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Ebay Suspends Phone Number Sales
wellingt writes "According to the
Jackson Sun, the attention brought by the sale of Jenny's famous 867-5309 has led Ebay to evaluate whether or not phone numbers are the property of their owner, and whether they can be sold. Verizon has made the claim otherwise."
Number portablity doesn't mean number transferablity. In order to get "your number" to move from Provider X to Provider Y, you have to show proof to Provider Y that you do in fact hold that number at Provider Y... if you go into Radio Shack with your buddy's phone bill and even with your buddy saying it's okay, you can't get his old number on your new cell phone.
So, there's nothing to sell on eBay. If you can't give it away even when you try, you can't sell it either.
Ask not for whom the phone rings. It rings for you - Jenny.
The phone number popularized by 1982's one-hit wonder Tommy Tutone - Eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-nieeine - rings into a Murfreesboro used-car dealership in area code 615.
Tuning in to national attention for the auction of New York's 212 version of the number on eBay, the dealership put its number on the Internet auction block Monday.
However Tuesday afternoon, David Ludwig, general manger of Auto Outlet, said he got an e-mail from eBay notifying him that his "Jenny" auction had been canceled for being "inappropriate." The other phone numbers being also sold disappeared from the Web site.
The auctions were put on hold until eBay could determine whether they fell within the company's guidelines, a spokesman said Tuesday night. "People are really creative," said spokesman Henry Gomez. "And this one had us scratching our heads a bit."
Buyers and sellers on eBay enter into a binding contract, he said.
So officials of the auction service have to make sure the seller actually owns the item for sale and has the right to sell it.
He said a determination would be made about the auctions after the sellers and phone companies involved had been consulted.
The bizarre convergence of '80s pop culture and offbeat Internet auctions made ABC's Good Morning America on Friday.
Before the auction was canceled, New York's "Jenny" was going for more than $200,000.
Ludwig said he was shooting for at least $10,000. Nonetheless, he said he was happy to keep the catchy number "once we get through all these prank calls."
How many people actually still call for Jenny more than 20 years after release of the song called 867-5309/Jenny?
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," dealership owner Mike Blacksher said.
Less than one minute after having the number connected at his dealership in January, the phone rang.
It was for Jenny.
The dealership actually has sold several cars to "Jenny" callers, he said.
Blacksher requested the number from the phone company after calling and finding out that no one had it, he said.
"We get 100 or more calls every day," he said. "People call all the way from Miami. People just keep running through area codes. They ask for Jenny or just start singing the song."
The calls fill up the company's voice mail every night.
The lawyer who owns the New York "Jenny" acquired it a few months ago after he called it and realized no one had it. He got the number from Verizon and has used it as a second line, hooking it up to an answering machine.
Verizon said its customers don't own their phone numbers, so the right to 212-867-5309 cannot be sold.
But in Nashville, a spokeswoman for BellSouth said nothing prevents a customer from transferring a number to someone else.
This is sometimes done for business partners who split up and the other person takes the number, Sybil McLain said.
"What two parties do between themselves is between them," she said. "We provide phone service."
Another Middle Tennessee "Jenny" opportunity could still be out there.
Her 931 area code number did not seem to be connected Tuesday.
Information from The Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service and from UPI was used this report.
Did eBay ever take game item auctions off while they evaluated if they really belonged to the sellers or not? From my understanding, Blizzard wasn't too crazy about people selling Diablo II items online, since it's basically just moving data around on their servers, nothing more. I don't have any specifics though, but this situation seems to parallel that one very well.
They are. No sales of stolen property are ever valid. A clueless person who buys stolen property at a thief's yard sale not knowing the seller stole it still is in possession of stolen property.
That item can be taken from the unwitting buyer by the police and returned to the rightful owner, the person it was stolen from. If the buyer wants their money back, they have to sue the thief, which is usually a fruitless effort.
So, eBay's role is that whenever they realize that property's stolen, they've gotta kill the auction in order to maintain buyer confidence in their marketplace. They don't want transactions that aren't going to work happening over their system, simply because that'd undermine the trust people have in their system.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Here in BC, Canada, our monopoly telco Telus has right in the front of the phone book that they own the telephone number and can change it at any time with reasonable notice.
I suppose this is no longer the case with the American's number portability, but this probably use to be the case and is where eBay is getting it's worries from.
In case you really don't know, I've seen two such auctions... One guy advertised it in his sig, another kept the auction anonymous. Perhaps someone else can give some links?
Lalala
Why not? You can get ICQ numbers.
Wow. That's, uh, not good. Ya see, your registrar doesn't own it in the first place, so they can't transfer ownership to you...
I've had this sig for three days.
Extending your hypothetical...
