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LindsVF's profile

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4 Messages

Thursday, January 18th, 2018 7:14 PM

BOGO iPhone 8 with new line, but saving old number

So we did the BOGO at the start of the year and added a 3rd line in order to qualify. I really hate to change my # and hubs can’t for work. I was looking online about cancelling the old paid off line, and ran across the section where you can change your phone # and search for a new one. So I’m wondering, if I cancel my 3rd line then immediately go to my new number and select the option of changing my number, could I search for my old number and change my new line back to that? Or would AT&T then tell me that doesn’t qualify anymore? Hope that makes sense....

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ACE - Expert

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64.7K Messages

6 years ago

It makes sense but likely won’t work. I don’t believe the cancelled number gets put back into the pool for reassignment for some period of time, 60 days probably. If people could do that to get the BOGO and not give up a number, they would have figured that out long ago.

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ACE - Expert

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64.7K Messages

6 years ago

@nflguy2018 Do not follow that advice. It will not work. You can use the free phone on any number you want but the Next plan and credits for the free phone stay with the new number. If you cancel that new number, you lose the credits and will be billed for the remainder of what is owed. It won’t matter what phone is using that number.

Tutor

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4 Messages

6 years ago

Yeah, I figured it couldn’t be that easy. Maybe I’ll look into porting my old number to google voice. 

Thank you. 

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12 Messages

6 years ago

We’re you able to get your old number on the new line? 

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4 Messages

6 years ago

I did not actually try. We had to add a new line to get the BOGO. So I just ended up deciding to port my old number to a Google voice account. What I am planning to do then is after the new 2 year contact for the new number is up, I can port my old number back, and in the mean time, I can sill use the old number, I just have everything forwarded to my new number or through the app on my iPhone. Hope that makes sense. 

Tutor

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12 Messages

6 years ago

If you port a number to google voice. Two questions.

 

#1 how much did that cost. 

 

#2 what happens when someone sends a text to that number?

Tutor

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12 Messages

6 years ago

ATT phone rep told me the following on Friday.

 

Add a third line to get the BOGO deal. Once my bill shows credits for the “free” phone, tell ATT I want to transfer one of my current phone numbers to the new phone and for the new number to be n my old phone. Then after that’s complete call and cancel my old line that now has the new number. 

 

 

The drawback is having having to pay for 3rd line for possibly 2-3 months depending on how quickly the credits for new phone start showing up on bill. 

ACE - Sage

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116.6K Messages

6 years ago

@nflguy2018

Wow, total cow kaka....  @sandblaster is correct, that DOES NOT WORK.  You cannot game the system.  You cannot use ‘ghost’ or temporary numbers.  You cannot ‘port’ a number from one existing line to another.  

The installments and credits are tied for the duration to the NEW number.  The installments can’t be moved.

 You can port the number to google voice, which provides a virtual place to keep your old number and still use it.  

Tutor

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4 Messages

6 years ago

I also wouldn’t recommend that. That is definitely not what was always portrayed to me. Everyone I talked to Indicated that if I canceled the new number we would get charged for the other phone. 

As for the google voice, it couldn’t really have been easier. I now wish I’d figured that out before I told everyone my new number. It was $20 to port the number, which automatically cancelled that line with AT&T. If and when I decide to port it back to AT&T it should not cost anything, or at the most $3. 

I set up google voice to forward calls to my new number. When they ring through on my phone I actually can’t tell if they are calling my old or new number, and people from my contacts are still identified. 

Texting not quite as seamless. Initially I had it forwarded texts to my new number also, but for some reason google voice assigned new numbers to each person, so the text would show up as an unidentified number and the body of the text would have the person’s actual phone number followed by their message. This was really annoying because obviously I don’t have people’s numbers memorized so I couldn’t tell who was texting. Fortunately google voice has an app, so I turned off text forwarding and now texts to my old number go to the app. In the app it identifies everyone from my contacts just normal, and I turned on all the notifications so that the texts pop up on my screen similarly to regular texts. The main drawback is that I-messaging doesn’t work through the app, so people texting me that way will see green messages and the 3 dots don’t pop up if they are writing back. But that doesn’t really bother me. Obviously for family and close friends I updated my number with them, but I still have a lot of people who communicate with me on the old one, and google voice has been an huge headache saver!

Hope that helps! 

ACE - Sage

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116.6K Messages

6 years ago

@LindsVF  Correct, and thanks for the update!   

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