Because a free number is lent, not owned, and the usual condition attached to the loan is that you keep using it — specifically, that you keep making calls out.

This is the detail that catches therapists, and it is close to a perfect trap for this profession. A practice line that works exactly as intended is one where clients ring you and leave messages, and you reply by text or return calls from somewhere else. From the provider's point of view that account looks dormant. Users describe precisely this: wishing incoming calls counted as use, because the number was discontinued while it was actively receiving them.

There are other conditions in the same family. Some free services require you to sign in periodically or the account lapses. Some allow only one number tied to a given handset, so getting a second one means giving up the first. And a free tier can change terms at any time without a commercial relationship that gives you any standing to object.

Whether a reclaimed number can be recovered depends on how long ago it happened and whether it has been reissued to someone else. It is worth asking, quickly, and not worth counting on.

What to do right now

Ask, immediately. If it happened recently, there is sometimes a grace window. Recovery gets less likely each day, because the number goes back into a pool and is reissued.

Assume it is gone and act accordingly. Do not spend a week on recovery while your published number rings for someone else. Get a working number first, restore the old one second if you can.

Find out what the number is doing now. A reissued practice number is a live privacy problem: people who ring it are calling a stranger and may say why. That alone is a reason to move fast on updating listings.

Send a written notice to every current client with the new number and an instruction to save it. Then repeat it in session, because the people who most need to hear it are the ones who do not read notices.

Work through every place the old number is published. Website, directory listings, insurers, intake forms, invoices, consent paperwork, referral partners, your email signature. Write the list down; the entries you miss will keep sending people to a dead end for years.

What if it wasn't inactivity?

Reclaims get blamed on inactivity because that is the documented reason, but it is not the only way a free number ends.

One number per device. Some services tie a number to a handset, so setting up a number on a new phone — or helping a colleague set up theirs on a phone that has been used before — can displace an existing one.

Terms changed. A free tier is a product decision, and product decisions get reversed. There is no notice period you can rely on and no contract to point at.

The account was for personal use. Several free services draw a line between consumer accounts and business or professional use, and a practice number sitting on a consumer account is on the wrong side of it if anyone ever looks.

Somebody else's account. Numbers set up under a shared or organisational account belong to whoever holds the account. If that is a former employer, a clinic, or a colleague who set it up as a favour, the number leaves when they do.

None of these are recoverable by arguing. All of them are avoidable by knowing, before you print anything, whose name the number is actually in.

How to stop it happening again

The blunt answer is that the reliable fix costs money. A number you pay for is a number with a contract behind it, and the contract is the thing that makes the number stay.

If you are staying on a free service anyway — which is a legitimate choice when a practice is starting and the budget is genuinely zero — then treat the conditions as maintenance:

• Make at least one outbound call from the number on a regular schedule. Put it in the calendar.

• Sign in periodically, whether or not you need anything.

• Read the terms once, specifically for what counts as inactivity.

• Never print the number on anything you cannot cheaply reprint.

• Always publish a second contact route alongside it.

The wider point

A number becomes load-bearing faster than anyone expects. Within a year of opening, it is on directory listings, in insurers' records, on every form, and in the phone of every client and referrer you have.

That is why the free tier is cheapest at the start and most expensive later. The cost is not the monthly fee you avoided. It is the day the number vanishes and you discover how many places it lives — one practitioner in this position described changing her number again as not an ideal option, which is the sound of someone who has already paid this bill once.

If you are choosing now rather than recovering, the question to ask of any option is simply: what would make you take this number away from me, and what would I have to do to move it somewhere else. A free service will usually not answer that. That is the information.

About Rivet

Rivet is a Canadian practice line built for therapists — a separate number for calls, texts and voicemail, with video sessions and clinical tools in the same place. Your data stays in Canada, and transcription runs on Rivet's own hardware rather than a third-party AI service.

One plan, $65 CAD a month, everything included. Fourteen-day trial, no card.

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