Family Getting Texts From Dead Grandma Is Ticked Phone Company Sold Her Number

(frankieleon)

Sure, the urge to talk to your loved ones after they’ve passed away is natural. But when one family start ed getting replies to texts sent to the mother and grandmother who died three years ago at age 58, they weren’t so happy to be hearing from beyond the grave.

The family had buried her with her mobile phone because she’d loved texting her family with nice messages, reports the Daily Mirror. Her son said he called up the phone company, O2, and asked that her number be canceled end never used again. He says the company agreed, and the family continued to text her when they felt like being close to her again.

But then her granddaughter got a reply: “I’m watching over you, and it’s all going to get better. Just push through.”

Shocked, as one would be, to hear from her dead grandmother, she worried that the worst had happened.

“Then I started getting horrible visions that someone might have dug up her grave and taken her phone, my mind was full of all sorts of really unpleasant possibilities,” she said.

As it turns out, O2 had given the number to a new customer, who’d been using it for a few weeks. He thought his friends were joking with him at first, so he replied, until he realized maybe that wasn’t the nicest thing to do, either.

The family says they called him up and he was apologetic about the situation, but now things can never be the same.

“We are a big family of texters, if we ever fell out or had something to say, we’d always just send a message, that’s why we buried her with her phone,” her son explained. “So to think someone else now has our mam’s number is just awful, we can’t believe 02 has done this.”

In the meantime, they’re trying to get the number deleted for good, but O2 says it sold it off to another phone company, complicating things.

A spokeswoman from 02 said: “We’ve been in touch with [the other company] and they have left their customer messages on e-mail. At the moment it’s a waiting game until he gets back in touch. Meanwhile we have spoken to [the woman's son]. He understands what’s happening and is appreciative that we’re trying to get the number back.”

Family who sent texts to mobile buried with late gran get replies ‘from beyond grave’ [Daily Mirror]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist