Apr 24 2008
Lost Cellphone? How to recover after losing your cellphone
Late last year I bought an iphone and must admit I was one happy customer. I’d just gotten everything set up on my new phone and was still enjoying the “newness” of having an iphone when it was stolen. If that wasn’t bad enough it happened on New Years Eve of all days! Imagine being heartbroken and out of touch on one of the biggest days of the year, that was me. However, I was able to quickly and cheaply get myself “re-connected” so as to not be totally isolated while I continued to look for my iphone. Here’s what you do if you lose your cellphone.
Having an iphone means I’m using AT&T but I’m sure other cellphone providers are similar. Once I realized my cellphone was stolen I used a friends phone to immediately call AT&T to let them know to suspend my account to prevent any international calls or data charges. I then quickly drove down to Radioshack and purchased a “GoPhone”. They are only about $20 bucks and you get a $10 dollar mail in rebate so really it’s only $10 dollars. The key here is to NOT let Radioshack activate the sim card. Tell them you’ll do so on your own. What you’re going to need to do is associate the GoPhone’s sim card to your AT&T account. If Radioshack activates it on the spot you’ll have a randomly generated phone number and won’t be able to switch it over to your own phone number. Once you’ve got the GoPhone open the package and pull out the sim card. Call AT&T and press 0 to talk to an operator. Let them know that you’ve got a new phone and sim card and they’ll walk you through setting up your account to work on your new temp phone. You can now receive calls on your own phone number while you try to find your old phone or decide what you’d like to do about getting a new permanent phone. The entire process should only take about 20 minutes and the total cost is only about $10 dollars.
