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Comment by sdfszdfs | Hacker News Reader

The Google Voice number I chose with was bombarded with calls from collections agencies. A freed number is more likely to come from someone who has abandoned their service due to non-payment. Google should have checked for this before offering these numbers. Based on what they've already built screening for collections calls would've been well within what they could do.

When I attempted to disable the number the process was extremely frustrating. I couldn't simply turn it off. I had to reassign it to another valid phone number. (No thanks.) I eventually got around this by following their suggestion to disable several AT&T forwarding and messaging services. This left me unhappy. What if I want to use these services for something else?

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I had this happen too back with GrandCentral, and it took forever to figure out because of the way it interacted with the PBX number it was forwarded to -- it would automatically hang up when you answered. I didn't figure out what was causing those calls until it became a Google Voice account, and saw the 0s calls in the logs (not sure if they showed up before).

But GV gives you a major advantage over getting a new cell number with the same problem: you can block callers with one click.

When a number is disconnected it's taken offline for a while to allow notifications to get out. Normally this should be 6 months or so, but depending on population growth it could circulate faster. If you have a 212 number I hear they hold on to them like family heirlooms.

This is probably the 3rd or 4th round of collectors that are just recieving the file after the number was taken out. All you can really do is ask them to stop and take them to court if they persist.

Google should have checked for this before offering these numbers.

In a lot of NPAs (area codes) there just aren't any never-assigned numbers left. My brother waited, for months I believe, for a GV number in 512 (Austin).

I'm not sure when he was trying to get his number, but I got a 512 number when I signed up a few months ago. I think I could even pick among a bunch of 512 numbers.

If you ask them in writing to stop calling, they are legally obligated to comply. Of course, you have to do that for each agency...

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