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July 15, 2004

Changing phone numbers ()

by fluffy at 3:23 PM
Grumble. T-Mobile lets you change your phone number, but they don't provide any sort of forwarding/notification on the old one — it just gives callers a "This number has been changed" message.

On the other hand, by not having a New York number it probably makes it more difficult for me to get calls back regarding apartments, since people are all like "505? I haven't seen that before. Must be long-distance." Though I bet most of the people I've called are using cellphones or have flat-rate long distance or whatever. But the mentality is still there. (Like, my mom still calls my cellphone from her cellphone even though she's had unlimited long distance on her landline for like a year.)

Also, almost everyone who knows my 505 number is in my address book, so I could just send out a big ol' bulk-ish mail to everyone. With the notable exception of the various people who I left voicemail with in order to try to get an apartment. Damnit.

But on the other hand, I almost never get wrong-number calls to this 505 number, while anything in NYC would be all like "Is José there?" or "Hey girrrlfriend, it's Shaniqua!" or whatever. And who knows what other sorts of people previously had whatever number I get...

I think I'll wait until I have an apartment before making the change.

Comments

#3115 terpia (unregistered) 07/15/2004 01:07 pm
Have you considered getting a prepaid local cell # and forwarding it to your current cell#? Or, if forwarding isn't available you could carry two phones temporarily or purchase a pager with a local # and voicemail. Pagers and pager service are unbelieveably cheap, and voicemail is voicemail for the most part.
#3116 07/15/2004 01:34 pm
That doesn't help - what happens then when I'm ready to change my cellphone to a local number? Then I'd have two numbers to switch people over to. (You can't port a number to an existing account, at least not with T-Mobile.)
#3124 broken (unregistered) 07/15/2004 06:25 pm
You never know... You may end up with Chris Rock's old cellphone number Smile
#3125 07/15/2004 06:44 pm
Dude, you already got one of my gmail invites, and I've seen that already anyway. Wink
#3126 broken (unregistered) 07/15/2004 06:50 pm
Hey, I'm not asking for anything else! Wink
#3132 terpia (unregistered) 07/16/2004 08:32 am
I just meant a temporary local number - you know, just until you get a place. You don't need to give anyone else the number aside from prospective long-distance-phobic landlords.
#3133 07/16/2004 09:34 am
Ah, right. but the cost of a throwaway prepaid phone isn't much less than hwat it'd be to turn my existing phone to a $20/month thing for the remainder of the contract.