If you get a new phone number, it seems obvious that you would need to make sure that you tell the people with your old phone number to update it.

In today’s story, that’s apparently not obvious, leaving the next person with the number annoyed and getting someone else’s calls.

Eventually, they stopped playing nice and figured out how to convince the number’s previous owner to take care of business.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

You won’t change your phone number? Challenge accepted!

Christine used to have my phone number 3+ years ago.

Clearly she did not want the ‘baggage’ in her life to follow to the new number.

Debt collectors, old flames (male and female – she was prolific if nothing else), and others.

I can understand this and Christine, I hope your new life is better today.

Debt collectors gave up pretty quickly. I have not heard from one of those for 2 years now.

Some of the old flames were very persistent but eventually gave up as well.

The last call/text from her past lovers was a year(ish) ago.

The big challenge was family, personal appointments (mostly text confirmations, Y to confirm, N to cancel) from doctors, hairdressers, nails, etc, and her employer.

I still get the odd call/text from family that can’t understand why Christine didn’t share her new details.

Sorry, I can’t help you understand her motivations.

The calls kept coming over a year later.

As the calls/texts would come in, I explained it’s not her number anymore please get her to update her details.

Normal stuff for someone changing their number.

People would say, ‘thanks, we will get her to update’.

Over time as this continued I started getting frustrated.

I cited HIPAA to medical and became a bit of a nuisance to others.

That helped a bit but largely there was no change.

As personal appointments kept coming in more than a year later, enough was enough.

I accepted the challenge of forcing change.

She got revenge by canceling appointments.

I ignored confirmation messages until the day before when the last confirmation typically gets sent out.

I cancelled everything!

Gynaecologist – cancel, hair appointment – cancel, lawyer app – cancel.

If they called to confirm, sorry Christine can’t make it anymore.

Slowly, she started changing her number.

No one wants appointments they make getting cancelled after waiting for weeks or months.

Good luck getting in again in any reasonable timeframe.

She got revenge via Christine’s boss.

The best was just over 1 year in I got a text from her boss.

He wanted her to come in early for a special meeting the next day.

I did the only reasonable thing and politely quit for her.

The next day, I got a very terse text from her boss saying how unprofessional, unkind, not funny, etc. that my text was.

My response “Get Christine to change her number.”

Eventually Christine got the message.

I then got a very expletive filled text from Christine.

My response, “change your number or I will keep cancelling all your appointments”.

At that point, I don’t think she realized how her appointments were getting canceled.

A second, even more expletive-filled text followed.

I ‘lol’ed in response.

Guess what? No more personal appointments.

Still the occasional family member though…

How lazy can you be?

It isn’t that hard to change your number.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

Apparently people don’t always update their email address either.

This reader got revenge via an invitation.

Here’s an idea of how to get Christine to update her family.

Perhaps she should update Christine’s contacts.

This reader’s husband won’t be able to get revenge on the person who used to have his number.

It seems like Christine would’ve been better off keeping her old phone number.

Sometimes adulting is hard.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.