start the process of porting with your new company.
 
Music Lover said:
Of course. Amazon doesn't make phones. I didn't think that I needed to clarify that.
Click to expand...

Third party sales and Amazon sales matter. It doesn't have to mean that Amazon makes it, rather Amazon handles the inventory under their own conditions. Look for "Sold by: Amazon.com"

Some of the third party sellers sell some weird phones, like those that were originally targeted for a foreign market. You'll notice the model number is a bit off. Stay away from those if you go Amazon. It is just my preference to take the possibility completely off the table by avoiding Amazon. YMMV.
 
Last edited:
JoeWras said:
Third party sales and Amazon sales matter. It doesn't have to mean that Amazon makes it, rather Amazon handles the inventory under their own conditions. Look for "Sold by: Amazon.com"

Some of the third party sellers sell some weird phones, like those that were originally targeted for a foreign market. You'll notice the model number is a bit off. Stay away from those if you go Amazon. It is just my preference to take the possibility completely off the table by avoiding Amazon. YMMV.
Click to expand...

It was sold by Amazon, not 3rd party. I would have bought it directly from Samsung but it would have been 7-10 days for delivery and the one I had was mostly unusable to a damaged screen. Amazon promised delivery in 2 days.
 
Old medic, you have more patience than I would have under similar circumstances.

I know the process of porting your existing phone number to a different SIM card requires precisely following the procedures, but I wonder if a.) the phone carrier techs deliberately make it into a failure process to keep you hooked on their service; OR b.) the phone carrier techs are low level dummies that don't know what they are doing?

I can't decide which would tick me off the most--the hassles you encountered porting the numbers or the fact that T-Mobile couldn't find the new account that was created specifically to sell you phones and a tablet. That is confounding to me.

As to the problem with porting over the numbers to a new SIM card, my experience is that the phone carrier sometimes needs to use a temporary IMEI number that they know is operational. Once your phone is connected to that IMEI number they can transfer it to your phone's IMEI number (or something like that--it seems like voodoo. HA.)

Now that you are up and running I'd love to be in the room when someone calls you and wants you to switch phone carriers. Should be entertaining!
 
Cell phones...can't live with em, can't live without em. I buy a new phone every 2 years. It seems any longer and the battery drains. I have ordered from amazon before without issues. I live in suburbia and only have issues with tmobile when I go into the rural parts of the country. My wife has an iPhone, I have an LG. Usually if I don't have service, neither does she...and we have only encountered this on road trips far from any cell towers, or when line of sight is blocked by being in a parking garage, or other substructure deep underground.

I buy fairly decent phones ( But not the $1000+ models, usually 200-300 price range) and haven't had much of an issue with anything. I did have an LG thinQ7 that had terrible battery life, and upgraded to the thinQ8 which has been MUCH better so far.
 
Remember to reset to factory settings before you return the Amazon phone, don't want your info getting into the wrong hands.
I've bought a couple of new open box unlocked phones from EBAY over the years and they always worked fine but there were plenty of other listings for locked phones as well for cheaper.
I bought my current phone a 2021 Moto G Stylus from HSN (with coupon $80) locked to Verizon Tracfone with the Verizon sim and made a few calls to show some usage with the free included minutes text and data for the 60 days needed for unlocking purposes. I then texted them for the unlock code which was provided within 5 minutes, unlocked it and inserted my Tello sim (T-Mobile MVNO) and it's been working great for the last 7 months.
 
Qs Laptop said:
Old medic, you have more patience than I would have under similar circumstances.

I know the process of porting your existing phone number to a different SIM card requires precisely following the procedures, but I wonder if a.) the phone carrier techs deliberately make it into a failure process to keep you hooked on their service; OR b.) the phone carrier techs are low level dummies that don't know what they are doing?

I can't decide which would tick me off the most--the hassles you encountered porting the numbers or the fact that T-Mobile couldn't find the new account that was created specifically to sell you phones and a tablet. That is confounding to me.

As to the problem with porting over the numbers to a new SIM card, my experience is that the phone carrier sometimes needs to use a temporary IMEI number that they know is operational. Once your phone is connected to that IMEI number they can transfer it to your phone's IMEI number (or something like that--it seems like voodoo. HA.)

Now that you are up and running I'd love to be in the room when someone calls you and wants you to switch phone carriers. Should be entertaining!
Click to expand...

As for porting, yeah its always an issue. I ported a Sister In Laws phone from AT&T to Tmobile and we got the runaround. I needed an authorization number from AT&T before Tmobile could do it. Once I got that authorization code, it was a fairly simple process. Getting the code was hilarious though, AT&T acted clueless as if I was the first person ever requesting this code, and ever porting a number. They play games.
 
old medic said:
...We cut the cord years ago, and use the hotspot for internet at home and travel....
Click to expand...


I wanted to come back to this part. Some phones, and some plans, don't allow you to use your phone as a hotspot. That's a hard "no" for me. We use the hotspot capability a lot when traveling. Even at home, the cable internet service we use (a monopoly in our area) can go out any time.
 
CaptTom said:
I wanted to come back to this part. Some phones, and some plans, don't allow you to use your phone as a hotspot. That's a hard "no" for me. We use the hotspot capability a lot when traveling. Even at home, the cable internet service we use (a monopoly in our area) can go out any time.
Click to expand...

Or some will cap the high speed hot spot and then dial it down at some point. When we first moved into our new house internet wasn’t available for a few months. We used our cells, but found after a few days that the speed was lowered. We eventually bought a high speed tower and that got us by until we had high speed internet.
A hot spot will also not have enough capacity to stream. So devices are your only option, not steaming on a TV.
 
OP - Great story.

This is why I delay changing phones as long as possible, it's a dangerous maneuver.

Once I had a cell phone, and they had a deal where you could buy the minutes and get a free phone. So I ended up with 10->12 free phones.
Sometimes when I would go to add the minutes to my account, by having to talk to their help desk and they lost my phone number and I ended up with a new phone number :eek:

The only saving grace is this was prior to 2FA on bank/brokerage/etc accounts..
 
Great story. Yikes!!!

I've only purchased unlock phones and never had problems setting it up. I'm currently on my third carrier, Mint Mobile.

I've purchased phones from Best Buy, eBay and Google and never any issues.

Going forward I'll continue to purchase phones directly from Google as I'm very happy with their Pixel line. Great deals on phones!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Mr._Graybeard
I got phished
2 3 4
Replies
85
Views
5K
isisdave
I
A
Need to Repair or Replace Cell Phone
2
Replies
33
Views
1K
Another Reader
A
GravitySucks
AI in Real Use
2 3
Replies
56
Views
1K
ERD50
E
PaunchyPirate
Helping an elderly parent stay on top of their financial accounts
Replies
24
Views
993
1242Vintage
1
M
New Car Dealer REQUIRES Financing
2 3
Replies
61
Views
4K
brucethebroker
B

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom