I’m a cheapskate when it comes to phones. I always got the free one with my cell phone plans in the States. I did the same thing here and bought the cheapest one I could find. After you buy your phone, you buy your phone number. I also got the cheapest phone number there was.
“What?” I can hear you asking…. “some phone numbers are more expensive than others?!?”
Yep.
You can pay however much for a “bad” number, or you can spend up to $500 (!!!) for a good number! The newspaper often has ads for different numbers for sale. They are divided up into price levels. So, a $500 number would be something like 70-000000 or 70-777777. A $100 number might be something like 70-505505 and so on. My cheap number is just a random mix of numbers in no pattern (although I am my father’s daughter and had to figure out a mathematical pattern in order to memorize my number, but that’s beside the point).
It’s not just good phone numbers that are more expensive, but license plates too. Apparently a good number on your license plate means that you are an important person… or at least very rich. I think normal license plates are 7 or 8 numbers… but I guess the shorter, the better (?).
Usually it’s super fancy cars or big, black SUVs with tinted windows with the “good” license plates, but every once in a while you’ll see an old beat up car with the number “2424″ or something on it’s plate which is always good for a little chuckle. Priorities, priorities.
This summer, Caleb saw a car from Dubai with the license plate: “2″
Wonder who gets number 1??
Tags: beirut, license plates, numbers, phone
:) His Highness Sheikh Mohammad has plate #1. Have seen his entourage on highway!
Nice! We figured it was definitely a prince. I think second to Dubai itself, there are more Dubai princes in Beirut during the summer than anywhere else. :)
Actually, phone numbers can reach thousands of dollars. The number 70/707070 was sold for $450,000!
As for car numbers, they are usually 6 digits (rarely 7). In general, the less digits there are the more expensive the plate becomes. These can easily be in the thousands and A LOT of people buy such numbers!
WOW! I thought $500 was ridiculous to pay for a number!!! Thanks for the correction on the license plates… I obviously haven’t been paying that close attention… I even went and looked at the one on our car, and yep, only six numbers! And we definitely didn’t pay any extra for it! :)