How-To: Activate Verizon iPhone on different phone number

[daaaaaan]

Just went through the process, figured this may help some of you.

1) Activate iPhone on the line it was ordered on via iTunes (lets say phone number ends in 1234). Do not allow it to sync anything from your iTunes (music, apps, contacts, calendars...etc..)

2) Once activated, long into MyVerizon for phone 1234, re-activate it (under "activate a device) using the old MEID number that the 1234 phone was on before the iPhone. Dial *228, and the old phone is now back to being 1234 line.

3) CALL VERIZON and have them add the iPhone MEID number on the phone number you want the iPhone on (lets say 6789). The rep will ask you to dial *228 to activate iPhone and will quickly realize *228 DOES NOT WORK on iPhones. Say that is all I needed, and hang up on them (you have to call verizon, logging into My Verizon like you did for the 1234 phone will not allow you to add the MEID number for the iPhone, it will give you an error).

4) With your iPhone disconnected from iTunes, go to Settings-->General--->Reset---> Erase All content and Settings. Your phone will take a few minutes and reset itself Once done, it will prompt you to connect to iTunes

5) Connect to iTunes to activate your phone just like you did with the 1234 number but now it will activate on the 6789 number.

Hope this helps and Verizon tech support was completely useless to me and I figured this out while I was on hold with them.

 

[Fresh1]

I'll be needing to do this soon. Can anyone else verify that this has worked?

 

[Remmnever]

Sounds like a pain having to call them. I'm going to try tomorrow. I think I'm just going to try and activate it on the line it came on and then re-activate the old phone back on to that line. Then active the iphone on the other line. Sounds good in theory but we'll see.

I've activated phones on VZW website before without issues.

 

[richpjr]

I'll be needing to do this soon. Can anyone else verify that this has worked?

I did not have to call Verizon. I just did this:

I activated the iPhone using iTunes, which deactivated the other line I used to upgrade.

I logged onto MyVerizon and actived the phone that was deactivated in the step above. I then called *228 option 1 to complete the activation on it.

I called *228 and activated the iPhone by entering the new number. I then had to power it off and on and everything worked perfectly.

The entire thing took less than 5 minutes.

 

[Remmnever]

I did not have to call Verizon. I just did this:

I activated the iPhone using iTunes, which deactivated the other line I used to upgrade.

I logged onto MyVerizon and actived the phone that was deactivated in the step above. I then called *228 option 1 to complete the activation on it.

I called *228 and activated the iPhone by entering the new number. I then had to power it off and on and everything worked perfectly.

The entire thing took less than 5 minutes.

Nice, this is what I will do.

 

[macuserjhs]

There are tons of people calling tonight because of the iphone and it takes a while to speak with a rep.

 

[Remmnever]

There are tons of people calling tonight because of the iphone and it takes a while to speak with a rep.

I was at the Verizon store tonight and even one of their reps was on hold for 40+ minutes.

 

[Rated]

gotta be an easier way, cant activate it on itunes with a different #?

 

[kdoug]

Here's the correct way and what VZW recommends.
http://support.vzw.com/how_to_use/iphone_alternate_upgrade.html

 

[rlav]

Here's the correct way and what VZW recommends.
http://support.vzw.com/how_to_use/iphone_alternate_upgrade.html

Thank you,

I was wondering if Verizon was actually going to post these, people have been saying different methods on how to do this.

 

[Icecoldcoke]

Their website almost makes it sound easy.

I got an error on Step 2, had to call Verizon, and it took 40 minutes for him to get it to activate it on my line.

Now I don't even think he did it correctly because when I go to add my old phone onto my mom's line it wants to activate the iPhone.

I tried to get them to fix this but they continuously hung up on me from 10:30 until 11 when their support line closed.

 

[johnnyboyvzw]

Just went through the process, figured this may help some of you.

1) Activate iPhone on the line it was ordered on via iTunes (lets say phone number ends in 1234). Do not allow it to sync anything from your iTunes (music, apps, contacts, calendars...etc..)

2) Once activated, long into MyVerizon for phone 1234, re-activate it (under "activate a device) using the old MEID number that the 1234 phone was on before the iPhone. Dial *228, and the old phone is now back to being 1234 line.

3) CALL VERIZON and have them add the iPhone MEID number on the phone number you want the iPhone on (lets say 6789). The rep will ask you to dial *228 to activate iPhone and will quickly realize *228 DOES NOT WORK on iPhones. Say that is all I needed, and hang up on them (you have to call verizon, logging into My Verizon like you did for the 1234 phone will not allow you to add the MEID number for the iPhone, it will give you an error).

4) With your iPhone disconnected from iTunes, go to Settings-->General--->Reset---> Erase All content and Settings. Your phone will take a few minutes and reset itself Once done, it will prompt you to connect to iTunes

5) Connect to iTunes to activate your phone just like you did with the 1234 number but now it will activate on the 6789 number.

Hope this helps and Verizon tech support was completely useless to me and I figured this out while I was on hold with them.

This is the process they're using in-store. Great catch. The online info was posted prior to actual devices being in customers hands.

 

[mightygitis]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

I'll be needing to do this soon. Can anyone else verify that this has worked?

I did not have to call Verizon. I just did this:

I activated the iPhone using iTunes, which deactivated the other line I used to upgrade.

