How to move your Verizon Phone number to google voice

Warnings 

Do this at your own risk - I'm only telling you what worked for me.  I don't know if it will work for you.


FYI:  I have an android phone - an HTC Rezound.

If you have grandfathered service such as unlimited data, a text plan cheaper than $10 which are no longer offered from Verizon you will loose them.   They are associated with your phone number which you are loosing.   They did let me sign up for their current best offers - like 12GB for the price of 6GB.

If you have 4G phone you will have to go to a Verizon card and get a new sim card.  Which for me at least didn't cost anything. 

You may be fined the fee for breaking your contact (over $300 in my case).   I'm hoping this is cancelled now that I've re-connected my account.  (I haven't been charged yet, so I'm not sure what will happen - I've been told if I get charged it should be cancelled because I re-connected.   It's also possible they will pull the whole amount from my checking using auto-bill pay, then credit it back to my account which would be annoying as it will take months and months before I used up that credit).

You will loose your phone insurance if you have it - it is associated with your phone number.  I was told I can't get it back through Verizon.

It will take up to 24 hours to port your number.   In my case it took almost exactly 24 hours and my verizon cell phone turned off and with in minutes I got a notification email from google telling me that the transition was complete.   My ported number then started working on Google immediately for VOICE calls (not SMS/texting).  My verizon phone could no longer make or receive calls.

It took around 3 days before texting worked to the google voice number.   I don't know if I was sent any text messages during that interval.  If I was I've never received them.

I learned switching to google voice as my primary number has some downsides.

• Google doesn't support Picture Messaging to a google voice number at this time.  (Sounds like they have something for Sprint but not Verizon).
• You either have to turn on or off call screening for all callers or particular groups, but not per phone number.  I was hoping to turn off call screening for just my new cell phone number and leave it on everywhere else.  This doesn't seem possible. 

I might recommend making these changes early during the work week so its easier to call support or go into a store rather than on a weekend.    It may turn out that I wish I had done this near the end of a billing cycle.  It's risky to change anything at Verizon during the middle of a billing cycle because for me at least in the past if I change something mid-cycle they are helpful by only charging me for the percentage of the month (old plan) I used.  But what isn't obvious is that same percentage applies to your minutes.  So if you used 90% of your minutes in the first 50% of the month you might see overage charges. 

They may ask you to set up a new line to get your phone working - I don't recommend this as I don't believe it is free.   But I'm not sure.

EXTRA WARNING:  This caused a lot of confusion with in Verizon support staff.  I've been without my phone for a almost a week - some had heard of Google Voice others had not.  I'm hoping telling you about my steps will stream line the change for you.

Read the Google Voice Porting FAQ

https://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1065667&topic=1708418&ctx=topic

Steps which worked for me.

I might recommend making these changes during the week so its easier to call support or go into a store rather than on a weekend.  You may also want to do this near the end of your billing cycle, I'm not sure. See my warning above.

1. Call Verizon and talk to support and tell them what you are trying to do (they may not understand but at least they have record that you called them).   They call it a "port out".
2. Start the google voice porting process which requires your verizon account number, phone number, some PIN (I'm not sure when I set a PIN with verizon), and maybe address and other basic info.
3. 24 hours later that number within an hour my cell phone stopped working and google voice started working using the new number.   Text messaging stopped working for 3 days then it started working again on Google voice.
4. I tried to deal with verizon 2-3 times over the course of 3 days to figure it what to do next.
5. Eventually when I called Verizon I learned I wanted to do a reconnected as normally done by the  "winback" team.   This is the process the use to reconnect after someone leaves for another provider like Sprint but quickly comes back.  
6. They told me to go into the store and tell them I wanted to reconnect as part of a winback process.
7. At the store they gave me a new 4G sim card and phone number - without charge.  I lost grandfathered plans associated with my old number, and phone insurance all associated with my phone number. 
8. My new phone number is working.
9. Wait and see if I get charged for anything....
10. UPDATES BELOW 5/9/2012
11. I got lots of texts from Verizon thanking me for getting a new phone. (I didn't get a new phone.)
12. I logged into the Verizon web page and it asked which number to associate with my online account. I choose my new number.  This stopped a reoccurring error with the "Backup Assistant" Android app from Verizon on my HTC Rezound.  (Note I don't think the app could download my old contacts, but since they were still on the phone - they are just re-uploaded once and I continue life as usual.)

If this process worked (or didn't work) for you tell me in the comments.

Christian Quotes

My favorite quotes and excerpts from this page.

http://christianity.about.com/od/independenceday/a/foundingfathers.htm

Patrick Henry

Ratifier of the U.S. Constitution

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here."
_{--The Trumpet Voice of Freedom: Patrick Henry of Virginia, p. iii.}

Thomas Jefferson
3rd U.S. President, Drafter and Signer of the Declaration of Independence

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; That a revolution of the wheel of fortune, a change of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by Supernatural influence! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in that event."
--Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII, p. 237

George Washington
1st U.S. President

"While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian."
_{--The Writings of Washington, pp. 342-343.}

John Adams
2nd U.S. President and Signer of the Declaration of Independence

"Suppose a nation in some distant Region should take the Bible for their only law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God ... What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be."
--Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, Vol. III, p. 9.

John Adams
2nd U.S. President and Signer of the Declaration of Independence
"The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God."
_{--Adams wrote this on June 28, 1813, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.}

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever."
_{--Adams wrote this in a letter to his wife, Abigail, on July 3, 1776.}

Jim Rohn quotes

Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you.

The more you know the less you need to say.

Pimp my Droid

I'm running a new HTC droid incredible. These are a list of my favorite apps.

Doubletwist
Very good audio player - syncs wirelessy over wifi with itunes. The database gets out of sync on deleted files. If I were on windows rather than mac I wouldn't have this - instead I'd get winamp.

