U.S. Cellular: could stand a “competence” injection
30 Oct 2004 
around evening time 
Matt Winckler
I woke up this morning and immediately checked to see if the phone transfer had taken place, like U.S. Cellular said it would yesterday. I picked up the house phone–still a dial tone. Not a good sign, or so I thought. I tried dialing the home number, and my fears were confirmed: the old adage had proven true, that “the devil you know is better than a kick in the groin on a cold morning.” My listening ear was greeted by that emotionless lady of the phone lines, telling me that I had dialed a number that was disconnected or no longer in service. The line from Henry V ran through my head as particularly applicable here: “I was not angry since I came to France, until this instant!!”
The U.S. Cellular store didn’t open until 10:00, so I ate breakfast and worked up a good cold fury, unmatched in malevolence, to unleash at the mindless minions manning the marketplace this morning. When 10:00 finally rolled around, I was down at the store, and was out for blood–this being a week after I was told it would be working in an hour, and six days after I was told it would be working in a day, and still four days after I was told it really wasn’t their fault, and just one day after being told it would be working by midnight. My longsuffering had run out, and it was time for somebody to pay the piper. The droid I’d been working with happened to be at the store, which pleased me greatly, because it is always better to direct vengeance upon those who have wronged you in the first place. I told her in no uncertain terms that having no phone service at my house was entirely unacceptable, and was ready to play the “911 isn’t available when I don’t have phone service, and you are opening yourself up to a world full of lawsuits if the slightest thing should go wrong while you have my phone serviced munged…” But it turns out I didn’t have to. She called the national porting service or whatever they use, asked why it wasn’t working, etc. and they putzed around with the phone for a few minutes, dialing this and beeping that, and finally the bright spark on the other end of the line told our local friend to turn off the phone and turn it back on, and everything worked.
If I weren’t so relieved that it finally works, I would have seen fit to chew the ditz out for not knowing about this prior to something going wrong. (”You have done this before, right? I mean, it is your job, right?”) As it is, this hopefully closes the saga of the number portability adventure, and we can start packing away our regular phones. To those who are thinking about porting their numbers over, here is my advice: it really isn’t that bad a process. Just don’t believe anything that U.S. Cellular tells you about when it will be ready. Expect it to be ready in a month, and no sooner.