A cautionary tale about Verizon's phone number transferring terms
I'm not sure this is new worthy, but I learned a hard lesson when
trying to upgrade to an iPhone 4S this morning and I'd like to share
the story so nobody else suffers the same fate.

I've had the same phone number since 1998. I've bounced between
different carriers, corporate accounts and back to accounts owned by
me. Along the way I've never had any issues as a result of maintaining
the same number. A month ago I resigned from a job. Upon leaving I was
asked to return the corporate phone I was provided when I started.
Since the company had purchased the phone this seemed reasonable.
Since I transfered my longtime phone number over to the company when
they provided me with my corporate phone I requested upon my
resignation that they let me reclaim ownership of the number. Of
course they had no problem with this and said I was free to pick any
carrier I would like and they would pay any fees required, which I
though was a nice gesture.

This is where my story gets interesting. I drive to my local Verizon
store and ask them to reclaim ownership of my number. They inform me
that has to be done via phone and ask me to call customer service, so
I walk into the parking lot and sit on hold. After a nice long wait in
a Verizon store parking lot I finally get a customer service agent and
I explain I need to transfer ownership of a number from a corporate
account to a new personal account and I make clear that my number one
priority is ensuring that I can hold off on getting a new phone for
two weeks so when the new iPhone comes out I can use my upgrade then
rather than immediately. The customer service agent tells me that will
be no problem at all and then signs me up for a new two year contract.
All seems well. I wander back into the Verizon store because I need
them to deactivate my company phone, so I can mail it back, and
reactivate and OLD Blackberry I had to hold me over for two weeks
until the iPhone is released. As the young lady is enabling my old
BlackBerry she casually informs me that I'm lucky I owned this old
phone because I'm not eligible for an upgrade until July. This is very
confusing to me because I've just activated a new contract and have no
phone - plus I've just been told I could use my upgrade in two weeks.
I ask her why I wouldn't be eligible until July. She informs me I'm
not eligible for upgrade because the phone number was associated with
a phone upgrade less than a year prior. I am, not surprisingly I hope,
very upset about this because not only am I being told I can't get an
iPhone I'm being told I can't get ANY phone until July because a phone
upgrade was provided to a corporate contract that my number was
associated with, but that was not owned by me.

At this point I walk back into the parking lot and call customer
service again and ask them if what I have been told is correct. I then
explain that just minutes earlier I had been told I could use the
upgrade associated with my new contract on an iPhone. I also explain
that I didn't own the previous (corporate) phone and couldn't keep it
even if I had wanted to. The customer service agent talked to his
manager and they both agreed this made no sense and said they could
approve phone upgrade for me and would add a note to my account. More
troubling, nobody can explain this policy to me. I can come up with no
sane reason that phone upgrades would be associated with phone numbers
and not contracts. It's the agreement to remain a customer for two
years (and obviously offset the cost of the phone) that makes the
upgrades fiscally possible. What does what phone number is associated
with the contract have to do with this. The customer service agent
also confirms if I had done everything exactly the same, but not
immediately be eligible for a phone upgrade.

That brings us to today. I wait in line to get my iPhone and of course
when I get in they have no record of the second conversation I had
with customer service two weeks ago and they tell me I can't upgrade
until July. I go through the entire story out in the same parking lot
and again I'm told I can get any phone upgrade except to the new
iPhone 4S because it's an "iconic" device. In the end they reset my
upgrade date from July to Nov 9. I have no idea why Nov 9 and
obviously I can wait three weeks to get my iPhone, but i think it's a
great example of terrible customer service. And I hope people realize
that phone upgrades appear to be associated with phone numbers rather
than contracts. Again, of the five or six people I've had to deal with
about this over two weeks nobody can explain this policy to me. This might be common knowledge, but between being signed up for a new contract over the phone with no terms of service and just using common sense to arrive at the conclusion that I would be treated the same whether I signed up for a new contract with a new number or transferred a number from a completely different legal entity.

Anyway, I was hoping you guys might be nice enough to help me spread the word to the masses.