When Your Mobile Phone No Longer Recognises A Number

[AbeSurd]

In Thailand I use DTAC and a cheap, bottom-of-the-range Nokia mobile phone.

LOCAL/NATIONAL NUMBERS

From time to time my mobile decides it is no longer going to recognise an incoming phone number.

For example, I have stored in the Contacts section of my mobile phone an entry. It says: Bob The Blob - 0812341234.

So when Bob The Blob's in Thailand and he phones me on my Thai mobile (which is also in Thailand), my mobile displays 'Bob The Blob' and lo and behold I know it's Bob The Blob that's calling me.

Then many months, even years later, when Bob The Blob (still in Thailand) calls me (still in Thailand) using the same old mobile he always had, with his same old number, suddenly my same old mobile starts just displaying '0812341234' when he calls me.

Even if I delete the Contacts entry for Bob The Blob and create a new Contacts entry for him, it still doesn't work.

Can anyone explain why this happens with local/national numbers? Is there a fix?

INTERNATIONAL NUMBERS

As I recall, the same used to happen with these too. It could usually be fixed by changing the phone number in the Contacts section from, say, 04412341234 (or is it 004412341234?) to +4412341234. Or vice versa!

Thanks.

[Daren]

I once had this problem with a Nokia phone. After much frustration I found that I had the offending number stored twice in my phone - once under the correct name, and there was one entry that was unnamed. Apparently the phone defaulted to the unnamed contact, and after deleting the unnamed listing, the name appeared as usual. Unnamed contacts appear at the very bottom of my phone list, thus it took some time for me to figure this out.

[welo]

Had the same problem, Nokia phone as well. I guess I even had 2 named contacts for the same number, and this caused no name to show up at all. However, it didn't explain every time I had this problem.

Still not sure it is due to a problem with the network/provider or with the firmware of the phone.

I don't know too much about mobile stuff, but maybe it is a problem with how the called ID is sent to the phone. A local number can be sent as 0xxx... or +66xxx or 0066xxx.

welo

[2008bangkok]

daren is right.. if the number is stored in the phone book twice either as Bob The Blob and unnamed or Bob The Blob and Bob then because it doesn't know which of the 2 contacts to show it will just show the number

[MTH]

Great info! Thanks to this thread I have finally solved why one of my contacts names never showed up when he was calling, just the number.

It was listed twice in my phone book under two different names.

[Jdietz]

As an added precaution, store ALL numbers in the international format, so instead of 08xxxxxx store it as +668xxxxxx when it's a Thai number.

The telephone knows how to convert this number to a local one when you are moving around the world, and it will always 'just work'

[quiksilva]

same thing happens with my nokia, very annoying!