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Cellular forums Home > Archive > Verizon wireless > May 2006 > Amazon, Number Porting and Rebates: SprintPCS=Yes, T-Mobile=Yes,
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Amazon, Number Porting and Rebates: SprintPCS=Yes, T-Mobile=Yes,
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| As many people know, Amazon.com usually offers the lowest prices on new
handsets when you are activating on a new carrier, because they have
very large rebates. However if you want to port your old number to your
new carrier AND get the Amazon rebate, you can only do it on SprintPCS,
T-Mobile, and Verizon. On Cingular, you can get the Amazon rebate, but
you can't port your number, or you can port your number and not get the
rebate.
See:
"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/508597/103-9775802-2636641"
"Cingular and Amazon.com have not yet established a method for customers
to transfer their current number to a new Cingular account.
Unfortunately, in order to port your previous number, Cingular will
cancel the account that Amazon.com activated and will activate a new
account with the ported number. This process makes you ineligible for
the Amazon.com rebates. We hope to offer a porting option in the coming
months, so please check back."
I just noticed this today, as I'm helping a relative in San Francisco
that's switching from Cingular to Verizon next week, and I went
searching for information on number portability and Amazon. Fortunately,
she's going from Cingular to Verizon, and not the other way around.
I wanted to alert people to be aware of this issue with Amazon and
Cingular. The difference in cost between buying at Verizon versus
Amazon, for the phone she is getting, is $150 ($-100 at Amazon, $+50 at
Verizon).
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| Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
> I'm not sure where Amazon is coming from in all this, but I know for a
> fact that it's no big deal for Cingular to switch your number on an
> existing account.
They don't get their kickback, and don't give you your rebate, if
Cingular starts a new account after they already opened one.
What you could do is to keep the account at the old carrier active until
you fulfill the Amazon rebate requirement (180 days of service), and
then port the phone number. So you'd be paying for two lines of service
for six months, plus the number porting, which of course would be far
more than the rebate is worth.
I expect that Cingular is doing this because they want to drive business
to their own stores and online sales, since it's much more profitable to
not have to pay the sign-up bonuses to a retailer. They've probably
decided that the number of people that are porting their number AND
buying on Amazon is sufficiently small that they aren't losing many new
subscribers with their policy.
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| Quick wrote:
> Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
>
> This is good... Don't know? How do you "know" your
> original claim? You said "...but I know for a fact that it's
> no big deal for Cingular to switch your number..."
Of course Amazon wouldn't put that notice up on their site if it weren't
true. It's not like they don't understand how carriers deal with number
porting.
The problem with what Amazon is doing is that they're first assigning a
new phone number, then you have to call to port your existing number
over to phone that already has a number. Normally, when you port a
number for a new account, there isn't a non-ported number assigned first.
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| Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
> In article < 44723acc$0$96952$742
ec2ed@news.sonic.net>,
> SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Exactly. Which is no big deal. Happens all the time.
It would seem to be a trivial thing to do, and in fact Amazon has no
problem with this procedure on SprintPCS, T-Mobile, or Verizon. So why
are they so insistent that if you try the same procedure with Cingular,
it won't work?
Well I called Cingular sales a minute ago, and the guy was instantly
familiar with the issue with Amazon. He said that it would be possible
to transfer a number later, but the last time he did that for someone it
cost the customer $80. I asked about the $36 porting fee, and he said
that they don't even charge that anymore, a port is done at no cost when
new service is established. He said that he was glad that I called,
because many people have been caught in this issue with Amazon, and that
most people didn't read the fine print.
The Amazon information is accurate, except that they leave out that it
would be possible to transfer a number later at a relatively high cost.
But you can't activate Cingular via Amazon and then simply port your
number later, either for free, or for a reasonable charge.
I think the bottom line is that with Cingular, a port is free when you
activate new service, but that porting is different than transferring a
number on service that already exists. If you ask Cingular to do a port
to a phone you buy on Amazon, they simply open a new account for you,
and Amazon loses the Cingular kickback, and you lose the rebate.
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| IMHO IIRC wrote:
> John please explain the following:
>
> From Amazon website
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...679872#Cingular
>
> Cingular
> Cingular and Amazon.com have not yet established a method for customers to
> transfer their current number to a new Cingular account. Unfortunately, in
> order to port your previous number, Cingular will cancel the account that
> Amazon.com activated and will activate a new account with the ported number.
