No cell service

I'm in the middle switching my cell phone provider from Cingular to my company's T-Mobile plan. I'm porting my number, too. Yesterday I noticed that I had zero bars of reception. That's not that unusual at this house, so I moved to the window where it's usually acceptable. No change. I switched the SIM from the new phone to my previous phone. I got a more informative message: "Unregistered SIM." Was it possible that the service had already been switched? I put in the request on Thursday, and this was Tuesday. I was expecting this to take a few weeks!

From a land line, I called my cell phone number and got a different voicemail prompt than expected (which is to say, different than what I was used to with Cingular). I went to T-Mobile's web site and found out how to get into voicemail, the default password, etc. I was then able to change the greeting to direct callers to a different number.

I checked in with the representative from our company to see if I could get a tracking number on the SIM. I was informed that it had been sent to the corporate headquarters in Seattle. She would overnight it to me. But it got shipped to my Champaign address (despite the fact that I had given my Chicago address). That's no biggie, really. After a delivery attempt is made today, I'll call UPS and have them redirect the package to me in Chicago. I should get it on Thursday. One week to port a number? Two days of downtime (could have been zero if the SIM was shipped to me instead of HQ)? Not too bad.