Beijing Man Buys Phone Number For $215,000
from the Jenny's-number-is-867-5309 dept
A while back, a Chinese airline spent about $280,000 for the "lucky" telephone number 8888-8888, and other Chinese numerologists have paid top dollar for dollars with lots of 8's in the serial numbers. Adding to the number craze, another lucky phone number (133-3333-3333) has been bought for about $215,000 in an auction that mostly likely resulted in quite a bit of buyer's remorse. Amusingly, Chinese newspapers didn't identify the buyer, and calls to the number apparently went unanswered. So the buyer has spent quite a bit on a number he can't really use until the novelty wears off -- though he probably also has caller id and wishes there were better call blocking tools. The next step for phone companies, though, might be to offer "number insurance" -- to let people pay a small fee not to be assigned "unlucky" phone numbers, like 444-4444 or 666-6666.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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