As I already mentioned, I am a new Sprint customer and therefore activated a new line and a new number. While I’m trying out the Pre, I’m still keeping my old line with an iPhone on AT&T, so I had to get a new number. Bad call.

It turns out that this number used to belong to someone that owed money to GE Money, and what with the financial crisis and what not, the person had gotten behind paying. Now, for some reason, GE Money got the idea that calling me 3-5 times a day, every day, would help them get their money back from this individual. The problem was that it was an automated call and I could never speak with someone to let them know it was a wrong number.

So what to do? Well, I talked to Sprint. They went ahead and changed my number, which took a little less than 5 minutes and happened almost completely without my intervention. The only thing I had to do was power-cycle my Pre, and I was back in action. Problem solved, right?

Wrong. Now it turns out that I am no longer automatically eligible for the $100 mail-in rebate on the Pre, and must call the rebate center and explain the situation to them, and hope for the best. Rebate situation: fail. New number: win. Net outcome: meh.