Cellular Frustration

I've been doing some research about switching my wireless provider so when it comes to the end of my current contract I can seemlessly carry over to my new provider. So in preparation I called and verified what the process is. For any cellular/wireless provider "porting" is the term for switching your number from one provider to the next. In the technical section, I read that porting wireless-to-wireless should technically only take 2-3 hours. However it is fairly typical for it to take 1 to 2 days. The only exception is that porting a landline to wireless can take 1 to 2 weeks.

So 2 days before my contract it over I sign up for my new service and make it so the new flip-phone should arrive the day after my service ends. Now when I check the status it says the porting will take 5 days. How wonderful. So I then think back to listening to all the service reps. One said that its very simple and if I purchased with them, they'd make it seemless with no days of lost service. One rep told me that I'm better off taking an extra month with my current provider and just waste the money, to make it easier. And the last one, which I foolishly beleived, well, she laid out a nice plan without any hiccups. Well, hiccup, hiccup, hiccup.

So if Verizon has the best consumer satisfaction, and if Sprint has the best nationwide coverage and if T-Mobile has the most anytime minutes -- well some of them have to have the worst of something. Man cell phone companies really suck, but realistically I don't talk much anyways so I'm better to lose service for a few days rather than paying twice for one month.

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