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I hereby declare myself a phone number porting ninja. I just rearranged my cell numbers and in the process resolved a long standing pain in the ass issue with my main business number I've had increasingly for several years.

I did everything I set out to do. But I found as a by-product that website information from random nobodies is often complete misleading horse shit.

First of all, my cell phone setup looked like this for the last year and a half:

- Business phone number on a BLU HD 6 smart phone, which is an increasingly wheezy and slow 2014 design running Android 5.0. No path to upgrades. And (since I didn't know what I was doing when I bought it) extremely skimpy 8 GB memory for apps, which turned out to only be 5.6 GB available after the OS's needs. I constantly ran out of room to install apps and I was constantly chasing memory use with a memory optimizer. (on that version of Android you can't transparently use an SD card as part of system memory, and when apps upgrade themselves they always move back into the limited phone memory.) I had had this phone number since 2000 when the line it was on was a Sprint line that was part of a dual ISDN data pair. After I got rid of ISDN I kept the number as a landline, I had it ported to Time Warner cable a few years ago, and then onto a Straight Talk cell account.  The BLU phone is extremely awkward to use for normal calls because of its size, so I always had to use an earpiece which worked OK but was one more piece of junk.

- Personal cell number, on a cheap $13 Verizon prepaid flip phone. 300 min or texts/mo for $15+tax, which was all I needed. I had the cell number since 2012 and several people in my life have the number.

Here's the deal with the two phone numbers. I had placed my business number on my websites for years, and also the phone number had started life as a land line. So in the last couple of years I would easily get 10+ spam calls a day on that line. Constantly: business loans, payday loans, marble mouthed Indian scammers, scammers with "arrest you if you do not respond" scam calls, electric providers, etc.

My business line was almost unusable for incoming calls because I never took any rings seriously due to the spam. And the existing apps I found did not do a great job of handling or detecting spam calls. Example: Should I Answer? app. It worked OK but got in the way every time a legitimate call came in.

My personal cell line has always been extremely quiet and only very rarely did it receive spam - usually misdialed calls. I've never publicized that number, ever, and only a few individuals have it. I got the flip phone because the BLU smartphone is impractical as a walk-around day to day phone. It's really in phablet size territory and can't be pocketed with most garments. And it's hard to hold in actual phone use.

But here is another thing driving this change of phone numbers. I upgraded my smart phone to a Moto G5 which has been exceptional, and is much easier to handle and carry and much better battery life and performance than the BLU HD. I realized after using it for a couple of weeks that I was not using the flip phone any. So I was wasting the payment on a second cell phone.

But I still had that suck business number on the nice new smartphone.

I want to keep the business number because it's registered with credit cards, and with tax agencies as a point of contact. But it had gotten useless for incoming calls because most calls are spam.

Here was my idea:

1) Move the business number off of Straight Talk onto a Google Voice account. Google charges $20 one time for porting in. This would spam proof the number, and also, GV has really good controls for things like ringing the phone only during business hours of the work week if you like.

2) With my smart phone now presumably dead with no plan, move my personal cell number from my cheap flip phone I stopped carrying, and onto the smart phone and onto a new plan.

3) My smart phone now has a *private* number with no record of spam, and I stop needing to manage two different cells. So I stop looking like a drug dealer with a burn phone, or a married man having an affair using a second cell phone. 

Also - Google Voice can be used on an Android phone directly as  a secondary phone number, for dialing out and also inbound calls. I've tried it and works really well and the calls sound like normal calls. So I lose nothing with this change.

That's the goal. Here's how it went.

The difficulty I'm finding with porting phone numbers turns out to be acquiring the account number for the provider of the current cell service for the phone number that you wish to port to your new carrier or service.

That account number is not easy to acquire as an end user in certain situations, with some providers.

Sic: If I move off of Straight Talk, I need to know the account number, plus a PIN that you set as a user in their web dashboard, in order to have a successful port. (Straight Talk turns out to be fairly easy and transparent.) Same for any provider.

The old phone number provider won't respond to the porting-out request if the PIN or the account number are incorrect or invalid.

So, I ordered a new Straight Talk SIM card set from Walmart ($0.99) and once it arrived (so I could port to the smart phone ASAP) I got to work.

I found some conflicting info about Straight Talk's account ID. The preponderance of information seemed to say that your account number for porting purposes is the current carrier's SIM card number (actually the last 15 digits of it.)  (This is for a "bring your own phone" situation where you used a SIM that Straight Talk provides. There are other cases where you buy Straight Talk's own phone, where you provide the MEID of the phone instead.)

I went into Google Voice, paid my $20, and initiated the port using the SIM card number as the account number. This was around 1 AM.

By 9 PM the following evening my smart phone was inactive and my Google Voice account showed the ported business line. Yay! So I guessed right.

The REAL challenge was porting my phone number away from Verizon. This is where I ran into absolute website bullshit from internet bullshitters and idiots talking out of their asses.

The issue with Verizon Prepaid is that VZW makes it almost impossible to speak to a customer service rep as a prepaid customer. Their phone system runs you in circles with canned rote recorded bullshit such as instructional audio on setting up voice mail.

And, with prepaid you never receive a paper invoice or bill with an account number. Also, the web interface does NOT show an account number.  You need to ask one of those impossible-to-reach customer service people for your account ID.  In theory.

So most customers have no practical way to acquire their Verizon prepaid account number. You CAN in theory but you have to fight with their phone system.