I logged onto MyVerizon and actived the phone that was deactivated in the step above. I then called *228 option 1 to complete the activation on it.

I called *228 and activated the iPhone by entering the new number. I then had to power it off and on and everything worked perfectly.

The entire thing took less than 5 minutes.

I called *228 and activated the iPhone by entering the new number. I then had to power it off and on and everything worked perfectly.

The entire thing took less than 5 minutes.

This did not work for us. When we attempted it we were directed to call customer service. It went very smooth though. I was on hold for a little bit, but the guy understood exactly what I wanted. We even had a fun little chat about the iPhone mania.

 

[rlav]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

I was on hold for a little bit, but the guy understood exactly what I wanted. We even had a fun little chat about the iPhone mania.

I have had to call CS a few times in the last few days and they have been very nice and always been able to answer my questions. Kudos to the CS people at Verizon, I'm sure they have been incredibly busy

 

[ExiledMafia]

phones been off the hook I gotta imagine

 

[martiansoldier]

just went through the process, figured this may help some of you.

1) activate iphone on the line it was ordered on via itunes (lets say phone number ends in 1234). Do not allow it to sync anything from your itunes (music, apps, contacts, calendars...etc..)

2) once activated, long into myverizon for phone 1234, re-activate it (under "activate a device) using the old meid number that the 1234 phone was on before the iphone. Dial *228, and the old phone is now back to being 1234 line.

3) call verizon and have them add the iphone meid number on the phone number you want the iphone on (lets say 6789). The rep will ask you to dial *228 to activate iphone and will quickly realize *228 does not work on iphones. Say that is all i needed, and hang up on them (you have to call verizon, logging into my verizon like you did for the 1234 phone will not allow you to add the meid number for the iphone, it will give you an error).

4) with your iphone disconnected from itunes, go to settings-->general--->reset---> erase all content and settings. Your phone will take a few minutes and reset itself once done, it will prompt you to connect to itunes

5) connect to itunes to activate your phone just like you did with the 1234 number but now it will activate on the 6789 number.

Hope this helps and verizon tech support was completely useless to me and i figured this out while i was on hold with them.

painful!

 

[mikeabbz]

I did not have to call Verizon. I just did this:

I activated the iPhone using iTunes, which deactivated the other line I used to upgrade.

I logged onto MyVerizon and actived the phone that was deactivated in the step above. I then called *228 option 1 to complete the activation on it.

I called *228 and activated the iPhone by entering the new number. I then had to power it off and on and everything worked perfectly.

The entire thing took less than 5 minutes.

excellent advice. Thanks. Just received phone and activated it on my line instead of fathers. Your advice worked perfectly!!!

 

[tdar]

Just went through the process, figured this may help some of you.

1) Activate iPhone on the line it was ordered on via iTunes (lets say phone number ends in 1234). Do not allow it to sync anything from your iTunes (music, apps, contacts, calendars...etc..)

2) Once activated, long into MyVerizon for phone 1234, re-activate it (under "activate a device) using the old MEID number that the 1234 phone was on before the iPhone. Dial *228, and the old phone is now back to being 1234 line.

3) CALL VERIZON and have them add the iPhone MEID number on the phone number you want the iPhone on (lets say 6789). The rep will ask you to dial *228 to activate iPhone and will quickly realize *228 DOES NOT WORK on iPhones. Say that is all I needed, and hang up on them (you have to call verizon, logging into My Verizon like you did for the 1234 phone will not allow you to add the MEID number for the iPhone, it will give you an error).

4) With your iPhone disconnected from iTunes, go to Settings-->General--->Reset---> Erase All content and Settings. Your phone will take a few minutes and reset itself Once done, it will prompt you to connect to iTunes

5) Connect to iTunes to activate your phone just like you did with the 1234 number but now it will activate on the 6789 number.

Hope this helps and Verizon tech support was completely useless to me and I figured this out while I was on hold with them.

so much of this is not correct. The simpler procedure posted above is correct and much better as is of course the one from the VZ support page.

 

[bretto]

Good thing I bookmarked this thread. I got my phone transferred to my line after calling Verizon, but when I tried activating it kept failing. Apparently I needed to do the reset on the phone, but none of the 3 tech support people I talked to thought that would do anything. I tried it anyway after being on the phone for an hour and remembering having read this thread, and it allowed me to reactivate the correct number in iTunes. Thanks.

 

[saberahul]

Call VZW technical support and came out of process within 45 minutes. Clerk was nice and walked me through the whole process. iTunes would get stuck up on "Waiting for Activation" but *22899 resulted in "Activation is complete." Not sure why everyone is saying *228 doesn't work cus it did for me. Anyways, I'm happy.

 

[snakelda]

I had to call verizon for them to transfer the iPhone to my primary line. Hopefully the instructions work for others.

 

[richpjr]

I did not have to call Verizon. I just did this:

I activated the iPhone using iTunes, which deactivated the other line I used to upgrade.

I logged onto MyVerizon and actived the phone that was deactivated in the step above. I then called *228 option 1 to complete the activation on it.

I called *228 and activated the iPhone by entering the new number. I then had to power it off and on and everything worked perfectly.

The entire thing took less than 5 minutes.

One of the guys I work with got his iPhone, followed these instructions and they worked for him as well. I'm not quite sure why it works for some and not others.