|
Cricket is one of the lowest price providers of cell phone
service in the United States. However, because of their limited coverage
areas , it can be harder to complete the activation process. If you follow
the instructions below, we guarantee you will be able to activate your phone. We
strongly advise you to call Cricket directly to activate your phone and NOT go
to a store to activate your phone. Please be patient and follow the instructions
below and you will get your phone activated.
How to Activate Your
Cell Phone on Cricket Wireless
1. Get the ESN
Number of the Phone. Take
the battery off of the phone and look for the ESN number on the label the
battery was covering. Models vary, but all of them either show the
ESN as an 11 digit number in Decimal format (sometimes abbreviated DEC) or in
Hexadecimal format which is a combination of letters and numbers that is 8
digits in length. Verizon can work with either one. It is not the serial number
which is usually designated "S/N" or the FCC ID number.
ESN Number is always
below the battery
Verizon can use
either the ESN, HEX, or DEC Number to activate your phone
2. Make sure the
phone is fully charged.
You don't want the phone to die when it starts programming because the battery
dies.
3. Know the Model of the
Phone you are activating, they will ask you for this information.
It is on the esn label.
4. Call 1-800-CRICKET 800-274-2538, from
any phone and follow the prompts based on whether you are new or existing
Cricket customer. You will be asked some security questions, and then they
will ask for the ESN number and the model number of the phone that you want to
switch your service to. Cricket then assigns the phone number to the esn number
which takes about 30 seconds. After Cricket uploads your ESN, the final
step is to program your phone over the air, which requires you to be in a
Cricket "Over the Air Programming Area".
5.
Determine whether you are in a Cricket Over the Air Programming Area.
You NEED to be in a Cricket "Over The Air
Programming Area" or "OTA" to Activate your phone. Look at your phone and
if you do not have at least 2-3 bars of signal you will need to go to an OTA
area. This is the trick to activating your phone on Cricket. Cricket has
its own network, however, it is only in certain cities in the US. They provide
service in other areas, however, in these areas your phone is actually using
another wireless company's network, such as Verizon. The effect of this is
that during activation, the phone must must be in an "OTA" area sot that it can
connect to the Cricket network.
To find the nearest Cricket OTA area, visit the Cricket website and
enter your state. If you are not in one, you will have to go to one before
you can activate your phone. Its easy to detect whether you are in an OTA
Area because your phone will receive a signal on its' display. If you are
not in an OTA, area you won't receive any signal because your phone is not
activated yet. This is the same, whether you go to a store or call Cricket
directly, the stores merely do the process below.
Crickets' National
OTA's:
Below is an actual example
of an OTA area from Cricket's Website. Most of Houston is Dark Green, and therefore an "excellent" OTA area,
according to the legend in the picture. The lighter areas are "good" OTA
areas. However, if you are in Woodloch, in the orange
box, you will not be able to activate your phone. (Once you
activate, you can talk from there, but you will be "roaming" on another
companies network as described above.)
For example, if you are in Woodloch, you
will need to drive toward a nearby city like Porter Heights or Conroe until you
see at least 3 Bars of reception on your phone. When you are in an
OTA Area with good reception you can follow the activation steps below.
Using the Cricket website, find where you are in relation to your local Cricket
OTA, and determine if you are able to do it from where you are or whether you
need to drive to a nearby OTA. (If you need to drive, we recommend you
copy out and print the steps below the picture so that you can refer to them
as you go through the process.)
6. Over the Air Activation:
You are now ready to activate you phone over the air. Once you have 2-4 bars of
signal strength dial *228 and press send. If all goes well, your phone will be programmed over the air in
about 60 seconds on the first attempt. If it doesn't, the key is to do it
over and over until it does, sometimes as many as 10 times. I don't why that is
the case, however, I have spoken to numerous people that
work in the stores and they consistently tell me that it is very common that
they attempt numerous times to program the phone over the air before it
completes successfully. Also, they also tell me that they do a test call
after each attempt to see if the programming went through, even if the phone
says the programming was not successfull. Keep attempting it and you will be
successful. (This issue is a function of the structure of Crickets
Network, not of any phone)
Please Read: We do not recommend taking the
phone into any Cricket Store, the people do not get paid by Cricket to switch
your phone number to a new phone so they either charge you a lot to do
it (I have heard as high as $35.00) or they try to sell you another
phone. I believe that they see eBay as their biggest competitor and
they tend to mislead people about the phones people purchase from
eBay.
Additional Help:
If you experience problems
activating your phone after following the preceding steps then please click on
our customer service link below or email us at
support@justcellularhelp.com. You can also call
our Activation Specialist at (818) 994-0481 between 9 and 5 Pacific Time.
If you get our voicemail, please leave a message with a number and best time to
call you back and that you are calling in relation to Cricket Activation.
|
