My wife and I went ahead and bought two Treo 650s yesterday. I thought a few things about the purchase process were pretty interesting:
- This was our first purchase of mobile phones from Amazon.com. As such, we experienced a completely self-service purchase process, including filling out credit applications.
- There was lots of documentation available, such as detailed descriptions of rate plans. Where I thought the process came up a little short was in preparing me for the information that would be required during the purchase process. Maybe it varies from carrier-to-carrier, but I felt that Amazon could have told us that we would need information from our driver’s licenses earlier in the purchase process.
- Amazon deserves credit for clearly explaining the mobile carriers’ credit check processes in post-purchase emails. They told us that:
- the carriers sometimes don’t do credit checks right away,
- we should expect to receive another email documenting our carrier’s credit decision within two days or we should re-contact Amazon,
- our orders would be automatically cancelled in seven days if the carrier did not respond with a credit decision.
[ FYI, our new carrier (Cingular) did the credit checks within 24 hours and approved us. ]
One surprising aspect of purchasing a new phone from Amazon.com that has Cingular service is that the process does not currently include support for number portability. In other words, if you want to take advantage of the good discount that Amazon.com and Cingular are offering on the Treo 650, you have to allow them to assign you a new phone number. This might be a show-stopper for some people.
This didn’t matter to us because my wife’s current mobile phone has a number in the “856” area code (the Philadelphia suburbs of New Jersey). This is not the area we live or work in now, so we want her to get a new number.
My mobile phone number is listed in my email signature, but not currently printed on my business card, so I don’t feel married to it. In fact, someone I don’t know Googled me the other day and called me on my mobile phone to ask a question rather than emailing or calling my office and leaving a message. This is another reason why it’s time for a new number.