Mint Mobile lost-phone recovery is locking my wife out of her number for 30 days with no alternative verification path
My wife lost her phone on Saturday. It’s physically unrecoverable.
We contacted Mint Mobile through chat that same afternoon to recover her service on a replacement phone. Mint opened an identity-verification case, but the verification failed in part because the process depended on access to the phone/number we were trying to recover. Email didn't work as it was linked to the number as well.
We tried again the next day. A second verification ticket was opened and was also closed within about a day as “verification failed.” They will ask you to jump through hoops within the chat to prove your identity, by asking questions that would take some research or just a really good memory to answer correctly. I guess we failed the test, with no idea of the consequences, and no follow through on their part.
Now Mint is telling us we are not allowed to attempt verification again for 30 days.
To be clear, we are not asking Mint to bypass security or simply take our word for it. We are asking for an alternate secure way for the legitimate subscriber to prove ownership.
The consequences of a "failed verification" were never explicitly clear in any of our earlier conversations. This is failure of policy, and a failure of a reasonable approach to customer service. I suppose you really do get what you pay for.
I was an advocate. I will now jump through a bunch of other hoops to move to another plan. That's the only option we are currently being given.