Comment by Sanzig
2 years ago
I moved from British Columbia (250 area code) to the Montreal suburbs (450 area code). The one digit difference was a huge issue: the number of times businesses and government agencies would helpfully "correct" my phone number when I gave it to them or when they tried to call it meant I missed a substantial number of important phone calls. I get it, my French isn't the greatest and I have a thick Anglo accent, but "deux cinq zéro" sounds very different from "quatre cinq zéro." Eventually I just gave up and got a local number (I ported my old one to VOIP.ms and forwarded it so I wouldn't miss calls).
Wow that seems crazy to me. I grew up in the northeastern US where even 3 decades ago, before a large expansion, we had 7 area codes within an hour drive. It would be bizarre to make such an assumption about someone, even then. When I lived in Boston, there was tons. Eastern Massachusetts alone has 339, 351, 508, 617, 774, 781, 857, and 978 as local area codes.