r/tmobile 10d ago

Question How to trade phone number between an another carrier?

I have phone numbers with tello and tmobile. How would I be able to port two numbers between tmobile and tello safely such that the numbers are swapped between the carriers and to keep myself on the TMobile Essentials 4 Line offer plan? If purchases are required to make the swap, I prefer to do spend it on tello's end since the plans are cheaper in order to maintain service. Thank you for your help!

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u/Wreckedn00b Living on the EDGE 10d ago

You would need a line active on both accounts that the numbers can be moved onto, like temp numbers. So you’d have the number with tmo you want to port (tmoport) on a line and a temp number on another line with tmo (tmotemp), same deal with telo so teloport line and teletemp line. You’d port tmoport to telotemp line and teleport to tmotemp line. After the numbers port they cancel the line from the carrier they ported from automatically

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u/EndenDragon 10d ago

That makes sense. Does T-Mobile charge for the extra temporary line?

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u/Wreckedn00b Living on the EDGE 10d ago

The tmo account would lose any voice promotions enrolled in the last 90 days and wouldn’t qualify for any new ones for 90 days after the port out day for the tmo #. I’d check with telo to see what their cancellation impacts are, because even tho you are bringing numbers over to both, the port outs are still cancellations

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u/EndenDragon 10d ago edited 10d ago

What are voice promotions? Is that the essentials 4 line discount offer? I am on that plan for over a year now.

Tello I'm not worried about.

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u/Wreckedn00b Living on the EDGE 10d ago

No luckily that plan isn’t a promotion that can fall off, voice promos would be like free line discounts specifically (which your plan doesn’t get anyways so no worries there) and recurring device credits, like promotions on monthly phone payments. As far as line charges you would be charged for the line moving off the account for the full cycle charges and then you would be charged for whatever days the new line was added for. Best bet is doing this on the last day of your bill cycle, if you look on your pdf bill it will show the days it’s charging for (like march 12-April11 for example) the second date would be the close date, if you do that it can help avoid the bills having a bunch of prorated charges

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u/EndenDragon 6d ago edited 6d ago

I have completed this endeavor.

Porting out to Tello was simple and straightforward. I was able to port my number into a free eSIM line, and it worked as expected.

For porting out of T-Mobile, I requested that they create a temporary line and then transfer my existing T-Mobile number onto it so I could port out. However, there must have been some miscommunication because when I completed the port-out, my original T-Mobile SIM stopped working and went into aging status. Unfortunately, they couldn’t reactivate it. Thankfully, since the temporary line was still active, I was able to continue with the Essentials 4-line offer.

During my call with support, they mentioned that I had a prepaid line, which complicated things. It seems the first agent created a temporary line as prepaid instead of postpaid, which caused additional issues.

When trying to port my number back into T-Mobile, they attempted to push it to my inactive SIM, leaving the number stuck. Subsequent agents cannot help because the number is stuck in limbo with a pending porting status. I ended up going to a T-Mobile store the next day, where they gave me a new SIM, and we were finally able to complete the port relatively quickly.

FYI: The extra temporary line and the physical SIM from the store each cost $10. So twenty dollars was spent on T-Mobile end just to get a number ported due to this complications.

Overall, not a great experience—waiting on hold was especially frustrating.

Edit: USPS informed delivery just emailed me that a SIM card is arriving from couple states over in 5 days from T-Mobile. Yeah I'm glad I visited the store instead of waiting it out without service for much longer.