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Users of the “one number for life” service Grand Central have been discovering that life actually meant for the term of the current owners, with Google sending out notices canceling user’s telephone numbers.

Troy Schneider received such a notice, advising him that in 8 days his Grand Central number would be canceled and that he would be required to immediately start using a new number allocated to him. Judi Sohn received the same message: with no prior warning she had 8 days left on her existing phone number then it would cease to operate. Sohn was fortunate to some extent: Google has offered to pay for the reprinting of her business cards, but that would appear to be a one off, and a token gesture at that.

The inconvenience of losing a telephone number, particularly for a business, is more than just stationery. Paper telephone listings must be changed (some people still use them), sign writing must be fixed, and every single listing of the old number has to be found and changed. Most land line telephone providers would offer a redirection service for the old number, however with Google it’s simply a matter of 8 days then no more phone number. Every customer that tries calling the old number post cancellation and cannot connect to the business is potentially a lost sale.

There was no comment at the time of writing from Google or Grand Central. Ironically the last post on the Grand Central blog talks about the wonders of being able to keep a Grand Central Number for life.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/146118898/