Recycled phone number regulations

snor

Just bought my teenager her first phone and got a pay as you go bundle.
In the last 24 hours, she has received 30 calls from people looking a particular Chinese takeaway. When I rang this takeaway, it appears they did have my daughters phone number but cancelled it 2 weeks ago.
Have to Say i am surprised the number has been recycled so quickly. Surely there are guidelines in Place to prevent situations like this arising? Will contact the phone company on Monday. Does this happen often?

ED E

With landlines they're kept 366 days out of service or more pre recycling. Not aware that there's a regulatory limit for mobile numbers though some networks keep a policy of 6 or 12 months.


Mobile operators are always staffed 7 days and usually 24hrs to a certain level (unless its Virgin, then you twiddle your thumbs outside office hours). You can probably get them to pull a new number from the pool now.

micar

Heard this happen to a phone number belonging a young person who passed away.

Family used to ring her phone to hear her voicemail intro.

To their shock, one day someone answered the number.

ED E

^ that was on Joe Duffy not too long ago. People burying phones in the casket to ring its voicemail. Understand attachment but a little pragmatism required here.

snor

Left message detailing my issue for the provider, But still waiting in them to contact me. Will try to get her number changed. The take away have her mobile number on their menus so not an ideal situation. �� Lovely calls from drunk, hungry people to my teenage daughter in the early hours of the morning!

RacoonQueen

Couple of weeks is very unusual - they'd generally do recycling in batches so perhaps with it being end of the year it got thrown in to the recycling as their account was cancelled. Definitely an error made there. The fact they are still advertising that number probably doesn't help.

Johnboy1951

snor wrote: »

Just bought my teenager her first phone and got a pay as you go bundle.
In the last 24 hours, she has received 30 calls from people looking a particular Chinese takeaway. When I rang this takeaway, it appears they did have my daughters phone number but cancelled it 2 weeks ago.
Have to Say i am surprised the number has been recycled so quickly. Surely there are guidelines in Place to prevent situations like this arising? Will contact the phone company on Monday. Does this happen often?

Bring it back to where bought and get a new SIM/number?

snor

Not that simple. Account and credit linked to the number and I don't fancy being €20 out of pocket. I will wait for them to get back to me.

Clarebelly

That's the problem with Chinese takeaways.........

There are so many Wings and Wongs, that it's easy to Wing the Wong number.

snor

Plenty of wingwongs ringing late at night for takeaways - that's for sure

RacoonQueen

snor wrote: »

Not that simple. Account and credit linked to the number and I don't fancy being €20 out of pocket. I will wait for them to get back to me.

They can easily transfer her account to a new SIM with the credit swapping over. They should be able to transfer her account and apply a new number in the store where you bought it.

GreenFolder2

That sounds like a misprint on a restaurant advert.
Phone numbers are quarantined for a considerable period before they're reused. I'm pretty sure that most companies automatically allocate them. It's unlikely that they reactivated a number too soon.

As for numbers of people who died. A phone number is just an electronic address that you're renting. ComReg allocates blocks of numbers to each operator and they allocate them to their customers. If you stop paying you'd lose the number after a set number of months.

They're not intended to be memorialised and voicemail will just cancel when the prepay account times out or if it's a bill pay phone, as soon as line is cancelled.