GrandCentral is informing select customers that their phone number will change on August 25. The feature-rich service recently acquired by Google bills itself as “one number for life,” which is then linked to your existing phone numbers – unless you are one of the unlucky few who: “have been assigned numbers that are not performing to our quality standards and are being replaced with higher quality services.” GrandCentral’s full email, inside.

We are sorry to inform you that your GrandCentral number (434) XXX-XXXX will need to be changed as of August 25, 2007. As part of our beta testing, we are continually evaluating different solutions and partners to create the best quality service possible. Unfortunately, a very small number of users have been assigned numbers that are not performing to our quality standards and are being replaced with higher quality services. To ease the transition to a new number, we have already added (434) YYY-YYYY as a replacement number to your account. Both of these numbers will ring your GrandCentral account until the 25th of August, at which point only the (434) YYY-YYYY number will remain active. Your login and everything else regarding your account will remain the same, including all your settings, voicemails, and contacts. If you have any questions or would like to request a different number, please reply to this email and we’ll do our best to accomodate you.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and hope you continue to enjoy the GrandCentral service.

Sincerely,

Craig Walker & Vincent Paquet
GrandCentral Founders

Though Google took GrandCentral back into invite-only beta, many people rely on GrandCentral as their one true phone number the way that people rely on GMail as their one true email address. A one week transition window is pitifully short for a phone number, especially one meant to be distributed widely to friends, family, and colleagues.

We have recommended GrandCentral before, and we use it ourselves; but for Google to change user’s phone numbers without consent defeats the entire purpose of GrandCentral.

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