If you are considering using Cricket Wireless, I strongly advise against it, if there is any remote possibility that you want to port the numbers to a different provider.
I’ve been working with a client on their sales team. One of the salespeople is using a Cricket Wireless phone, which is problematic when it comes to call recordings, transcripts, or other automation.
My client tried multiple times to port, and it got rejected multiple times. On May 31, they attempted it again, and Cricket reported, “Pending order”.
When I called them on June 4, I was informed that they had port requests from multiple service providers for each of the numbers, but that they’d file a ticket with the backoffice so that we could figure out which service provider to cancel. I was informed that canceling one of the survice providers would result in the port being completed automatically.
I was promised a call back within 24-48 hours. When I didn’t hear anything, I called them back directly. I escalated the call through 2-3 levels.
This time, I got a completely different answer.
This time, the answer was: “We don’t know why it failed. You need to confirm your PIN with the receiving carrier.”
Furthermore, “We don’t have any information about why ports failed. That’s all on the receiving carrier.” This is NOT true. Ports may be denied for delinquent accounts, and more. This information has to exist within Cricket somewhere, if we can only find it.
It seemed pretty clear to the person I spoke with on the phone was stonewalling me, and that he wasn’t being particularly truthful or honest about the situation.
His advice was to cancel all of the ports, then to try again. We had already done this multiple times. But, we complied and tried again.
By Wednesday, June 12, the receiving carrier had submitted the information. On Monday, June 17, we received a message indicating that the port had been rejected due to an invalid account number.
When we called support, we confirmed that we had used the correct account number and PIN. Their advice? Cancel the port and resubmit! This was the process we had just completed!
I asked to escalate the call. I spoke with Christian at Cricket. He informed me that they had multiple outstanding port requests that were pending. I conferenced in the receiving carrier, who confirmed that both of their port requests were rejected. Then, Christian notified me that the status had changed to being rejected. Finally, he suggested that perhaps the port hadn’t completed because the receiving carrier didn’t allow porting multiple numbers. In a conference call with the receiving carrier, the receiving carrier did confirm that they did support receiving multiple numbers.
As of June 18, we are trying to port only 1 number instead of 2. We are requesting a new PIN, because Cricket is not giving us information before the port expires.
Bottom line… I keep hoping something changes, but if not, I actively discourage the reader, from getting a line with Cricket Wireless until they can resolve this issue. We have a salesperson with an active pipeline using a Cricket Phone Number and we have NO WAY to port this number to a different carrier.
Thanks!
Matthias