Posted by I really didn’t want to change my mobile carrier, but Verizon forced me to look elsewhere. They increased their prices on all non-5G accounts. I don’t have a 5G phone, so I feel like it would be a waste of money to pay more for no added value. In late August I decided to move my two mobile phones from Verizon to US Mobile. Cost savings, plan options, and customer support were my primary objectives. US Mobile is an American MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), which means that they use other networks to provide cell coverage. The two networks they use are Verizon and T-Mobile. Since I was previously with Verizon, that is the network I preferred.
The first phone I added was a factory refurbished Samsung S10e. I ported the number from an older S7 model and setup a 2GB pooled data plan for the S10e. After the number transfer completed, I inserted the black (Verizon) US Mobile SIM and the phone was ready to use in a few minutes. I waited a few weeks before adding the second phone to see how the service preformed. There were the normal transition issues when moving old apps and data to a new phone, but the US Mobile network worked as expected.
The second phone was more of a challenge and tested US Mobiles customer support. The next phone to make the move was a Samsung S8, which was previously on the Verizon network. I ordered another SIM kit to get another black SIM card. Each kit comes with a black (Verizon) and a white (T-Mobile) card. When I entered the IMEI number into the add line form on the US Mobile website, it said that the phone was incompatible with the Warp 5G (Verizon) network. I had no choice but to use the white SIM. The number transfer was taking a long time. After about an hour I got an email from US Mobile saying that the transfer had failed because the transfer pin was invalid. I had created the pin on the Verizon website the day before. I had to call Verizon to get another transfer pin because I had already put the new SIM in the phone. I had to put the Verizon sim back in the phone in order to confirm the transfer pin. After that I called US Mobile and gave them the new pin. As I was on the support call, I decided to test the IMEI number on their web page and this time it said that the phone would work with the black SIM!
I really wanted both of our phones on the same network so that I could use the data pool. With the white SIM, I had to add the S8 into a 5GB data plan. As I was talking to the technician, the number transfer completed. He then gave me instruction on how to transfer the number to the black SIM card. This worked and I was able to move the line into my data pool. The next day I logged into my US Mobile account and saw a 3rd line in my data pool with huge usage numbers for Talk/Text/Data. Right away I opened a support chat with US Mobile and it took about 20 minutes to get the problem sorted out on their end. I suspect that doing a number transfer so soon after creating a new line was the cause. The S8 is now in the data pool with the S10e. The S8 was prorated so that there is only one charge when the plan renews. I bumped the data to 3GB for the next billing cycle for a total cost of about $25. I was also able to get a refund on the 5GB data plan that I didn’t need.
My advice would be to use a newer factory reset phone if possible and not to put the new SIM card in until the number transfer is complete. I may have made a few mistakes with the second line, but US Mobile’s customer support was exceptional. If you are considering US Mobile for your carrier, use code FREEKIT to order a SIM kit and then use code JHKIAEL for 50% off up to $10 when adding a new line.