How to swap BlackBerry devices with someone

This bit of advice might come in handy when trying to procure a BlackBerry Storm. I bought my 8830, using my upgrade from Verizon, back in January. We had no idea the Storm was even in the works, and only had an idea that we’d soon be getting a CDMA Curve. A few months pass, and there is one model of BlackBerry on Verizon I’d rather have, and one on the way. Damn. Last Saturday, my father called and said, out of nowhere, “I’m going to buy a BlackBerry today. Which should I get?” He’s not technologically illiterate, not by a longshot. Yet I know he needed the most basic model. I started to say 8830 when a lightbulb went off in my head. Why not have Dad get the Curve, and then I’ll swap him for my 8830? Brilliant. So I ran the idea by him, and he seemed pretty receptive. I guess running a BlackBerry website signifies that I know what I’m talking about. I don’t see it, but apparently he does. So he went out and got it, and we set the swap date for yesterday. (By the by, if you ever buy a BlackBerry on BIS through Verizon, make sure the salesperson gives you your BIS login information. My dad didn’t do this, and it could have been cause for anguish. You’ll see later that this wasn’t the case.) We called customer service to do the ESN swap, but you can do it through your online account. You’ll have to put a dummy phone on one of the accounts, or so says my Verizon rep. So you put a dummy phone on one account, put the recently deactivated BlackBerry on the other, an then that BlackBerry on the first account, replacing the dummy. However, given the quick and easy way I got through CS, that might be easier. I have plenty of horror stories from Verizon customer service, but this was far from that. That’s not it, though. There’s still a matter of swapping BIS information. Thankfully, this has become incredibly easy. I logged into my BIS after reprogramming my phone, and it actually recognized that a new device with a new PIN was hooked up. It asked me if I wanted to swap, so I said yes. Bam. Done. All I had to do after that was send service books, the option illustrated to the right, and that was that. But what about the other account? At this point in the process, the Curve was set up with my phone number, and now had my BIS information. Of course, since PIN is device-centric, I now had my dad’s PIN. What about him, though? We didn’t even know his BIS login. Thankfully, we didn’t need one. Because his PIN was now associated with my account, his old account became moot. In fact (I called tech support to confirm this afterwards), his account no longer existed. So we could move onto setting him up with an account. I backed out to the main BIS login screen and hit create new account. After giving him a username and password, I was prompted for the device PIN and ESN. I entered the information from my old 8830, and that was all she wrote. He had a brand new BIS account connected to my old 8830, and I had my old BIS account connected to his brand new Curve.

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.