I’ve yet to see a systems migration that is perfectly seamless for all involved, so I’ll cut DISH a tiny amount of slack on that. There’s always some number (the smaller the better) of folks negatively impacted.
Where I won’t cut DISH any slack is their apparent inability to assist those negatively impacted. There’s no excuse for making your customers repeatedly call in hoping to get lucky enough to communicate with someone actually willing and able to assist.
It’s not the customer’s job to fix things that break with your systems migration. Maybe; DISH’s failure to properly serve them explains why DISH has done nothing but lose customers (over a million of them) not just at Republic but across multiple wireless brands.
Well, I haven’t called back yet. I figured I need to get the SIM card to the other phone first anyway.
Short work day tomorrow, so I figured I’d try again after work.
Update: So, I just got 2 more SIM cards from RW. All the ICC ID’s are different. Hopefully, I can get this resolved tomorrow.
I’ve seen very little that’s impressed me with Dish and customer service thus far. Now admittedly I have a potential of being a bit bitter (former expert here), but it isn’t just that program closing down. Dish seemed to spend little time actually understanding what a brand they purchased did right, and follow that in their ownership.
So for us, so far, Boost Infinite is working and it’s actually been pretty reliable. But we haven’t taken any trips out of town in the last week. I’ll probably take travel into big consideration as to whether or not to stay with Boost long term.
It is working well for me too.
I finally just turned off Wifi calling on my phone.
It made a big difference in MMS throughput when I did for some reason.
Boost Infinite PROS so far:
SURPRISINGLY smooth transfer (at least for my two phones).
30GB of data per cycle vs 1GB with R.W. CONS so far:
WIFI calling/texting does not work as well as it did under R.W.
NO web portal (must use App).
$10 surcharge for tethering.
App required for visual voicemail. Unknowns:
What will my total monthly bill be for next 6 months (is it in the App somewhere)?
I have only gone on one trip (to Walmart), so who knows how it will work traveling.
Success!. I am now on Boost Infinite. Support told me to download the Carrier App, but everything seems to be working in my initial testing. Do I need that app?.
So true. I am 2 days into trying to get my 2 RW phones activated with BI. Yesterday I spent a total of 11 hours being bounced around between the 2 companies, to no avail. Last night was a 2 hour, 22 minutes phone call (including 1 hr, 21 minutes on hold waiting to speak with a tech). I’ll spare you the details, but basically, it started with a tech (with a thick accent) who told me that a needed to speak with a “higher level” tech, and transferred me to a guy (also with a language barrier issue) who kept telling me that he couldn’t help me until I gave him my account number, which I insisted that with Republic, the phone number is the account number. This guy had me hunting through billing statements and logging into my RW acct separately looking for a number that didn’t exist. Then he said I’d need to contact Republic for more help. I asked him, “Who do YOU work for?”. He replied, “BOOST”. So, the Republic rep had transferred me to a Boost rep who couldn’t activate my phones. Two and a half hours on this one phone call to end up back where I started.
I had set up the Boost accounts successfully per the 8/7/23 email, but the phones never activated. Never received Sim cards. Now, I’m struggling to clean up their mess. The way this has played out, I’ll be a Google Fi customer by tomorrow.
To be clear, you only needed SIM cards if you were on a a legacy Republic Wireless My Choice plan. Setting up the accounts in the transition portal was just a means to get your billing info to the Boost Infinite side of the business. If you didn’t require SIM cards, the only other thing you needed to do was wait until you got a message saying you had been transitioned to Boost Infinite. More info was to follow. Granted, there seem to have been some significant snags along the way, but if you haven’t received a message that your number has transitioned there’s little else to do right now.
Full disclosure: I left my number behind, cancelled, and went elsewhere.
Regarding “account” numbers… I took numerous screenshots of my RW acct AND of all the screens during setup of my BI transition acct. Here’s what I see…
RW acct (5.0), my phone number. FIRST SCREEN (while setting up) BI transition acct, is an acct number beginning with a capital letter “A”… LAST screen of BI transition acct (after submitting credit card info) is an entirely DIFFERENT account number compromised solely of 12-digits, no letters, and not my phone number.
So, is this causing BI’s issues?
CarrierApp is intended to set the correct APNs. The phone, however, often does so itself without CarrierApp. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
To me, it seemed like the RW customer service reps got limited training/resources, but the one thing they always recommended for every possible problem was to download the Carrier app – like it would solve all problems that customers have! It didn’t.
I don’t blame the service reps - I blame their training and resources.
Sad, but glad to be out of RW (Boost didn’t offer what I wanted, so it was time to overcome my own inertia.)
ohplus, if you are directing your question to me, I’m 5.0. (originally 3.0, then had to upgrade when 2g/3g was shut down).
Am wondering if my number is one of those legacy false wifi numbers (sorry, don’t know the tech term for it).
This whole situation is enervating…
You’re thinking of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
Neither your or any other Republic number is still classified as VoIP. That ended for you and anyone else when they moved to a 5.0 plan. It also ended for anyone with a legacy My Choice plan when Republic’s proprietary WiFi-first technology was removed from remaining My Choice lines.
Whatever is going wrong for you and others is entirely on DISH. Don’t let support suggest otherwise.
It’s not unusual , in and of itself, for there to be some negative impact when undertaking a systems migration. Despite promises to the contrary (which I would have never made but DISH did), I’ve never seen a truly “seamless” systems migration of any kind.
A well executed systems migration minimizes negative impact and has resources in place to swiftly deal with any negative impact that arises. I’ll leave it to you and others to decide if this is a well executed systems migration.
Ah, thanks for the technical clarification/explanation! I thought I had remembered something along those lines, I just didn’t have the terminology to research on my own.
Apologies that I keep turning this all over in my mind.
And, yes, I believe I’m doing it because of the “seamless” promise-- that I fell for hook, line, and sinker.
Thankfully I followed your sage advice and got my device unlocked a few weeks ago…
I don’t say this lightly but there’s nothing technical one might do or point out to support that’s going to resolve the issue. It’s something DISH must do at an IT/Engineering level, which is why all tier one support is able to do when one calls in is apologize and ask for patience. It’s not an acceptable answer to give folks with no service, however, in fairness to those agents it’s all they’ve got.
I would encourage anyone suffering an extended service outage due to migration to contact DISH’s Executive Escalations Team by sending email to executivecustomerservice@dish.com. They may not be able to immediately solve the issue either but they need to know how widespread the impact is.
If one gets nowhere with the Executive Escalations Team (despite the difficult circumstances give them a reasonable amount of time to respond as they may already be buried), the next step would be filing an informal FCC complaint here:
Please understand an informal FCC complaint is not a panacea and won’t necessarily result in immediate satisfaction. DISH has 30 days to respond to informal FCC complaints though usually a response comes much sooner.
Whether it’s talking to DISH’s Executive Escalations Team or filing an informal FCC complaint (or both) you’re asking for one of two things:
Restoration of service or
The ability to port out
Even if one’s service is ultimately restored, I’d think long and hard about sticking around. I see no evidence DISH will get better at operating a retail wireless business anytime soon. Maybe one day but not soon.
Yep. Must be buried.
Went ahead and PHONED RW support (wait time down to 30 mins) got a mini earful of horror stories.
Received correct account number plus port out PIN.
US Mobile SIMS on the way, overnighted.