How hard is it to port a telephone number?

Hello everyone, this is the Angry Systems Administrator. I’ve just wasted a good 4 hours of my morning trying to move Ms. Angry Webmaster from her current phone service to a new one. She asked me to help since she didn’t want to bother the Angry Webmaster, and wanted it done right.

This should have been a very straightforward process. I’ve ported numbers from one mobile provider to another a number of times. It generally doesn’t take all that long. Then I ran into Lycan Mobile. Ms. Webmaster has used them for years since they allow free calls to China. Then she got a new phone a few months ago and wanted a new number for it for business reasons. (I recommended setting up a google voice number but she wasn’t interested)

I should have guessed there would be problems when the sim card she ordered was delivered to the wrong address. We still don’t know where it ended up, or if it’s even in the state, never mind our city. I ordered her a new card and stopped all payments on the other. (Got to love American Express. They really don’t like vendors much)

Per her request I ordered a new sim and this one actually showed up. Then the fun began. Their instructions for activating the card on their web site could be considered, problematical. Once I got it activated, I spent an hour trying to find the tools to port the number from her current provider, (Mint Mobile) to Lycan. I finally gave up and called their support number. That ended up being another 40 minutes navigating menus, hanging up and trying again before I finally reached an actual human being…

Who didn’t speak English as a first language. The Lycan support center is actually a call center in India. (I believe Mint has their in Canada and/or the United States). After a good 40 minutes tring to explain the problem, trying to decipher what the person on the other end was saying, and dealing with her sticking her mic in her mouth, she finally said “You will need to buy a new SIM card.”

Excuse me? Why the Hell would I need to do this? And what about the plan we had set up for Ms. Webmaster? How do we get that moved to the new card? The answers I got were not the kind that provided a warm and fuzzy feeling. Flat out blind rage was more the emotion I was feeling at that point.

That was it as far as I was concerned. I canceled, (Well stopped the automatic renewals that were set up for the low price), reinstalled the Mint Mobile SIM and payed for another 6 months on Ms. Webmaster’s current account. Her account was due to expire tomorrow and she probably would have lost the number she needed to keep. She might be aware that I reupped Mint Mobile, (They send out email confirmation and she would have seen it on her other phone), but not why I did it. I’ll talk to her about it either tonight when she comes home or tomorrow morning depending on the time.

I never thought I would have this much of a problem with a phone service. I’ve helped Ms. Webmaster several times in renewing her current account on her other phone. I think the main problem is that the service is designed for immigrants, (Which Ms. Angry Webmaster is), and generally people aren’t porting numbers over to it. Their experience and technical ability is therefore a joke. There is a reason I put everyone in Mint Mobile. They provide good service for a decent price. Lycan is more of “You get what you pay for” and cheap service also means rotten support. I would stay far away from Lycan Mobile if I were you.

Thank you

(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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~The Angry Systems Administrator~