*phew* finally made the switch to Airvoice $10/month plan! That was more of a headache than I bargained for.
It all started last month when I was following MMM's instructions to switch over from T-Mobile (I have an unlocked Nexus One, and I don't care about the 3G incompatibility). I got the SIM card and filled out the port your number form, but I kept screwing up.
You have to call Airvoice to figure out what went wrong with the port, and their phone lines are always jammed. I have to wait between 3 and 10 minutes every time I call. The first time, they told me I didn't have the PIN correct. I thought it was my voicemail PIN; nope, it's something different. I called T-Mobile and found out the PIN is the last 4 digits of my SSN; good to know! But by the time I figured this out, I had just started a new month of T-Mobile service, and they don't prorate when you cancel. So instead of wasting money porting right then I decided to wait a few weeks and enjoy my data that I had just paid for.
Then, a week in advance of my billing cycle date, I tried to port again. It didn't work, again; I called Airvoice, sat on hold for 10 minutes, and found out that the account number was wrong. T-Mobile account numbers show up on your billing statement, or on the my.t-mobile.com website when viewing your bill. Once found, I gave Airvoice the correct account number over the phone.
The next day (today), still no port! I called again, waited 10 minutes, and found out they couldn't do the port because I activated the SIM I bought from them. Despite everything the instructions that come with the SIM say, do NOT go online to activate the SIM card! Since today was the close of my T-Mobile billing cycle and any additional delay would cost another $60, I had to get this resolved; I went to the nearest AT&T store and talked one of the store employees into giving me an unactivated AT&T SIM card. AirVoice will accept unactivated SIM cards from AT&T, but as a rule they are not supposed to do this. I had to be super vague and annoying to the poor store employee who kept wanting to activate the SIM for me, but I insisted that I was going to "do it over the phone," conveniently omitting the fact that I wasn't buying AT&T service. With the new SIM in hand, I called Airvoice again, waited only about 5 minutes this time, gave them the new SIM ID, and the port went through!
I'm just glad this whole mess is done, and that I'll get to stash an extra $40-50/month from now on. Lesson learned: I should have called T-Mobile to get the account number and PIN from them, instead of guessing. I wish I had known the SIM activation was irreversible, or I'd have logically tried porting before activating.