> This process makes you ineligible for the Amazon.com rebates. We hope to
> offer a porting option in the coming months, so please check back.
The fact is that both Amazon _AND_ Cingular say that you cannot purchase
Cingular service through Amazon and subsequently port your number _IF_
you want to get the big Amazon rebate.
You can not port and keep the rebate, or you can port and forfeit the
rebate. No one has violated any FCC directive. I guess the fact that the
other three national carriers don't have this ridiculous limitation has
upset Navas into another lying frenzy.
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| Isaiah Beard 2006-05-23, 5:48 pm |
| Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
> In article < 4471747b$0$96939$742
ec2ed@news.sonic.net>,
> SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
>
>
> This is not true.
Actually, it is true. EVEN if you port your number afterwards.
> Should one get a Cingular account via ANY method, not just Amazon, it's
> a simple matter of getting the account activated and then, separately,
> asking Cingular to change the phone number to your existing number and
> port the number over.
The problem is that whoever is handling the rebates for Amazon is
checking the phone number issued *upon activation* to see if the account
is still active. If you port a number in, that activated number goes
away, and the rebate doesn't get processed.
I know for a fact because I know someone personally who got burned this
way. Even porting after the fact invalidates the Amazon rebate.
> I'm not sure where Amazon is coming from in all this,
Amazon is the entire point of this thread. If you purchase from Amazon
you can get that Amazing Low Price, after rebates, but ONLY if you stick
with the number they give you. If it's changed for any reason, even a
port, the rebate is lost. And this ONLY occurs on Cingular purchases,
for some reason.
--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.
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| Isaiah Beard 2006-05-23, 5:48 pm |
| John Navas wrote:
> Simply that Amazon hasn't worked out a deal with Cingular to allow number
> porting as part of its reselling of new Cingular service;
Thank you John, for rehashing to OP's post and the whole point of this
thread. Once again, you have brought nothing to the table.
> i.e., Amazon is
> covering its XXX. That doesn't necessarily mean you can't port a number after
> an account is established without penalty.
On the contrary: the penalty is that you lose the advertised rebate.
--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.
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| Isaiah Beard wrote:
> I know for a fact because I know someone personally who got burned this
> way. Even porting after the fact invalidates the Amazon rebate.
The issue is how long before you get the rebate? Amazon says you must
keep the phone active for 180 days. So do you not get the rebate for 180
days?
> Amazon is the entire point of this thread. If you purchase from Amazon
> you can get that Amazing Low Price, after rebates, but ONLY if you stick
> with the number they give you. If it's changed for any reason, even a
> port, the rebate is lost. And this ONLY occurs on Cingular purchases,
> for some reason.
It may be that for Cingular they have no way of checking if the phone is
still active on the account that they opened, unless it's on the
original phone number, but for the higher-rated carriers they do.
I just pointed this out for people to be aware of it. Actually, I was
about to post a question on number porting and Amazon, because on the
phone purchase page for Amazon there was no link to any information
about number porting. Then I Googled it, and found
"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/508597/103-9775802-2636641".
I think that the person that you know may not be the only person that
got burned on the rebate because of this, since it's not widely publicized.
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| Isaiah Beard wrote:
> John Navas wrote:
>
>
> Thank you John, for rehashing to OP's post and the whole point of this
> thread. Once again, you have brought nothing to the table.
On Usenet, I think that many of us hold out the hope that posting
incontrovertible evidence will encourage people to refrain from posting
incorrect or content free responses. In many cases it does have that
effect, but not always.
>
> On the contrary: the penalty is that you lose the advertised rebate.
That's the bottom line. Cingular is not charging an unreasonable fee for
number porting. It's just the way that they've set up the kickbacks to
Amazon which eliminate Amazon's kickback if the number is ported. No one
is forcing anyone to purchase at Amazon. However, I think that Amazon
should be more upfront about this issue on their pages for Cingular phones.
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| John Richards wrote:
> "SMS" <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote in message
> news:44723acc$0$9695
2$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net...
>
> Amazon did the same to me (assigned a non-ported number) when I
> recently ported from Sprint to T-Mobile. Something in their
> procedure sucks.
I think that it'd be pretty difficult for Amazon to come up with a
procedure that didn't require them to create a whole department to deal
with wireless activations.
