Cell Phone Number Parking: How to Hold Your Number

Some of us fall in love with our current cell phone, plan or carrier. But don’t forget your actual cell phone number, too. We sometimes feel a strong tie to those seven digits.

Perhaps you’re paying for U.S. cell phone service and leaving the country for an extended period of time. If you’ve ever wanted to temporarily keep your prized number without paying for your plan (or even your phone), you can.

Various services help you park your number so it’s waiting for you upon your return. In the meantime, you don’t have to pay for your traditional cell phone service while your number is held.

It’s also likely you can put your number on vacation or on hold at your carrier without using a cell phone number parking service.

NumberGarage and ParkMyCellPhone.com are two competing services for cell phone number parking.

NumberGarage: Number Parking Service

For number parking, NumberGarage charges $29.95 for the first month and $4.95 per month thereafter. With this service, you can hold your number for later use.

Number parking, though, doesn’t allow you to make or receive phone calls through a parked number. Number parking ports your phone number to NumberGarage until you revert it back to a carrier and put a paid plan on it. As another option, NumberGarage can forward your number for $29.95 for the first month and $9.95 per month thereafter.

This service sends an incoming call on your parked number to the cell phone or landline number of your choice. With this route, you can cancel your cell phone service (so you’re not paying the bill) and just forward your current number to another one.

With NumberGarage, parking and forwarding both come with no contract.

The forwarding service gives you 200 minutes per month. Thereafter, the per-minute charge is 5 cents per minute. You can change where your number is forwarded up to three times per month. Thereafter, there is a $2.95 charge per number change.

ParkMyCellPhone.com: Number Parking Service