Porting – Avoiding Carrier-Blocks and Redundant Charges (/porting)

UPDATE – 2011/03/01:

Ok, another update: based on THIS HoFo thread it seems that cx can have the 30-day ‘fee’ waived internally within Rogers, without having to file a CCTS complaint, but you’ll have to push and/or get to the right rep (RET dep’t?)

So all in this would seem to be the best way:
– go ahead an do your port whenever you darned well feel like it
– after it’s all done promptly call Rogers and tell them to reverse your 30-day fee because you ported out, or else you’ll just file a complaint with CCTS about it (and CCTS will force Rogers to reverse the charge if you file a complaint)
– if Rogers doesn’t co-operate then either escalate to OoP or CCTS (I recommend CCTS) per this Rogers complaint escalation flowchart

UPDATE – 2010/11/13:

It would seem that the CCTS is getting wind (sorry for the pun) of the problems with porting, esp re the 30-days overlap in billing. They specifically mention this issue in their 2009-10 Annual Report (see page 29: “Number Portability – Sometimes Not As Easy As It Looks” in the pdf; the link to that report is on this page: /CCTS).

What they say to do is to “future date the port” by 30 days – specifically this (quotation begins on pdf page 30):

A second option involves “future dating” of a porting
order. We have found during the course of some
investigations that providers can future date a porting
order by up to 30 days. So when the new provider receives
a request to port in a customer’s number, it can date
the request 30 days into the future. The old provider can
accept this as the customer’s 30 days’ notice. During
this period the old provider continues to provide service
and only it bills the customer. Thirty days later, when the
number is ported, the new provider begins to provide the
service and only it bills the customer. One phone call, one
monthly fee.

Until such time as the industry has created another
solution, we recommend that customers seeking to port
their number to a new provider first verify whether they
are required to provide 30 days’ notice of termination
to their current provider. If such notice is required, we
recommend that the customer ask the new provider to
future date the porting order by 30 days.

What’s my own take on this advice? Well, on one hand it has great provenance since it comes straight from the CCTS.

On the other hand though: I’ve never heard of “future-dating” a port so it’s probable that most carriers and/or reps would have little idea about this and would likely a) refuse or b) attempt to do it but screw it up.

The CCTS info doesn’t specifically say, but I’m assuming that when you give the ‘future-dated port’ instruction to your new carrier they enter into the shared, carriers’ database the port instruction, but future date it (and that entry into the database is what communicates your ‘notice of cancellation’ to your old carrier).

What a nuisance! Thanks so much there, Rogers.

The below is my original advice about minimizing billing-overlap when porting, and TTBOMK is still valid if this above information is not to your liking.

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… below is my original post on this issue…
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Usefulness:

Knowing about the way porting works (and the need for 30 days notice of cancellation) can help you avoid paying for a full 30 days of unused Rogers or Fido service when you port_out your number to another carrier, or even having your port instruction get blocked altogether.

Details:

Specifically, knowing about way that Rogers and Fido mishandle the notice-of-cancellation vs porting_out process can help you avoid:

– paying for 30 days of overlapping cell service when you port_out from Rogers or Fido, and/or
– having your port instruction get blocked because of an arbitrary and improper cx-admin ‘feature’ used by Rogers and Fido

Do note: it doesn’t matter when, in your billing cycle, you want a cancellation or port to actually take effect – charges will be pro-rated and it just works out, so don’t sweat trying to coincide your billing date with the cancellation date or the date you port your number or anything.

The intended goal with a smartly-executed porting of your number is: you want to port your number away from Rogers or Fido and avoid paying for overlapping cell service with the new carrier.

This is an overview:

– you have to give your current carrier (Rogers or Fido) 30 days of advance notice of cancellation (per the ToS s. 31)
– or else they’ll charge you for that missing 30-days of notice,
– and the day you port counts usually counts as your cancellation date,
– unless you have previously given a notice of cancellation
– (which is the smart thing to do so you don’t pay needlessly for Rogers or Fido service that you can’t even use)
– however by default Rogers & Fido handle such a ‘pending-cancellation‘ account as “frozen” and arbitrarily, also blocked from porting (for no good or “Service Agreement”-compliant reason, FWICT)
– …and they will do this unless you specifically inform the rep , at the time you’re giving your advance notice of cancellation, of your intent to port
– (in which case I believe no ‘pending cancellation’ [“frozen“] flag is placed on your account, but instead a notation is simply made to your account and your actual end-of-billing date will have to be manually adjusted after the port is done, or else it will be wrong and you’ll be incorrectly charged too much)

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The cause of this grief is that the Rogers & Fido cx-admin systems “freeze” an account once this advance-notice-of-cancellation has been implemented by the cx, and if a port request comes in from another carrier thereafter both Rogers and Fido will refuse to release the number for porting – IOW they’ll block the port. (AIUI from reps, simply because of this “frozen” state of the account.) Even though there’s no right in the Service Agreement for Rogers/Fido to deny you porting your number when you have provided advance notice of cancellation (making Rogers/Fido’s port-blocking a breach of contract FWICT).

It seems that you can work around the grief, and reduce your overlapped cell-phone billing time to 5 days, this way:

1) Figure out the date you want to port your number, that is 25 days or more in the future
2) Your selected “cancellation date” will be 5 days after that, note it
3) Call into Rogers or Fido and advise them of your “cancellation date”
4) Tell the rep you will be porting your number so you need to make sure that it’s not frozen or blocked in any way
4a) What the rep should then do is leave your account entirely unchanged, except to place a note on your account that you called in on such-and-such date and gave your advance notice of cancellation
5) If you want to double-check that the actual port process won’t get screwed up: right before you call the new carrier to port first call in to Rogers/Fido and verify that you account won’t be blocked from porting; then right afterward…
6) Call your new carrier to effect the port (approx 5 days before your date of cancellation)
7) After the port has completed successfully call Rogers to make sure they don’t intend to bill you for 30 days from date of port, and that your initial cancellation date takes precedence for final-bill calculations
8) When you get your final bill verify that it’s correct too (you’ll probably need this link: /complaint)

I hope this helps people avoid having their port instructions blocked needlessly, or paying for a full month of service they can’t use, when porting away from Rogers & Fido!

To close I’ll give you some links that Rogers has, related to porting:
– rogers.com/LNP
– the “Local Number Portability FAQs” on that page leads to here
– the “What To Expect When You Transfer Your Number” link that leads here

UPDATE – 2010/11/13: