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Porting a Bell landline number

W

Hello,

I am trying to help my mother with a phone number port from a Bell landline. She is a senior with very low tech confidence level and is absolutely beside herself with anxiety about this, because the port is partway completed, reps on the phone have been unable to provide any meaningful feedback about the status of the request and the time it is taking, and she is going away on a trip in a few days during which she needs her mobile phone.

The port request was created on Friday 5/19. The mobile number was dropped from the device and began calling out using the landline number on Sunday 5/21. The landline still works for inbound and outbound calling.

There is a possibility that the port request may have been re-submitted by Koodo again late in the day on Sunday 5/21. We have not received clear information from any rep to confirm this, but one person said something that made it seem like this may have happened.

How long should we be expecting this to take? The self serve portal says 2.5 hours. Reps on the phone says 24-48 hours. Past forum posts says 3-5 days, but no confirmation once complete of how long it really took. Obviously, being a landline, I understand Bell has extra steps to do, but it would be really nice if there was better clarity about this process, such as an upfront warning that Bell landlines take longer.

As she requires the phone to work during her trip, we are faced with the decision of just continuing to wait and see if this completes, or attempting to cancel the port and get issued a new phone number (which it seems to me creates a risk of losing the Bell number forever if they action the port-out anyway).

If there is anything you can tell me to try to calm my mother down, it will be much appreciated.

Thank you.

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13 replies

Sophia
Userlevel 7
Badge +4

Landline porting takes 5 business days, so your mom seems to be still within that time period. What we did during that time was forward the landline to our temporary cell number, so we could still be reached. Calling out was possible on the temporary number.

It's a little bit of a scary time having to wait that out, but once done, she'll never look back I'm sure.

W

Landline porting takes 5 business days, so your mom seems to be still within that time period. What we did during that time was forward the landline to our temporary cell number, so we could still be reached. Calling out was possible on the temporary number.

It's a little bit of a scary time having to wait that out, but once done, she'll never look back I'm sure.

Thank you for your response.

5 business days potentially puts us into her trip, depending on precisely when all the right buttons get pushed. This will almost certainly mean buying a prepaid SIM for the trip. I realize this is not your problem, but providing context.

There is no temporary cell number at this time. That number is now out of service. The cell phone works for outbound calling only using the landline number (and can receive no inbound calls, and no texting in or out).

The obvious question is “why did she choose to do this so close to her trip”, and the answer is unfortunately Koodo’s fault. It should have been made clear that Bell landlines take longer to port. With that knowledge, she would not have decided to do it.

Sophia
Userlevel 7
Badge +4

Oh but there will definitely be a temporary number for her to use - you have received the SIM card yet right? And as I said, you could forward the Bell number to that so basically there is no real disadvantage to having both a landline and a cellphone for the first day(s) of her trip. If she doesn’t seem to have service, try rebooting the phone.

W

Oh but there will definitely be a temporary number for her to use - you have received the SIM card yet right? And as I said, you could forward the Bell number to that so basically there is no real disadvantage to having both a landline and a cellphone for the first day(s) of her trip. If she doesn’t seem to have service, try rebooting the phone.

There was indeed a “temporary” number (porting was not specified at time of signing up) - she has been using the phone with a Koodo-issued number for the last couple months. That number is now out of service since Sunday morning.

That is really the core problem here. The phone is not usable since the port request became “halfway done”, which is how it sits right now.

Sophia
Userlevel 7
Badge +4

That is definitely very strange. Until the port has finalized, nothing should have changed with her Koodo number. Let me flag a rep, hopefully they will be able to look into your account and/or advise further action :)

Edit: oh, you would need to be signed into this community with the account email address, can you confirm that this is the case?

W

That is definitely very strange. Until the port has finalized, nothing should have changed with her Koodo number. Let me flag a rep, hopefully they will be able to look into your account and/or advise further action :)

Edit: oh, you would need to be signed into this community with the account email address, can you confirm that this is the case?

The account I used to create this thread is not her Self Serve account, and the email address between them is not the same.

As I created the account originally, I could definitely sign into it, but I don’t want to use it to participate on the community (trying to get answers here without blowing up mom’s email in the process).

Sophia
Userlevel 7
Badge +4

In that case, flagging won't be very useful. I suggest calling the porting department at 1-844-232-7678. Hope you get it sorted before the trip!

