You Pay For the Unintended Consequences of Cell Number Recycling
As cellphone use explodes, the number of times a number is recycled increases. This used to just mean a few "sorry, wrong numbers" but now it might mean a big billing headache.
If the former user didn't cancel their text-message based services, like sports scores and potential dating matches, updates, you can start getting charged for their info fix.
What can a consumer do?
• Fight with the cellular provider to get the charges waived.
• Contact the 3rd party services themselves and remove the service.
• In extreme instances, disable text messages entirely.
What can a cellphone company do?
• Notify 3rd party services when number owners turn over.
• Wait longer before recycling numbers.
• Open up more area codes.
(Thanks to Philip!)
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Comments:
Even after getting my cell over 5 years ago, I still get calls for the previous guy. He was an office complex maintance guy, so every time we get a bad rain or major storms I still get phone calls. The sad part was he had his own Jeep parts biz with the cell as his only contact point. Easy enough to find on the web but no way to contact him. As luck would have it, saw the website on his jeep in a parking lot as was able to talk face to face, and since then the number of wrong numbers have dropped to 1 a month.
Now on the other side of things, withing 8 hrs of my wife getting her cell she had an ex-con harrassing her for having "his" number. He couldnt understand why the carier gave up his number. He was in jail and couldnt get the bills to pay them so why shouldnt still have his number.
This was an absolute nightmare when my wife ported her phone number from Sprint to Cingular.
We ported the number shortly after the merger between AT&T and Cingular. From time to time, she was unable to connect to the network. Sometimes, for days on end. Then, when she would travel for work, it would work the entire time.
Come to find out that the number that she originated with Sprint 4 years ago had been an AT&T number before it was a Sprint number. When it was an AT&T number, it was disconnected due to failue to pay by the person who had the number before her. AT&T had it in a database that indicated that it should be denied access to any AT&T network. They didn't catch this during the merger. So, it would connect to Cingular, but not AT&T. It took 6 weeks of almost daily phone calls and e-mailing directly with two Cingular analysts to get it resolved.