bds, other than racial slurs and comments about hitler, why don't you think this can be done? especially with number portability?
No you cannot do it. I had a friend go through this hassle, and spent hours at a local retailer, then he talked to the national cust. service. No result.
macr Posts: 4
Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:16 am
On another forum a user outlined the following saying it would work. What do you guys think?
Say husband has T-Mobile 917 number with NY address and wants to join wife who has AT&T 415 number with SF address and family plan.
Step 1) Husband should port T-Mobile 917 number to AT&T using same NY address. Husband will now have individual account with AT&T under NY billing center.
Step 2) Husband should go online to website and change address to SF address. AT&T won't force him to give up his phone number - but it will effectively transfer his 917 number from the NY billing center to the SF billing center.
Step 3) Husband can then successfully join wife's family plan under SF billing center despite his 917 area code.
Could this work?
elmo01 Posts: 2342
Phone Model: Samsung SPH-M510
Service Provider: Bell Canada
Wed Oct 08, 2008 5:26 am
no . ATT all numbers in the family plan MUST be in the same market .billing address has NOTHING to do with it.given your parameters one number would have to change.
you can stay single lines and keep your numbers but no family plan
macr Posts: 4
Wed Oct 08, 2008 1:26 pm
Thanks kindly for your insight. Ok, so you are saying my billing center is determined by my area code - prefix combo alone irrespective of my address? If true, that means my account gets moved from billing center to billing center dependent on my area code - prefix even if my address remains constant.
For example, if I live in NY but change my number to a Chicago number then to a Texas number my account actually gets transferred to the Chicago billing center then to the Texas billing center even while my physical address remains unchanged in NY.
Only way around this is to change my number to a business number which is handled by NBI on a nationwide basis and start a family plan with NBI? (Why businesses numbers would allow family plans at all seems a little odd.)
elmo01 Posts: 2342
Phone Model: Samsung SPH-M510
Service Provider: Bell Canada
Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:19 am
rather than making suppositions why dont you just call customer care?
macr Posts: 4
Fri Oct 10, 2008 9:07 am
Because people here can be more knowledgeable than AT&T customer care reps. The reps usually have a hard time understanding much less answering other than routine questions.
Despite that I called them once again on this issue and got lucky getting a guy who boasted he'd been with AT&T with 5 years. He understood the question perfectly and confirmed that the billing address is irrelevant to determining the billing center - only the phone number does - and that combining numbers on the same bill cross centers is not possible.
macr Posts: 4
Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:37 am
For anyone following this, the solution is to first move your account to the business group which is nationwide. That accomplished the goal for me.
Rates are the same. Have to go through yet another credit check and scrutiny as a business but its not too hard.
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