Jim Skamarakas

Anna picks out a new camera for Brighid, I remind her that Anna just got an awesome DSLR for her birthday. We don’t need another camera in the family. So she returns the camera, and wants to get Brighid something nice. So off she goes to the store, meets a very nice lady named Wendy in the Cherry Hill, NJ AT&T Wireless store, and decides on an iPhone.

So someone buys an iPhone for Christmas for someone in the family, Brighid gets it, is all happy, and plugs it into the computer downstairs to activate in on Christmas Day. Two weeks later move the rest of the family from Verizon Wirelss (VZW) to AT&T and transfer the iPhone onto the family plan. Simple? Not for AT&T Customer Service, or the people in the store where we bought the new AT&T Tilts we put on the family plan. Sure the store said they would look into it, but after a few days they call back and say we have to wait until the 25th of January and the iPhone has to go a full cycle on its plan. Not that that makes any sense.

We go till the 25th, and nothing is moved over. Then Brighid gets a text message about her plan changing. Then another text message. Then calls she makes stop displaying the notice about minutes left. This starts a very long day of many calls into AT&T.

Jim or Anna: Sir or Madam, We have a phone ###-###-###1 on a family plan. Please add phone number ###-###-###2 onto the family plan. It is already with AT&T, on a seperate account.

AT&T: Sure, please hold on for 30 minutes of verifying we are who we say we are (this works because thiefs get tired of waiting on hold) and then tell us that the number will get down and will call us back.

Then never call back

So we repeated this process, and this time were told that we needed to speak to someone else, and got disconnected.

We repeat this process again, and get told we don’t own ###-###-###2 because it got ported into a prepaid plan and is no longer our number.

Yes, AT&T decided to inform us that the phone number we moved over from VZW was no longer our number to move anywhere, let alone to our own account on AT&T.

At this point, I was livid, gave the phone to Anna. She tried to explain it nicely for an hour. In that time I had called VZW, explained the nonsense of the minors account not being ported over properly and our not giving consent to losing this phone number. They say no problem, port it back and set her up. All this while Anna is still on the phone in the other room trying to get it fixed by AT&T.

VZW takes my call, sets up a new account, has me get the AT&T account password, calls AT&T to get the AT&T account information, ports the number back to VZW, has me reprogram Brighid’s Audiovox 6700, update the software, have me make 2 test calls, sends me 3 test text messages, and has the phone working on the ###-###-###2 number. While I am on the phone thanking the guy for such great service, Brighid’s iphone disconnects. Why? Because it lost its number.

Anna hands me the phone with AT&T on it, they say now they figured out how to make this work, we just have to OH no the number is gone! Yes, They figured it out 3 minutes after all this frustration, I just yanked the number back to VZW. Now they say I can go to the store tomorrow, get a new SIM, and plug it into the iPhone, plug the phone into the PC, connect up to iTunes, and put her phone on our family plan. As Bill Cosby says, yeah right!

 877-419-4500 iphone activation support

Popularity: 3%

Categories: technology
Tags: anna, brighid, cellphone, customer service