It doesn't really hurt to have the new number until the old number is
ported, just means that you're paying for two services for a few days or so.
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| Quick wrote:
>
> 180 days?
Only on Cingular. On the other carriers, you can port your number and
still get the Amazon rebate.
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| Scott wrote:
> "John Navas" < spamfilter0@navasgro
up.com> wrote in message
> news:56Gcg.90363$Fs1.70003@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
>
>
> Looking in the mirror again, Novice?
Well I think that when both Amazon and Cingular agree that if you buy on
Amazon that you lose the Amazon rebate if you port your number, that
it's probably true. There is no upside for either of those entities to
lie about this. OTOH, Navas delights in posting misinformation, though I
don't think any of us have figured out why he does it. Shilling for
Cingular with such obvious lies certainly won't help them gain any
customers.
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| Walt Kienzle wrote:
> Yes, they will add the number change charge -- and I found this out the hard
> way.
If it's only $36 that's not a big deal. When I called Cingular and asked
about the whole Amazon issue, he told me that the last time he did
something like that (a number change to a number from an account on
another carrier, that wasn't porting a number to a new Cingular account)
it cost $80!
The problem is that a number change for an existing Cingular account,
from an account on another carrier, is different than simply porting a
number when you are starting new service.
The other issue is that no one has any idea how Amazon enforces the
rebate provisions. Do they wait 180 days to process the big rebate, and
only process it if the phone number is the same as the one they issued?
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| dold@XReXXAmazo.usenet.us.com wrote:
> So, the answer would be to keep both lines until the rebate came in, or
> change numbers. Why does it work this way? Don't know.
It works that way because Cingular wants to discourage people from
buying on Amazon.
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| Quick wrote:
> SMS wrote:
>
> Why would Cingular want to discourage people from
> buying from one of their channel partners? I've heard
> opinions of bad management but that seems over the
> top? Why not just discontinue the partnership?
I suppose they figure that someone deciding to port to Cingular is not
going to change their mind about which carrier to port to based on the
rebate, and that they can discourage the customer into buying direct
from Cingular rather than through a partner that costs Cingular more in
acquisition costs.
It doesn't make a lot of sense, but sometimes you end up with some very
naive marketing people that put up these kinds of roadblocks. Maybe
that's a reason why Cingular is doing so poorly in terms margins and
churn compared to Verizon.
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| IMHO IIRC wrote:
> Cingular
> Cingular and Amazon.com have not yet established a method for customers to
> transfer their current number to a new Cingular account. Unfortunately, in
> order to port your previous number, Cingular will cancel the account that
> Amazon.com activated and will activate a new account with the ported number.
> This process makes you ineligible for the Amazon.com rebates. We hope to
> offer a porting option in the coming months, so please check back.
A workaround to this could be porting your number to T-Mobile To Go, and
keeping the prepaid account open with the old number until the Amazon
rebate arrives. Then port the T-Mobile To Go number over to Cingular. It
wouldn't cost much to keep that prepaid account open for a few months.
It wouldn't work for me, since I don't have T-Mobile coverage where I
live, but if you can live with T-Mobile To Go for your incoming calls
for a while, it's one workaround.
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| Isaiah Beard 2006-05-29, 5:48 pm |
| SMS wrote:
> Isaiah Beard wrote:
>
>
> The issue is how long before you get the rebate? Amazon says you must
> keep the phone active for 180 days. So do you not get the rebate for 180
> days?
I think the rebate period is 6-8 weeks, typical time frame for mail-ins.
If you deactivate the phone, I *think* the rebate, if you've redeemed
it, is tacked on to your cancellation fee, but I can't be sure.
--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.
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| Isaiah Beard 2006-05-29, 5:48 pm |
| John Navas wrote:
>
> There's no "incontrovertible evidence" (as yet at least).
It's on the website. All you have to do is read the fine print.
--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.
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| Isaiah Beard wrote:
>
>
> It's on the website. All you have to do is read the fine print.
Or call Cingular, as I did.
When both Cingular and Amazon state that there is no rebate if you buy
at Amazon, then port your number, is as incontrovertible as it's likely
to get. What you _can_ do is to keep your old service until the rebate
arrives, then do a number port, but this means paying for two carriers,
and carrying two phones, for a couple of months.
It's typical Navas to make statements like that when he has no
corroboration.
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