Winamp
Very nice audio player - syncs with winamp on windows. I haven't tested the syncing ability since I'm not using windows.

Google Music
Best audio player I've tested. It also includes the best integration with Google Voice Search.

Google Voice Search
http://www.google.com/mobile/voice-actions/
It lets you navigate, play music, search the web, etc by voice recognition. This is very useful while driving. Spanish words are hit or miss, remember to pronounce street names like you are a true gringo and it works better.

Google Voice
-I replaced my Verizon voice mail with Google voice. Very nice. I get emails with links to the voicemail MP3, and an attempted voice recognition on the text. I can even scroll through the list of messages visually on the phone.

AirplaneModeTimer
SilenceModeTimer

- Awesome apps. Have you ever put your phone in silent mode and forgot to take it back off? Now when you put it in silent mode it asks for how long. Then goes back into normal mode after that time amount has passed.

Bluetooth OnOff
GPS OnOff
WiFi OnOff
- Widgets used to quickly turn features on and off, most with one click.

AK Notepad
-Nice Notepad app

Call Confirm
-Excellent and extremely simple app. Before I got this I was accidentally dialing people by clicking on their name when I was just trying to scroll past them in the display.

Amazon
- Buy stuff on Amazon

Bible from liveChurch.tv
-Awesome Bible app - contains tons of translations and reading plans, quick and easy to use. The only downside is if you use it as an concordance, the search results appear in random order.

Congress
-See what bills are up for vote in congress.

CoPilot
-Commercial navigation app like google maps but doesn't require an internet connection. Maps seem out of date, and I'm currently working with support because it uses some DRM stuff that locked me out.

Dolphin Browser HD
-Awesome web browser, worth the couple of bucks it cost. Has support for gestures, double click to zoom, and pinch to zoom.

Google Earth
- I haven't used it much, but it disappeared then re-appeared in the market.

Fandango
-Find local movies by movie title, or theater and date. The only down side is that it doesn't show which movie times are the more expensive 3d digital.

Google Finance
-Follow stocks, simple and easy.

FlashLight
-White circle of adjustable size.

Gentle Alarm
-Highly recommended alarm clock. It transitions from silent to full volume over several minutes to gently wake you up, plus you can configure multiple alarms by day of the week.

Google Sky Map
-Use it to show you what star/planet/constellation you are looking at. Simple and easy.

Handcent SMS
-Nice SMS app - simple and easy with notifications which include the text of the message in the notification bar and nice graphics. The only thing you have to know is to turn off notifications in your default messaging app or you get notifications twice.

Linpack
-Android port of the linux software for benchmarking the speed of your phone.

Live Scores
-Gives live sport scores.

Locale
-Popular app for android I haven't used it yet. You can configure it to run actions based on location. For example you could tell it to go into silent mode if you are near your church, and go out of silent mode once you leave automatically based off the phone GPS. Lots of apps can be used along with this app.

My Verizon
-Gives me stats on my Verizon account - number of SMS messages sent, minutes used, etc.

NewsRob
- Syncs with Google Reader to follow RSS feeds. This is an AWESOME app, first app which made my android phone really useful to me. I read most web pages from here instead of the browser. Browsers in android are still cumbersome to navigate an article. This app makes reading multiple web pages easy. One downside is that the sync seems to be one directional it doesn't tell Google reader what I've read locally.

Remember The Milk
-Follows my todo lists on rememberthemilk.com. Awesome todo list manager. Requires a pro account at the RTM website for $25 a year.

Scanner Radio
-Follows Police/fire radios over the internet for tons of towns across the US. Not too useful to me, but it is awesome that this is possible.

Shazam
- Get the title/album title of a song just by letting the app listen to it for a few minutes.

SpacePhysics (LITE)
- Fun game where you have to draw figures which follow physics principles to solve puzzles.

SPB TV lite
- Interesting but not useful. It streams tv channels to your phone. Most of the free or paid channels are not in English. Cool that it works though. It does include several fox stations in English (1 in the free version).

StudyDroid
-Flash card application for android which syncs with a web page.

Tip Calc
- Easy method of determine the tip even when you are splitting a bill.

Tricorder
- Nerdy app, looks and sounds like a Star Trek tricorder. Most of the sensors display real data for example GPS signal strength, wifi strength, cell tower signal strength, digital compass, etc.

Itunes Export

Itunes Export is an awesome free and open source program for exporting music playlists, mp3's and unprotected AAC files from Itunes on both the Mac and Windows. I used it to export music to my android phone. I just created a playlist in Itunes with everything I wanted on my phone, then ran the app to put the MP3's and playlist in a folder. Then copied the contents of the folder to my mounted android phone over a USB cable and walla quick and easy. You can select whether you want just the playlists or if you want to include the music itself.

http://www.ericdaugherty.com/dev/itunesexport/

A.W. Pink - Revival

"It is true that (many) are praying for world-wide revival. But it would be more timely, and more scriptural, for prayer to be made to the Lord of the harvest, that He would raise up and thrust forth laborers who would fearlessly and faithfully preach those truths which are calculated to bring about a revival."
- A.W. PINK

C. T. Studd - Enlist

Concluding a short series on prayer We Christians too often substitute prayer for playing the game. Prayer is good; but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is nothing but a blatant hypocrisy, a despicable Pharisaism... To your knees, man! and to your Bible! Decide at once! Don't hedge! Time flies! Cease your insults to God, quit consulting flesh and blood. Stop your lame, lying, and cowardly excuses. Enlist!
C. T. Studd

Prayer

"Prayer is the breath of a newborn soul, and there can be no life without it." - Rowland Hill

Making a Difference

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/35963.html

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people who are convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.
Ellen Goodman