W

In that case, flagging won't be very useful. I suggest calling the porting department at 1-844-232-7678. Hope you get it sorted before the trip!

Understood, thank you.

The automated system at that number still says the same it did the other day, which is that the request is in progress, and that any updates will be sent by SMS.

The only problem with this, of course, is that she cannot currently receive SMS until the porting is complete. I suppose any text message saying there’s a problem will be sent as a Txt2Landline, which I guess she could receive if she is available to answer the phone at the time of the message.

W

Adding some unpleasantness to the mix:

In my circle of friends and work contacts I have numerous connections to Bell - none to Telus, unfortunately. I normally reserve bugging them for important things, and this has become important.

A current Bell technician has advised there is no port request pending on the number. His recommendation was that Koodo needs to reach out to Bell, via live person-to-person interaction (e.g. not just submit the request through the usual process).

A past Bell technician who now works for a competitor says that their standard wait time for a Bell port is 8 days.

Obviously, it is unclear if the lack of a ticket is because Bell just hasn’t created it yet, and that’s part of the “2.5 to 24 to 48 hours to 5 days to 8 days” wait time.

Edit:
Turns out I do have a professional connection to Telus, and I made that call just now. 7 to 10 business days is the standard wait time for a Bell POTS line port. I’ve been advised that the process is most likely working normally, our expectations have just been skewed by bad information given by Koodo.

Sophia
Userlevel 7
Badge +4

That's a bummer. At least you know you're in the process, but that is hardly any comfort I'm sure.

For the duration of the travel you might consider Public Mobile with a one month subscription. I understand that they just went live with free eSIM activation, so if your mother has a phone that supports that, she might actually enjoy both lines simultaneously for a little while.

W

That's a bummer. At least you know you're in the process, but that is hardly any comfort I'm sure.

For the duration of the travel you might consider Public Mobile with a one month subscription. I understand that they just went live with free eSIM activation, so if your mother has a phone that supports that, she might actually enjoy both lines simultaneously for a little while.

I’m looking at options for something along the lines of a prepaid SIM card (or a month of postpaid with whomever).

It actually is somewhat of a comfort because I was finally able to put her concerns to rest. I was truly shocked that Koodo misinformed us so severely about this. In a past job, I worked in a call centre providing account management for similar services, and my approach was always to tell customers the worst case scenario. I’m already a customer; you already have my money. There’s literally no point in overpromising.

Repeat callbacks hurt the reps metrics, so why wouldn’t they set people up with a realistic (or pessimistic) expectation so customers can take a step back, relax, and accept that there’s nothing they can do?

In the grand scheme of things this is a minor inconvenience but it is absolutely something that Koodo should address, and I’ll write it up as an ‘idea’ once this process is actually finished.

Sophia
Userlevel 7
Badge +4

I would definitely recommend prepaid for just one month. The hassle of signing up, credit check, the cost of activation, then having to call in to cancel etc are insane otherwise. I noticed that none of Public Mobile’s original (cheap) plans are showing on their website. Not sure if that’s a glitch (they went live today with the updated site), but Koodo prepaid is quite robust too. After the one time payment and activation you can just let it expire afterwards.

W

I was specifically looking at a prepaid plan with a US carrier which includes a high usage limit of Canadian roaming. Part of her trip takes her into the US, and it appears that Canadian prepaid plans generally don’t offer very attractive US roaming options. Additionally, her phone supports VoLTE but not VoLTE Roaming (why there is a distinction, I may never truly grasp) so given that we still have 3G towers but the Americans do not, there would be an advantage to the ‘native’ carrier being American. I think. But anyway, it looks like that won’t be needed.

As of late this afternoon, the mobile phone is now fully working for calls and SMS! The Self Serve portal indicates the request is complete. The landline, curiously, is still working for outbound calls only. Clearly a Bell tech needs to go pull a plug somewhere.

So, the time required was as follows:

3 business days accounting for the holiday

4 business days ignoring the holiday

6 calendar days (which is what Koodo reps all said is how it is counted)

Not to mention the Bell account clearly still exists as the line still works, so there is unfinished business remaining here at this time.

6 calendar days is a far cry from the promised 24-48 hours (and we must not forget that the self serve portal says 2.5 hours!). It is still an entirely reasonable number of days, but people need to know this sort of thing up front.

Certainly, thank you for your input in this thread.

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