I changed my cell phone number about two weeks, and a few days into the change I realized that I was getting a lot of calls from “Unknown” caller. I thought that was kinda strange for me because I rarely get a call with “Unknown” as the ID. Then Michelle called me and she came up as “Unknown” and all of her contact info is in my address book. About that time I was thinking it’d been awhile since I heard from my bro and realized that he had called me a couple times but his number came up as “Unknown” as well.
So.. I called Apple first to see if it was something with my iPhone. We did everything, reset everything, unplugged everything, and got my dog something to eat. Even the Apple guy was a little stumped, so he thought we should call ATT. So.. we (yea, he said we would stay on the line with me as long as it took to help me get the problem solved. Another reason Apple is the best.) transferred over to ATT and talked with 3 different people over a period of 2 hours. We got to the point with ATT that they were beginning to get stumped and didn’t know what the problem was. They said they would call back with a commitment to figure it out.
So they called back the next day.. and again I was on the phone with a rep for about an hour, then all of a sudden a tech person said, “You know, not all cell phone numbers have the caller ID function. Even if a person has contacts assigned to someone, it still wouldn’t work. I wonder if the number that you got doesn’t support caller ID?”
I was like, are you serious? It didn’t even occur to me that phone numbers of any kind didn’t have caller ID. I figured in our technology age that every cell phone, even the free clunkers (if you have a free clunker, I’m not making fun of you) had an option of caller ID. But I was told that some don’t. They said probably around 80-85% of cell numbers support caller ID options, and that about 15% don’t. AND.. I also found out that nobody knows which ones do or don’t. It’s a hit and miss thing. They can’t tell you ahead of time if it does or doesn’t.
So they tell me, the only thing we can do is give you a new number, and hope it supports caller ID. They said they would call me back within 24 hours to see if the caller ID was working ok. Sure enough, with the new number all of my address book and contact info was working just like normal.
So.. after giving everyone my new number a couple weeks ago.. I had to give them another new number. Now at least I know when they call. Here’s to being out of the 15% range…
