Port out ATT number to another carrier

You contact your new carrier and tell them you want to port a number. The new carrier does the actual port. They will need your ATT account number and account pin.

How do I get a transfer pin?

You set up the account PIN yourself.

Where do you set the pin?

I was told by Verizon that I need not ONLY the pin for the account, but you also need a "transfer pin".  He said AT&T started this as an account safety protection feature....  Do I have to call into AT&T for this transfer pin, or is there a way to get this pin in my account online?

Dial *PORT from your account home. 

Who do you contact in AT&T when this doesn't work.  I have the transfer PIN and I've been fighting with support for two days now to get this resolved.  I get the message "Please contact AT&T to remove your transfer freeze" when I try and transfer."  The new carrier has verified the issue is on AT&Ts side.  I have tried generating a new transfer PIN and get the same result.   How do I get someone from AT&T who can actually trouble shoot and issue rather than just read from canned scripts?

OK, since nobody from AT&T could figure this out I post what my son discovered.   You put the SIM from your new carrier into you phone enter your account info (acct. number, transfer PIN, name on acct.) and they you try to activate.  And of course it fails.  Now no one from AT&T will be able to tell you why it failed (at least none of the 10+ support people I talked to could).  When you eventually get tired a messing with it and need to use your phone again and put the AT&T SIM card back in, you see AT&T sent you a text message that you have to reply to for the transfer to continue (continue is of course the wrong word as it already was denied, so it should say be approved on the next attempt).  So you reply to that message with the PIN in that message and then you can swap your new SIM back in and retry the transfer and it should work this time.

   Why AT&T would design something that can't possible work is beyond me.  There is no way you could receive that text message without the AT&T SIM as you won't be on there network where you phone number still lives.