10 Aug 2007

If Your New Cell Phone Number Used to Belong to Someone Else ...

Imagine getting Paris Hilton's old cell phone number and fielding her birthday phone calls...or comedian Chris Rock's. It happened recently to two people because cell phone numbers in Los Angeles and New York are in such high demand that cell phone numbers are recycled very quickly.

Inheriting someone else's old cell phone number can mean more than taking calls from the previous owner's family and friends. With the growth of mobile content services for cell phones, your new number may come attached with some additional nuisances: existing cell phone content subscriptions.

Cell Phone Subscription Services You Didn't Order

You can now use your cell phone to subscribe to mobile content providing anything from the latest sports scores to American Idol contestant information, plus subscription services offering the latest ring tones, jokes, horoscopes, and games - all for a few dollars a month.

However, when you inherit someone else's subscriptions along with their cell phone number this can become a problem.

You may start receiving messages from a company you've never heard of soon after getting your new cell phone number. It may seem like nothing more than a nuisance until you see your monthly cell phone bill. That's when you realize that the cost of all these unsolicited messages is adding up.

Sometimes the subscription is billed as a line item on your cell phone bill. It is also likely that those messages are coming out of your monthly allocation of text messaging. If you don't have a data plan, you might be charged a messaging fee for each and every incoming text message - whether it was meant for you or not.

Canceling Previous Owner's Cell Phone Subscription

Because these add-on services are often from third-party companies, canceling the subscriptions may not be as easy as simply calling your carrier. Although phone companies are often willing to remove the charges once you explain your situation, you will likely need to contact the other service yourself to put an end to the ongoing subscription. The contact information for the subscription provider is usually available on the cell phone carrier's bill together with the charges.

Current customers are sometimes met with resistance as they attempt to cancel a previous owner's subscriptions themselves. Some companies require a letter from the cell phone company before canceling the service; others, such as adult content services, require that the current subscriber be over 18 in order to cancel the subscription.

In any of these cases, you should contact both your cell phone provider and the content provider immediately to dispute the charges.

New Phone Numbers - A Limited Resource

The Wireless Association, CTIA, estimates that there are currently over 233 million cell phone subscribers, over 70 percent of the U.S. population. Given the recent explosion in cell phone use, it's virtually impossible to issue a brand new number to every new account holder.

In fact, any given cell phone number may be dormant for as little as 30 days before being issued to a new subscriber, which is usually not long enough to guarantee the cell phone subscription companies will have canceled service.

One surefire way to avoid the problem of recycled cell phone numbers is to port your existing number. Since the FCC mandated Wireless Local Number Portability (WLNP), customers can transfer their existing cell phone (or home) number to their new cell phone. This ensures the transition goes smoothly for you, and you can avoid any friends or companies trying to reach a previous owner. It also ensures that your friends and family all have your current contact information.

Recent studies have predicted that the global total of cell phone subscribers will reach 4 billion by 2010. There isn't much we can do to prevent old phone numbers from being reassigned so quickly, but by porting our existing phone numbers when we switch service and by knowing what to do in case we inherit another person's subscriptions, we can save ourselves time, frustration and money.

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