Parking a telephone number.
June 23, 2005 7:41 PM   Subscribe

I need a quick and preferably cheap method to park a wireless phone number I don't want to lose.

So the wife and I have separate accounts with the same nationally known wireless conglom. We want to combine our two accounts into one and share minutes.

To actually add her current phone to my plan would take a visit to a local store and multiple pieces of ID and something called a "Transfer of Liability." Suffice to say that it appears to be cheaper and less hassle to add a new phone to my plan and give it to her.

I asked them if they could give my wife's old number [she's had it for five years] to the new account, and they said no, because it's already one of their numbers [her own account, same company]. Like, if it were a number from another company it would be no problem.

So I'm thinking about how to make this number a foreign one. My best guess would be to open up a voicemail box for a day or three and port the number there, then have my wireless company "port" it back.

Has anyone done this? Does it work? Can you recommend a voicemail provider or another place to park it? I ask here because people are smart here and I'm not in the mood to sign up for an account at howardforums or anywhere like that.
posted by britain to Shopping (2 answers total)
 
Best answer: I don't remember exactly what my friend did as a solution to the same problem, but I think it was this. He bought pre-paid minutes on t-mobile and turned off his phone. He never uses the minutes. Interestingly, he can check his messages (from another phone) without using minutes. So it's like free voicemail and it saves his number.
posted by about_time at 8:38 PM on June 23, 2005


Transfer it to a VOIP provider that offers a no-risk trial, then transfer it back.

If you already have VOIP, you might be able to transfer it as a "second number" to your VOIP account for like $5 a month, then transfer it back.
posted by kindall at 9:11 PM on June 23, 2005


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