You can't buy 1-800-BUY-STUFF because only 1-800-BUY-STUFF Inc. owns that number, and that's not transferable. However, you can buy either the license to 1-800-BUY-STUFF's image, and as part of that deal you get to tell 1-800-BUY-STUFF Inc. where to direct that number for the duration of the license. Or, you could just buy 1-800-BUY-STUFF Inc. outright, and then merge it with your company, and then tell the phone company to move the 1-800-BUY-STUFF phone service to your headquarters instead of the old building that you're going to sell.
That's why a business can find a way to get the phone service into the hands of a spinoff company and then sell that spinoff, but it's hard for an individual to make the same moves...
He may be laughing his ass off somewhere around here. The official site says that Tommy "pays his bills with work as a software engineer."
There's a modest market in 800 numbers since number portability for them was introduced in 1993. What's the problem?
As it happens, Tommy Heath is a software engineer who still releases albums on the side. His most recent album, "tommy.rtf" is pretty clearly named from his other work.
From this page, or here.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
As someone that has had many different roommates, I can testify that this is true, at least with Qwest. All it takes is a phone call with both parties present. One presents his identifying information, tells that he'd like to transfer it to the person coming on the phone next, and hands the phone to other person for them to present their identifying information.
They have never asked why.
Just about any item that someone objects to the sale of, eBay will block. They're the dominant auction site, they don't _need_ that business, and they'd rather block it than deal with the difficulty. eBay is controversy-averse to a fault.
Ask anyone burned by their "VeRO" program where eBay will remove any auction requested by a VeRO, even if the item auctioned is clearly legal to be sold (e.g. a CD given away with the sale a pair of jeans at the GAP)
Actually, there was already an article on /. a while back about a couple guys in Australia having copyrighted practically every phone number you could think of.
i do this quite a bit for my company, with verizon and cingular. here's an example: we hire a new sales person who's had his cell number for a gazillion years and doesn't want to part with it, but his provider/plan suck in comparison to our corporate plan, and we don't want to get stuck paying for a sucky plan/service.
we contact the phone company, request for an assumption of service in which the company now take on the financial responsibilities of the service contract. this usually take a tax id number, but between individuals you would use a social security number. once the billing is switched over in the company name, we port the number into our corporate plan.
if the employee leaves and wants to retain their phone number, the process is simply reversed. the process is easy, what's difficult is that each provider wants to lock you into their service plan. in the case of assuming an individual number into a group plan, since the group plan already exists, we're not bothered to sign any contracts. on the other hand, if the individual wants to break their number from our plan, they need to commit to a some type of time commitment( 1 or 2 year plan) before they can assume responsibility and service.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
The first ICQ number is 1001. No idea why they started there. I tried selling one on ebay and it got shut down.
funny munging
Here in .uk, Flextel, a personal number supplier, not only permit buying and selling numbers obtained from them, they even actively encourage it.
-- Soruk
Suppose a Verizon customer moves to Qworst and takes his number, which is part of the Verizon pool. He cancels his Verizon service.
How does Verizon know not to reissue that number?
If the guy flat cancels his Qworst service, do they notify Verizon that the number is now available for reissue?
That's what the number portablity database is all about. First off, the guy does not directly call Verizon to cancel... if he does, he loses his number so he'd better not do that. Instead, Qwest sends the Verizon the notifcation through the number portability system that they've just won over this customer, so they'd like the xxx-yyy-zzzz number rerouted to their system at entry point A. That's how Verizon finds out he canceled them, and how Verizon knows that they have to keep that number marked off in their database as one they can't issue.
When the guy leaves Qwest, if takes that number to another carrier, that new carrier can make the number portability magic happen again. This time, the number portability database realizes that they've already got the number on the exceptions list look where it's going and see that they need to notify Qwest that they've lost the customer, and changing the routing table accordingly so that when a new call comes in through Verizon the new redirect is issued.
If he leaves Qwest by calling them directly, then Qwest has to inform the number portability system that they lost the customer, and the number reverts back to the owner of the exchange, so in this case Verizon is told they're the ones who get to reassign the number.
Nice story - but not true. 716-867 wasn't assigned back then. (I know - I was in 716 then, too, and of COURSE we all tried dialing the number.) Today, it's a Cingular cell exchange in Buffalo, but that's a much more recent development.
No one owns a telephone number except the telco. As a customer of Verizon, you are "leasing/renting" your phone number. The phone number is not yours to sell. Local Number Portability does not transfer ownership between the telco and the customer. LNP transfers ownership between telco providers. Try a google for LERG (Local Exchange Routing Guide). This is the bible for telcos to see which carrier owns which block of numbers AND which blocks of numbers are portable. Verizon was/is well within their rights to stop the auction.