I am sometimes having trouble putting in my phone number in competition forms. My number only has 6 digits. Does anyone know how to get around this?
eg Phone Number
(021) 123-456_
Please enter a valid phone number.
Field value must fill mask.
It will only let me put in a digit, nothing else. I am thinking it is the way the form has been set up, but it has happened a couple of times this last week on different sites.
Put it in proper E.164 formatting. +6421123456. You may need to leave off the + depending on the form.
Thank you so much, you are a genius- it worked.
I am going to blame having Covid for not thinking of that.
It is NZ local comp though.
Interesting - my number is also the same length, and I don't recall ever having an issue, but I would always enter my actual full number (+64XXNNNNNN) rather than a 'local' version.
Occasionally you do have to drop the leading +, but the site normally tells you that explicitly, and I can't help but think they used a crappy programmer if they could not do that automatically (even I could code that, I am no programmer!)
I sometimes have issues with my number as it's so long - 02xxx123456 (last numbers are real :D)
Must be relatively new - numbers that long have only been around for about ten years I think, but all my stash of throwaway SIM cards are like that now.
Same issue for me, same length. Doesn't happen often but did on a competition I entered last week, https://toastmag.co.nz/win/dish-fast-dish-summer/. I removed the 0 from 021 so I could add my last digit.Can sometimes get around it like that, but not if the 021 is fixed eg from a drop down and the form won't accept 8 digits.
I have contacted Toast Mag about their form, it will only accept 7 digits.
putting the international country code in as described above by Wakrak and moona works. i e +64 and drop the 0.
These tricks work if people are likely to parse your number manually, or you don't care if they get it. Do they work if parsing is automated though e.g. a competition which sends you an SMS if you win like the KFC one? While I prefer to enter my number in full E.164 format, I generally do not with local stuff with automated parsing since I'm never sure if it'll work.
@Nil Einne: I've never had any issue getting SMS send to my full number that I know of, but how could you ever be sure?
Phone systems generally don't care - they handle full numbers fine, but anything is possible, especially if the other party is using a cheap overseas SMS provider.
@Alan6984: If it's an automated contest like the KFC one or a phone number verification eg the Market or Waitomo then the point is you either get the SMS or you don't. While you can't be sure the reason is because if your number of its only once, if you try again next time with only the non geographic prefix and number and it works and then maybe again with the full number and it doesn't you be fairly confident of the reason. I'm actually surprised you've never had a problem especially with forms that don't allow the plus. I guess their backends are better than I thought which is a bit surprising considering how bad many of the forms are. Even on the back end level some utterly fail when you have a plus in your email.
@Nil Einne: Back-ends are more likely to be full on phone systems, with SMS integration, whereas front end websites are often programmed by trades-people web developers, rather than professionals (and getting paid is not a definition of professional in this case!)
With competition entries, you normally can't try a different number - you enter something, and you'll never know whether it worked (and you didn't win) or not (and you did, but they never got in touch by SMS or any other option you might have entered, and just moved on to the next person).
{Shrug}
Interestingly, I have just been looking at getting a (Vodaf)One pay monthly plan to see if it was worth it to save $10 on a broadband plan. On the signup form they're issuing the old six digit numbers again - no idea why, every one I was offered was a short one!
Very odd indeed, since a 'six digit' number, actually 'uses up' 100 numbers that they could issue.
Seems like someone might have mucked up, and / or not understood what they were doing.
Hi, I had trouble entering my email address because predictive was adding a blank space at the end. Still does it so check there's not a blank space at the end of your number.
A mate text me recently and predictive spelt that he uses lingerie. He's got a V8 holden and I've had some great mileage out of giving him a hard time about 'drag' racing it. Thanks predictive!
Yes I've had forms refuse to accept your email just because of a blank space at the end. Silly since it's something they can trivially deal with and I would have thought someone on their web development team has experienced it before.
Sillier though are those WiFi captive portals which have Facebook logins but then never properly whitelisted Facebook. Potentially it'll mean people can browse Facebook without logging in, but it's silly to add the feature if it's very difficult to use and requires mobile data
What if you did 6421-123-456?