Mother ‘devastated’ at recycling of dead son’s phone number
It was the last link that Geraldine, from Cork, had to her son.
The family accused the mobile phone companies of “gross insensitivity” for recycling the numbers of dead people and giving them out to new customers.
Geraldine, who said she did not want to be identified further, said she spoke out in an effort to ensure that procedures are changed so that a similar incident doesn’t happen to another grieving family.
Geraldine’s 18-year-old carpenter son died in an industrial accident in Cork in 2003. She and her husband, Stuart, kept their son’s mobile phone number and its SIM card.
In the dark months that followed, Geraldine would phone her son’s mobile number regularly to listen to his voicemail message.
Stuart said Geraldine would tell her son about family news and events.
Simply hearing her son’s voice gave her great comfort, he said. Other family members and friends would also phone the number just to listen to his voice.
Stuart said his niece discovered that her cousin’s voice had been replaced by a woman’s voice just after the third anniversary of his son’s death last month.
The number had been passed on to a new Vodafone customer in Dublin.
“My wife is devastated,” Stuart said.
“The last link is now gone and we can’t get it back.”
Vodafone made no attempt to contact the family in advance of reissuing the mobile number to another customer, he said.
Vodafone Ireland said it was “unfortunate” that the voicemail had been deleted in this case.
“It is very unfortunate that Vodafone was not aware of the customers’ desire to hold on to the voicemail as we could have assisted in that regard.”
The company confirmed that it recycles inactive numbers after 18 months.
“Number allocations are a national resource and are controlled by ComReg,” a spokesperson said.
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