I'm considering porting my long-held number to Google Voice and switching to prepaid service. Unfortunately that would mean being hit with an ETF, but the savings would still work out. But it occurred to me that because I have an unlimited data plan I could probably easily find someone to assume liability for the remainder of my contract (14 months), and avoid the ETF entirely.
I know porting will automatically cancel the line with Verizon, leaving nothing for anyone to assume liability for, and that cancelling will relinquish the number, leaving it unavailable for porting.
If I port out, then call and claim I didn't know that would result in cancelling the line, would I be able to get the plan back without porting the number back?
Is there any way I can do BOTH?
I tried to do something similar.....but it didn't turn out like I had expected.
I wanted to port out my number to Virgin Mobile and get a new Verizon number on my "dumb" cell phone. Verizon said "No", if I port the number out, they will consider my contract cancelled and I will have to pay the ETF.
I went to Radio Shack and purchased their new VM HTC EVO 4G phone for $300 and activated it with a new number. My cost for service was $35/month for 350 mins voice/unlimited data. It took a full day to get the phone activated, but once done, it was pretty nice. The new phone had the new Android ICS OS and was really fast.
I then ported my Verizon number to VM, knowing I would have to pay a $200 ETF. It took a full day for VM to complete the porting process, along with more than an hour with several calls on my VOIP line with VM Customer Service, but the porting was eventually successful.
Sadly to say, the very next day, my wife got ill and we had a death in my extended family and at the same time, the VM service went from "just OK" to piss-poor (very, very weak signal and no data). I came to the conclusion that saving $20/month wasn't worth the risk, so I called Verizon.
Verizon gave me a deal I never expected. They let me come back into my old plan as if I had never left, and because I was just six months from my normal phone upgrade time, they immediately upgraded me to a RAZR MAXX for $199 and waived the $35 upgrade fee and also waived the $30 reconnect fee, and in addition gave me 500 text messages per month for free for the next 12 months.
Needless to say, I ported my number back to Verizon and took the VM phone to Radio Shack and got a full refund on it except for the $35 Virgin Mobile monthly fee.
I recently received (and paid) my monthly Verizon bill, and there was no change at all in my cost for service. The only thing...my contract expires 16 month later that it would have had I not taken the actions that I did.
Good luck...and happy 4th of July !!!
