Mobile Phone Reviews
 
 
Confusion over T Mobile phone numbers

Mon, 27 Feb 2006

The excitement of buying a new pay-as-you-go mobile phone was short lived when Patricia Hepworth got it home and started charging it up. She found a text message from a Muslim extremist group inviting her to march with them at a demonstration.

The 59 year old mother of five was shocked to see the message in her in-box that was dated three days before she purchased the mobile phone. The wording of the message was "Defend the honour of Allah, March this Saturday. Muslims for life – Muslim’s Unite!"

Mrs Hepworth wasn’t happy at the fact she now owned the phone number of a radical Muslim in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

The T-Mobile phone was purchased from a Tesco store in Bury, Greater Manchester.

T-Mobile has apologised to Mrs Hepworth and gave her a replacement phone with a new number.

Mrs Hepworth said, "When I charged up the phone for the first time I had not even had a chance to make a call and was busy reading the manual on how to work it.

"Then my phone beeped with a text message and when I read it and discovered it was only from three days ago I panicked.

"The phrasing calling on me to ‘defend the honour of Allah’ sounded terrifying and I started to wonder just what type of person had owned the phone before me.

"I was fearful that I now owned the number of an Islamic extremist or a terrorist."

The demonstration the text message was calling Muslims to attend to is against the recent publication of cartoon in certain newspapers around the world.

A spokeswoman for Tesco Mobile said, "We are at a loss to explain why a new handset had a text message on it, and have referred this to T-Mobile to investigate."

A spokeswoman for T-Mobile said, "The number had been recycled, something all major networks have to do. We are very sorry for any upset."
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