Wind Mobile has a technical problem porting numbers in Ottawa

According to the Wind Mobile customer representative that I spoke with yesterday, Wind has a technical problem that is hindering the transfer of certain blocks of telephone numbers from carriers in the Ottawa area.  This problem was apparently identified some time ago, and it was believed to have been resolved – that is, until yesterday when it was discovered that the issue was affecting my account.

I signed up for Wind service last week, with the promise that the phone number I have been using with Bell Mobility for the past five years would be easily ported to Wind within a few hours.  It wasn’t. After many calls to customer service, and repeated verification of the details of my Bell account, I was finally told yesterday that a manual process had to be used to transfer my number because the automated system was malfunctioning.

The customer representative that I spoke with didn’t provide much in the way of details, but he did say that the problem was entirely the fault of Wind Mobile, and had nothing to do with Bell or the information that I had provided.  I have to admit, as aggravating as this has been, it was nice to have them at least take responsibility for the delay in service.

I was also told that my service would be up by Tuesday. We’ll see.  Having been told four times in the last week that a Wind representative would call me back (one actually claiming that he personally would call back), and never actually receiving any of the promised calls, I’m not holding my breath that the promise of service on Tuesday will be kept.

Like I said, we’ll see.

Update: My phone works! Woot!

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Still waiting…

So last night, after waiting all day with the hope that my number port would finally go through, I sent Wind Mobile’s customer support people a message using the Contact Us form on the website.  I immediately received an automatic response indicating that they would endeavour to respond within 48 hours.

Well, technically that 48 hours isn’t up yet but since the initial estimate of 3 hours for my number port has inexplicably turned into 4 days and counting… I’ve stopped holding my breath.

I decided yesterday that I would at least give them an extra day, just in case the delay was due to my having chosen to sign up on a Saturday.  Well, two extra days is more than enough.

Tonight, Wind is getting a call.

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The big switch – Bell to Wind

Over the weekend I officially signed up to have my cellphone service switched from Bell to Wind – and have my number ported along with the new service.

I was told by the Wind representative that the switch generally takes about 3 hours, but could take as long as three days.  I had also talked with friends and colleagues who have ported numbers to and from other companies without incident.

But… as soon as I got home, excited to use my new phone, I was lurking around the Wind Mobile Community website – and discovered dozens of horror stories from people trying to port their number to Wind!

There are complaints of multiple errors with account numbers, multiple calls to customer service and hours waiting on hold. There was even one person who’s phone number was lost somewhere between the two companies – neither of which is apparently able to retrieve it.

Needless to say, I’m getting anxious.  I’ve been waiting for my new phone to work for three days – the max that I was told I should wait before getting in touch with customer service.  In the mean time, I’m technically paying for phone service with two different companies at the same time.

So, I wait.

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The winds of disappointment

I was in a Blockbuster video store a few days ago (yes, you can in fact still get movies from a store!) and noticed that a part of the store had been converted into a booth for WIND Mobile.

I’ve been wanting to change phone companies for a long time, but I’ve been waiting for WIND to come to Ottawa.  I admit that I was rather disappointed when they announced expansion to Edmonton.  Not that I have anything against Edmonton, but I don’t live there.

So you can imagine my surprise when I saw the booth, despite not hearing anything in the news.  Well, it turns out that Blockbuster is just “getting ready” – WIND isn’t actually here yet.

Strange… I’m not usually disappointed by a telephone company until after I start using its service.

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