Service Transfer and Moving Preperations

Posted by: Dan on May 21, 2008

For the past week or more it’s been time to get packing and to get ready to move. Last Saturday I made some pretty good progress at getting at least half of my packing done. I had planned to go through my storage area here at the apartment on Sunday but a call of distress from Brooke Saturday night had me over at her place to help pack instead. Which was pretty cool because I didn’t really get to see her that much the previous week. Plus I got to do my laundry over there.

Anyway the packing has been going well and I think I should get the rest done by early next week. This weekend however will be spent moving Brooke and Bettina out of their place. Assuming my fat-butt doesn’t pass out from too much exercise. Honestly though I think it’ll go fine.

I called a few places today to set up the transfer of services to the new apartment. I knew better this time and started with WE Energies since they’ll help make other service transfers as well. They helped with Time Warner Cable including the addition of digital phone and a DVR. However, I still had to call TDS Metrocom so that I could keep my same phone number.

I hate TDS – get ready, I’m going on a rant here. When I first signed up with them as asked for the lowest service that still included caller ID they put me on a plan that was way more than I needed. Only recently did I find out I was getting hosed. Anyway I was paying almost $40 a month through them for only a few calls a month. When I say few I mean the most phone calls I placed from my home phone in one month was 23. I’m allowed 500. On average I make 6 calls.

Anyway when I called to make sure I could keep my same number I was informed my TDS billing address would need to match my new apartment address which means they have to transfer service over to the new apartment. The cost… $50! And that’s not including the monthly fee. So in all it’ll be like $90 – unless they pro-rate the service for the few days. But I don’t know if they’ll do that because the lady never said – she didn’t even tell me there was a moving fee until I asked her. In hindsight I should have skipped asking and then complained about the fee saying I wasn’t told about it and wouldn’t have done it if I had known. Oh well. better to be honest and screwed over than save some money I guess.

So today’s little tip goes to people moving, rather than couples getting ready to get married. Call and set up the transfer dates for your services way ahead of your move date. Otherwise you could end up paying more.