In many countries you can port a phone number to a new provider whenever you want, even if you have already been using the new service for many years.
However in Australia it seems that most companies will only let you do this as part of activating a new SIM.
Vodafone is an exception. Are there any other providers that let you port to an existing service?
I can’t really understand what op is actually asking
I'm going to guess. He has 2 SIMs.
Sim A no credit.
Sim B $30 credit.
He wants to port the number from Sim A to Sim B so he has $30 credit with Sim A's old number.
Am I correct?
Too much effort
Just port to a brand new sim.
Basically yes.
Sim A is my main number
Sim B is a new service
Both on 365 day prepaid plans. Sim B needed to be activated a month ago in order to get bonus data, however I did not finish using the data of Sim A until today.
I activated Sim A (Vodafone) in May 2024, but I only ported my main number from Amaysim to that Vodafone service in August 2024. So I thought it would be possible with all providers - especially as in the past 5 years I have done the same thing with mobile phone services in the UK, Canada and Hong Kong.
If I had known it was not generally possible in Australia, I would have either just sacrificed the remaining data on Sim A, or bought a different Sim B to activate now.
It still seems to be possible with Vodafone today.
heh… I can and it cost me over a thousand bucks. Had a number already with boost for a year, with about 6 months left on it. A pixel deal via Harvey Norman came out with Optus and I thought, great, I'll buy now, pay off the phone monthly but not use the service until boost had finished, and I could port the number over. Called optus to check, no problems. 6 months later, online optus dude set me up. no problems. Started getting two bills. big problems. no going back….
Why did you want to stay on Boost for 6 months and not just port over to Optus straight away? Or just buy a phone with a discount bigger than the early termination fee?
It sounds like less of a porting issue and more you didn't think through things properly. It's never a better deal to buy a phone on a plan and actually stay on that plan.
2 bills from Optus?
But I wouldn't expect to be able to defer usage of the post-paid plan credit if I paid the monthly plan fee.
I think this loophole was shut. My brother had his number ported to another existing SIM, and then the people did password resets for his email accounts and bank, which resulted in them stealing money.
Having this option is just so risky with scams going around today
Your brother get his money back?
Yes. It was about $6k.
But sloptus did nothing about it by the sounds of it. All my Dad was able to find out was there "this person" / "scammer" did this all in NSW.
It's harder these days to port.
How long did it take between the phone service dying and the money taken out from the account?
These days it's more secure, from porting, and the bank's internet banking protocol. I know CBA and Macquarie don't use SMS for 2FA… I think Westpac and NAB are still living in the dark ages with SMS.
@JimB: A couple of hours with how it all happened. It was all through CBA for banking but they got his Hotmail account which then allowed everything else. This was probably about 5-6 years ago I think.
@JimB: Hotmail still exists, its all part of pretty much "outlook" now. If you sign up today, I am pretty sure you cannot get a hotmail address, just an outlook.com
Last time I used Amaysim it was possible to do this. Granted, it may have been 3 or 4 years ago.
Thanks. Asked them and they said not possible now.
I think Lyca allows this
but they are so sh*t that they stop giving you activation after 5 activations of a new sim
I can't really think of a situation where I'd want to do this