Phone number not ported

[dwk]

I invited my mother, sister, and step-father to my Party Pay. They were transferring from Verizon and started on Thursday. First my mother, who was the primary on the Verizon account, then my sister and step-father. By Friday my sister and step-father had their phone numbers transferred and were good to go, but Verizon had canceled my mother's account prior to transferring the number and that failed.

There was some back and forth over the weekend ending in a Visible rep saying the number was transferred to Visible, but not properly setup for my mother's account. Today she is being told that the number is not under Visible's control. Contacting Verizon they say that here account was terminated  on 11/12/2012 (not a typo, 2012) and that it cannot be recovered. The Win Back Team at Verizon (why is that a publicly facing team name?) says she can open an account and they might be able to get her number activated so she can transfer it to Visible.

We are coming on 5 days of back and forth between the two Verizon owned companies, and I everyone in the Party has been well aware of the situation as we cannot easily call my mother. Nor can the PhD students she is working with.

How could a number transfer go so bad and what can be done to fix this situation?

[upstate-SC]

Service cancellation prior to port is always unsuccessful. Try to contact VZW to re-activate the service. Then after a month port. If you would like to carry with the same number.

This is the best guess I have.

Also I recommend you to join existing parties, not to create a new one. Thanks.

[dwk]

1. We didn't cancel service prior to port, Verizon did.
2. We have contacted Verizon, see post. They seem to think Visible has the number, Visible says Verizon does.
3. My Party is an existing party that has been around for years, not a new one.

As of today we have reached out to Verizon Executive Relations, FCC complaints, and mailed a snail mail letter to Visible's CEO as the only other ways to contact someone at Visible is this forum (apparently not), in-app chat, or social media. None have gone anywhere.

[upstate-SC]

We wish you the best, we would also like to know the steps you did later on. Please keep us posted.

[Airwolf]

To me it sounds like the port failed for some reason, but the service being cancelled due to the appearance of the port starting was executed.

I am sure it will be a finger pointing game of whose fault it is, but non the less, I would think Verizon would be able to get the number back, but if it is taking to long, maybe sign up for the visible free trial in the mean time to at least have a way to contact and hopefully it can get resolved within that time frame. 

What a frustrating experience! 

[dwk]

Yeah, absolutely.

We did get in touch with Verizon Executive Relations and the FCC. They are talking, but Verizon has verified that they have in fact given Visible the number. Verizon reached out to the executive team at Visible (glad they are the same company for this issue!) and we are waiting to hear back. Visible had to start a new case as the old case was so large agents couldn't open it in their system!

I will continue to update as things happen. We forget how many financial accounts are still tied to SMS based MFA, while I would never recommend turning off MFA, I do recommend using a service like iCloud Keychain, Authy, or Google Authenticator if they are available.

[dwk · Accepted solution]

Ok one week later and my mother has service on her original phone line!

They ended up sending a QR code to download a new eSIM. There were concerns that the previous eSIM would interfere with installing the new one and they told us to delete the old eSIM if that happens and try again. It worked.

[rufus]

Wow. The same thing played out for me.  1 week without port or service.  Other lines on my account were transferred with no problem.   I hope Visible gets its act together.   This can't be scalable and is bad for business.

We are still trying to get my apple watch to work, but at least I have my phone number back!