Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Grrrphone

The phone saga:

I mentioned awhile back that we had decided to cut loose the land line and port the number to a cell phone.

It all went swimmingly at first. Net 10 took the information, did their jiggery-pokery, and within a few hours BAM! The new cell phone said it was active, showed the right phone number, etc. I could call out using it, and caller ID would show that the call was, indeed, coming from the right number.

But, calls INTO that number went to voice mail at the old land line provider (Charter). I gave it a day to see if that was just a thing to wait on. No. So I called Net10, they did some more jiggery-pokery, and told me it was all good on their end, but that Charter hadn't released its end of the number yet. Could take a few days, just give it time.

So today, a little over a week later, I call Charter. Their answer: The thing didn't go through, Net10 didn't take possession of the number yet, the request expired yesterday, the whole process has to be re-started.

Except that Net10 obviously HAS taken possession of the number, ma'am. Look at your caller ID -- I'm calling you from it. It's you we're waiting on.

No, no, you have to call Net10, nothing we can do.

Sigh. Back to the drawing board.

In other phone news, I'm also in the middle of transferring my previous Net10 cell number to a new phone. I've done that before and it's always been easy. This time, after the usual jiggery-pokery, they told me they have to send me a new SIM. It'll be here tomorrow, via FedEx.

No biggie. If I had thought about it, I just would have activated the new phone with a new number. That phone is the C4SS batphone, and C4SS's number is a Google Voice number that I can forward to any phone. Probably five people on earth have the actual old cell number, and I could have just communicated the change to them. But I'm assuming the SIM problem would still have been a SIM problem, so I guess it's all the same, really.

I've always had good, reliable and courteous service from both Net10 and Charter. I'm inclined to blame the land line transfer snafu on Charter. And yes, I've been a little irritable with them about the whole phone thing.

In terms of communication, Net10's call centers are scattered around the world and sometimes the accents make it a little harder to communicate, but not so much that it's really troublesome (there are worse things than spending half an hour on the phone with a Filipino lady). Charter's call center (at least the one I've talked with and asked the location of) is in Louisville, Kentucky, where the accents would be just as much a factor if I didn't speak Southern.

Update, 01/12: OK, the C4SS bat phone is back up. Net10 FedEx overnighted that new SIM (for a $30 phone!). Plugged it in and that was the end of the problem. Great service.


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