I don’t think I’ve ever seen a British company use this but from what I’ve seen in the States it is very popular and these ‘word’ numbers are very converted.

27 comments

  1. As the leading UK “ask” subreddit, we welcome questions from all users and countries; sometimes people who ask questions might not appreciate or understand the nuance of British life or culture, and as a result some questions can come across in a different way than intended.

    We understand that when faced with these questions, our users may take the opportunity to demonstrate their wit, dry humour, and saracasm – unfortunately, this also tends to go over the heads of misunderstood question-askers and can make our subreddit seem hostile to users from other countries who are often just curious about our land.

    **Please can you help prevent our subreddit from becoming an Anti-American echo chamber?** If you disagree with any points raised by OP, or OP discusses common tropes or myths about the UK, please refrain from any brash, aggressive, or sarcastic responses and do your best to engage OP in a civil discussion, with the aim to educate and expand their understanding.

    If you feel this (or any other post) is a troll post, *don’t feed the troll*, just hit report and let the mods deal with it.

    *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*

  4. I’m guessing but maybe the option to choose a number that “fit” your business isn’t available here, or was a bit late happening for it to take off properly.

  7. I seem to remember that the old rotary and early keypad style ‘trim’ phones that everyone had in the 70s and 80s didn’t have the letters printed on them and it was only when British Telecom switched from pulse to tone dialling that the we started to see letters appear on phone keypads. I could be totally wrong though.

  8. I have a hard time figuring out what numbers I need to actually dial when it is 800 got junk (live in America now).

  9. There is one now for spam texts where you forward them to 7726 (SPAM on a keypad), but yes, that and 0800 REVERSE (for ‘Dad’s taxi’ in the olden daysi!) are the only ones I know of. It’s such a good idea, not sure why they didn’t catch on.

    I don’t think it’s down to old phones not having the letters on, because they did have them.

  11. Fun fact: we actually used this as the basis of our original area codes and almost no-one knows about it.

    Nowadays phones tend to tell you where an area code is from, but if ever you’re in a situation where you’re uncertain it might actually help you identify where a call is coming from:

    The 01X1 series are all linked alphabetically except 0191 (Newcastle).

    0121 > Birmingham > B = 2

    0131 > Edinburgh > E = 3

    Etc.

    In the 01XXX series the first two numbers after the one are usually the initials of the location, except 0 is used for O instead of 6 as on the keypad.

    E.g. 01274 > BRadford > BR = 27

  12. shorter numbers for most places? Started off with five numbers after the code. Now still mostly six, not seven.

  14. What I want to know is why smart TV don’t do this. I have to control a cursor on an alphabet to search for something on my TV instead of letter/number presses like old text messages, that’s far faster.

  16. Yeah, I remember seeing these on movies during the 80s.

    I always thought the Yanks had phones with special letters on them!

  17. They tried, but also because the UK numbers are a bit harder to do with, largelly because longer and not split up the same.

    Area codes alone are 4/5 characters (and were shorter before)

    I do have a virtual number on my CV which has my name on it, but you’d never know unless you “saw” it

  18. My dad spoke of a UK prank where you dialled a word and if it connects say “did you know your number spelled sausage” (or whatever) guessing this would have been 40s or 50s…

    He was a boy in the 40s and a teen in the 50s. I don’t think he actually did it, he was the son of a telephone engineer so I guess it may have been ‘something his dad told him’…

  21. Long distance/trunk calls used to have to go through the operator. You’d dial 0 and then tell them the exchange and number you wanted. STD codes and all number dialling were introduced from the 1950s. It took a while for them to be available across the country. Telephone directories advised not using them in listings because some areas were unable to dial them.

  22. For those debating whether UK phones had letters on them: it’s apparently more complicated than just ‘depends how old you are’, which was my first thought.

    [https://telephonesuk.org.uk/phones-1960-80/](https://telephonesuk.org.uk/phones-1960-80/) (and other pages off the menu of that site) shows pictures of a lot of phone designs. Some have letters, others don’t.

    The phone I remember most clearly was706L (shown on that page), which had letters and a button for the party line (anyone else remember party lines?). I also seem to remember call boxes always having letters, but that may have depended on the area you lived in.

  25. Blame Nokia. ‘C’ press 1×3 we’d screw up dialing like that after years of texting. Not to be funny but our use of mobiles was adopted quicker than the US mostly down to contract use being affordable.

  26. The shortcode for forwarding spam text messages to Ofcom is SPAM (7726) – that’s the only one I can think of.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like