Are Old Numbers

[weecalf]

Where you do not use a phone number for some time is it allocated to someone else’s phone ?

[Mamyalynne]

PAYG? Yes.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/advice/pay-as-you-go-mobile-use-it-or-lose-it

[Old_Geezer]

They are a limited resource. Can't have them permanently allocated to lost phones forever. It's why you are obliged to use them for something that costs every so often.

[woofgang]

not only that,on most payg, you lose any balance too.

[Prudie]

Do you mean mobiles or landlines? Landlines are certainly given to someone else. We were unknowingly allocated someone else's old number when we moved to a house that previously had no BT connection and for months we were getting calls for the previous people, even from their family!!

[weecalf]

I rung my own number from contact on this phone it sounded ringing but did not ring on this new phone .Sometime later I got a call saying you rang me and on checking it was my old phone number ringing me from another phone .

[Buenchico]

Old mobile numbers are recycled remarkably quickly. It's not at all unusual for people to get calls intended for the previous user of their number.

I've had my present number for around 15 years but I still get calls for 'Norman Hobbs' and 'Debbie England' fairly often. (I suspect that it was Norman Hobbs who called me, not long after I'd bought the phone that the number came with, accusing me of nicking his girlfriend's phone and telling me that he knew where I lived and that he was going to beat me to a pulp!)