A friend of mine broke her brand new phone that she has with Bell so I'm trying to help her find the cheapest way to get another one on her account as a replacement. Her old phone prior to her upgrade is already in use.

Is it possible to purchase a prepaid phone from Bell then swap that onto her postpaid account?


Thanks in advance!

Yes, it can be done.

Is there a waiting period between the time I buy it and I swap it onto the account?

Nope. Chances are though, if you buy a prepaid phone you'll have to pay for the activation on the spot.

Not always... Yes if you buy it at a Bell World, Telephone Booth, etc... some stores like (certain, not all) Wall Marts will just sell you the cell unactivated, or even Best Buy online ships out prepaid phones unactivated.

So if I went and bought this phone at my local Best Buy:

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/prodd...466&catid=23500

I could just logon to my web account and switch over the ESN myself, skipping the $35 activation fee? I called *611 and the CSR told me prepaid ESN's are not compatible to be activated on a postpaid account... confused.

"Grab n Go" phones can't be activated on normal accounts.

Standard prepaid phones can.

What a "Grab n Go" phone looks like, I'm not sure. Never seen one in person.

grab n go is basically anything with a blister pack. and the SKU will be GnG something.

Great, so the BB ones are probably GnGs then eh?

Prepaid phones that should technically not work on a postpaid account but still do can be found here.

http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpW...tractId=prepaid

The only limitation is for certain handsets that have their own SKU in RMS, for example WAL MART phones (they're specifically labeled with their own part numbers) have to be activated first on a prepaid account (for the first activation only) when trying to activate it through Infonet. If you try activating first on a prepaid account, you will get a WAC E16_******** error code. If you activate it on a prepaid, dummy it, then do an ESN change onto a postpaid account, it will work just fine.

If anybody works in the prepaid outbound loyalty/retention campains, it's standard to skip calling back prepaid account with dummy ESN's since most of the time even the customer's themselves are not aware that the store did this switcheroo trick just to get the prepaid phone onto their account.

Channel Support can activate it on first activation on a postpaid account, but they have clear instructions not to do this, for the same reasons as they don't accept foreign ESNs and etc, for the sake of keeping their jobs and such =)

Luckily for us, we cannot refuse a customer who wants to activate his line. Unless it is a HUG done at the store.

In case anyone was wondering, I went and picked up an LG Rumor from Futureshop for $70 and activated it online without any problem. The No Contract price from Bell is $280 hahaha... nice savings for me.

The phone even came in a blister pack, but apparently is not considered a Grab N Go phone. It says right on the packaging that it can be used on a monthly plan.