What Happens When You Change Your T-Mobile Number?

T-Mobile lets you change your phone number as often as you like, but you should know a few things before changing it with a customer service representative or in-store sales agent. You must consider the cost of transferring the number, phone number availability and what happens to your voice mailbox.

There's an associated fee with transferring your T-Mobile phone to a new number. As of the date of this publication, the service fee is a non-refundable $15. The fee is charged to T-Mobile bill, so it's not necessary to pay up front to change the number.

Due to Federal Communications Commission regulations, a cellular phone provider must assign you a number from the next set of sequential numbers in the database. If you are not satisfied with the number assigned to you, then you can choose from three other choices from the same set of sequential numbers. Intentionally choosing a vanity phone number is not allowed.

One of the down sides to transferring your T-Mobile phone to a new number is that you lose all your voicemail messages. As well, you must record a new greeting once the new number is established. For this reason, T-Mobile suggests listening to new voicemail messages on your phone prior to transferring and before they automatically deleted by the system. When you receive your new number, a new voice mailbox is set up which requires setting a new personal identification number (PIN).

There's two options to get your phone number changed. You can call T-Mobile customer service or go into a local T-Mobile store. The representative will inform you of the cost, loss of voicemail messages and what numbers you can choose from. The number transfer may take two to four hours to complete.