AT&T: A How To Guide

How to take your number from one family plan from your home state, and your husbands from another family plan in his home state, to create your own family plan in the North.

Step 1:
You Can't.

Step 2:
Keep talking to people to try to figure out some way to make it happen.

Step 3:
Give up and admit defeat.

We have made numerous phone calls and visits to AT&T stores to try to achieve our initial goal. We have finally come up with a work-around which involves an admission of partial defeat.

Here's how the process went:

Day 1:

• Get account numbers from current accounts from primary account holders. (Remember, both are more than 1000 miles away.)

Day 2:

• Call AT&T to get everything rolling and get all the way through the process (30+minutes) before the customer service representative realizes she can't do it. She doesn't know why and gets her supervisor who says there was a way to do it and gives us an explanation (45+minutes) that was confusing and turns out was also impossible.

Day 3:

• Go to AT&T store to try to get clarification on the possibility of combining phone numbers from different markets(states) into a single family plan. 
• Receive explanation that seems satisfactory and makes goal look achievable. 
• Leave disappointed that it can't happen right away because a release of one phone number from previous family plan is needed.
• Make phone call to primary account holder and have them call AT&T to release the line. This is done in less than an hour and seems to have been the easiest part. (Thanks PPS!)

Day 4:

• Go back to AT&T store to explain situation and get new account started now that all the "ducks are in a row". 
• Talk to extremely nice sales guy who explains that nothing we have been told up to this point is correct. The phone numbers cannot ever be combined into a single account no matter what. 
• Find out that it is possible for one of us to keep our original number but the other person has to get a new number in the same area code as the one who keeps their number. 
• Settle on this being the only option that will work. 
• Discuss and decide who will keep their original number since we've both had our numbers for 10+ years. 
• Share decision with sales guy. 
• Find out we will have to come back tomorrow.
• Enjoy seeing a light bulb go off over our heads when we realize we can just port the second number into GoogleTalk and therefore, technically still keep both original numbers. 
• Do a small happy dance.
• Hang out in basement blogging about the experience while singing along as your husband jams out Papa Roach, Creed and 3 Doors Down on his oh-so-cool green electric guitar.

Day 5:

• Return to AT&T store to get new account set up and FINALLY get new phone.
• Do a BIG happy dance along with the other three people in line with you that are also upgrading from an iPhone 3G.