So I first tried to figure out the account number on my own to save time. One idiot stated that you could open the page source of your VZQ user profile page, and your account number would appear in the source code. I found this, a 10 digit number. Also the same idiot said you append -00001 to the end of that number. (Verizon normal post paid cell accounts have the pattern of -00001 as trailing digits.)

Great, so I used that account number guess to try to port into Straight Talk from VZW.

After waiting a day and a half my phone account on ST was showing "port in progress."

And, oh, yeah. When you request to port your phone number, your existing carrier (the one you're trying to move off of) won't tell you if a porting attempt failed. And, the NEW carrier you're going to may tell you nothing either. As was the case here.

In general: I'm finding in the last couple of years that this process for cell to cell moves either happens in 24 hours or less, or, there is a problem stopping the process and you must find out what it is. If more than a day elapses with no change, you should call the carrier you are porting into and ask them what the problem is.

I got on chat that evening and found that my provided account number was incorrect and therefore the other carrier rejected it. So I guessed right.

Fine. So I ran the poor guy at the other end through several account numbers. It turned out that they could re-submit the request in real time and tell me the result in a few minutes.

The other guesses I found online based on idiotic web advice (which VZW all rejected) were:

The phone number (area+number).
The last four digits of the number.
I also tried the web site source code value without the -00001.

Nothing worked. And one of these tips was written by Verizon staffers on their community forum site! 

Later that evening I found instructions on how to get through to a VZW prepaid wireless rep in a real phone call. You have to enter certain numbers at specific times in their "script". (Note to the board: if you want these instructions offer me something of value like a paid gig. I worked hard to find this, damnit!) Hint: the key was pressing 7 when the phone bot asks you to describe your problem.

Once I got that procedure, I called, was connected in a few minutes to a nice lady rep who spoke clear English, and I got the account number.

For VZW Prepaid it's a 12 character sequence with a leading alpha. Nothing in the number matches any info I found anywhere in my possession.

Clearly Verizon wants to lock in prepaid customers. Jerks.

I got on chat again with Straight Talk, and after a lengthy assed wait because of their system, provided the "good" account number.

The rep had apparently looked at my ticket and asked me "are you sure this is the right number" because of the earlier false tries. I made it clear that I wasn't guessing this time.

They applied the number at like 2:30 in the afternoon. They said it cleared OK and that my phone should be working by 4 PM. It had a signal and I was able to make a call by 3:30.

Later that evening I had a voicemail from Straight Talk on my home phone telling me that the port succeeded and that my phone should be working, which it was. Completely unnecessary and I would have preferred they had been as proactive when the attempt failed earlier.

Straight Talk did their job - I avoided talking to the dreaded time wasting phone support rep in India - BUT - they aren't very helpful if things go wrong.

You the customer must stay on top of the process. Which is probably why most people lose their cell number when they change carriers - hassle factor and passive aggressive vendors like Verizon.

I felt pretty good about wading through all that crap and achieving a desired result.

I have VZN, they recycle numbers. My number was owned by someone named Derek and I get a metric ton of shyt. I had to install Mr. Number and then put entire area codes onto spam block. Like 202, DC  area code.

Not an option for you,I realize.

Who uses phones these days, anyway. It is a dying paradigm IMO. These days it's all about text and email.

Phone calls aggravate the f out of me. I am never in a position to talk when someone calls. Either driving or at the gig or something. When I am available, I cannot remember a single important thing from the call. Such as address time place phone, etc. Have to write it down which means it will get lost.

When people text you, you actually have some valuable info retained and can reference it, months from now.

Wish it were so anyway. Phone calls are so 1995.  They cause much anxiety.

There's a ton of food for thought in your post.

Recycling numbers: it's a reality that area codes of large metro areas become saturated so I pretty much expect that. I've researched my preferred "quiet" cell number - it seems to have been someone's Magicjack number before I got it. All you can do is cycle through new numbers - I think Verizon and other carriers will allow you to ask to just change your cell number - until you get one that doesn't have a SPAM history. And perhaps the fact that a number was once a landline makes it spammy.

I'm finding that moving my spammy business line to Google Voice tremendously quieted down that activity. And GV has its own spam filter you can select.

Yes on all points about phone calls. However, when I deal with a new client, I want to talk to them before accepting a penny from them. The ones I haven't done this with have often been a disaster.

Looks painful but you got it done! Good for you.

Ironically I worked on a system at Ma Bell called LNP - Local Number Portability when it first became possible to move your number around from location to location.

In the past because of the way the phone system was set up, it was impossible to retain your number because each area had its own area code and central office (NPA-NXX-XXXX). Its different today because local number portability has been implemented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Numbering_Plan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_number_portability

A lot of EEs I graduated with went to work for one of the telcos, Western Electric or Bell Labs in the early 80s, and I recall having phone number assignments explained back then such that they sounded a lot like IP addresses. Today phone numbers are an arbitrary identity tag, I guess.

Yep. I am impressed you pulled this off. I did the number move once from Google to Skype to Line2. It was a pretty painful ordeal. Have not wanted to do it again.

I use this VoIP service called Line2 that allows me to have a second line on my cell phone. You just have to an account and the app and away you go. The nice thing about Line2 is you can make calls from pretty much any device - smart phone, PC, Mac. And its a regular phone number. I pay $9.99/month and have had it for years. I got it because I had this job where I was conference calls at home all the time and at the time it was very easy to blow out your minutes on your cell phone.

It doesnt really matter today because you have unlimited minutes on your cell phone but I still keep it because I work at home a lot and I have a USB speakerphone attached to my work computer. Using Line2 is just like having a line at your desk.

I also use this line when I am interviewing. I dont want any of these body shops to have my personal phone number.