If your account is left with a negative balance for a period of 1 month, an abolishing process will take place. In this process the numbers in your account will be deleted from the account.
After the numbers are deleted from the account they are set to a "hold" status for the next two weeks. While the numbers are in this "hold" status you can still buy them again by looking for them in the "Search and Buy Numbers" section of the portal here. During this period of time, only you will be able to search for and purchase the numbers. No other customer can acquire these numbers.
If you do not buy back your numbers when they are in the "hold" status, the status will change to "Aging" and will remain like that for the next two weeks. While the numbers are in an "Aging" status no one (including you) can buy them. This is part of the number recycling process required by the FCC.
After the numbers have been left in "Aging" for two weeks they will be released so that they are generally available. At that point, anyone with a Telnyx account can find them and buy them.
Important Note: Please be aware that if your account was abolished, you will not be able to get your numbers back by simply adding balance to your account.
If your numbers are still on the "hold" status you need to buy them back after adding a balance to your account.
If the numbers are in the "Aging" status, we can still get them back for you but you need to reach out to our numbering team. Do consider that our numbering team does not work 24/7 but our support team does. You can also reach out to our support team for these requests.
Numbering team: numbering@telnyx.com
Support team: support@telnyx.com
Do note that this general process also applies when you accidentally delete a number from your account. It immediately goes to the "hold" status and after two weeks it goes into "Aging", then after another two weeks it is released. So if you need to get it back and you can't find it in the "Search and Buy Numbers" section of your account, reach out to our team.
Auto-Recharge
It's also important to consider that numbers are charged a Monthly Recurring Cost. The cost itself depends on the number. This MRC is charged at the beginning of every month. So even if you had a positive balance in your account, if you abandon your account for several months without setting up an auto-recharge for your balance, there is a chance your account can fall in the negative.
Make sure you check our Billing setup article here, about how to setup Auto-Recharge.
Notifications
Sometimes even recurring payments fail because of issues with card expiry dates among other things. Make sure you have your notifications properly configured and that you've setup notifications be sent to all the emails or numbers of the people that need to be alerted of anything going on in your account.
You can even add different notification events and not only for low balance alerts. You can even be notified whenever a number is deleted from your account. You can read more about how to do that here.