Check your customers' phone numbers before the holiday texts go out

December runs on text messages. Order confirmations, "your package is out for delivery", pickup reminders, reservation confirmations. Americans exchanged nearly 2.2 trillion texts in 2024, according to CTIA, and the holiday weeks are when your customers watch their phones for news about their orders.

They're also watching for scams. The FTC says a text message was the most reported way scammers first contacted people in 2025, and fake package delivery texts were the most reported text scam in 2024. Your real delivery text is competing with fake ones, so it needs to reach the right phone and look like it came from you.

Here's what goes wrong with the numbers on a customer list, and how to check them before peak.

Why check phone numbers before the holidays?

Because numbers go bad without anyone noticing, and the holidays are when you send the most texts to the most people. A number can be mistyped at checkout, belong to a landline that won't receive a text, or have been disconnected and given to someone else. The FCC estimated in 2018 that about 35 million US numbers are disconnected and made available to new subscribers every year.

Your list probably has a mix of line types, too. The CDC found that 80.0% of US adults lived in households with only cell phones in the second half of 2025. But the FCC still counted 15 million traditional landlines and 63 million VoIP lines in June 2025, next to 395 million mobile subscriptions. Business customers, older records and anyone who typed their office number at checkout all end up on the same list.

What can go wrong with a number on your list?

• It isn't a valid number. A digit is missing or swapped, so the text never reaches anyone.
• It's a landline. A landline usually can't receive a text as a text. Some carriers read the message out as a voice call instead (Verizon does), which isn't what you want for a tracking link.
• It's VoIP. Plenty of VoIP numbers are real business lines, and some are temporary ones. They're worth a second look before you rely on them.
• It was ported. The customer kept their number and moved to another carrier. That's fine for texting, but any routing or fraud rule built on the old carrier is out of date.
• It was reassigned. The number is valid and mobile, but it now belongs to someone else, and your "your order has shipped" text goes to a stranger.

How do you check a phone list before a holiday campaign?

1. Clean up the format. Store every number in one format, such as +1 and ten digits, so duplicates are easy to spot and every system reads the number the same way.
2. Check that each number is valid and get its line type. Send texts to mobiles, route landlines to email or a call, and review VoIP numbers.
3. Recheck old numbers. Anything collected before last holiday season has had a year to go stale.
4. Check for reassigned numbers where it matters. A validation check tells you whether a number works and what kind of line it is, not who owns it today. For that, the FCC runs the Reassigned Numbers Database, which tells you whether a number may have been permanently disconnected since a date you give it. It's a paid service, and it's most useful for automated marketing calls and texts.
5. Handle opt-outs and disconnects fast. CTIA's messaging guidelines tell senders to process telephone deactivation files regularly, giving daily as an example.
6. Check new numbers at the form. A real-time check at checkout or booking catches the typo while the customer is still there to fix it, the same way an address check at checkout does.

How do you make delivery texts look real?

Customers have been taught to distrust texts about packages. The US Postal Inspection Service tells people that USPS texts won't contain a link, for example. You can't fix the scam problem, but you can make your texts easy to recognize: name your store, include the order number the customer saw at checkout, send from the same number every time, and tell customers at checkout that you'll text them.

Is a checked number OK to text?

Not on its own. A phone check tells you whether you can reach a number, not whether you're allowed to. Consent rules still apply, and they're changing: under an FCC order adopted on September 30, 2026, amended rules on how customers revoke consent take effect on November 25, 2026. Under the TCPA, each unlawful call or text can cost at least $500, and a court can triple that for willful violations. Talk to your counsel about your own program.

Where DQVerify fits

DQVerify's phone check returns whether the number is valid, its line type (mobile, landline or VoIP), the current carrier, whether it was ported and the previous carrier, and the number in one standard format. Run it through the API when a customer types the number, in under 150 ms at the 95th percentile, or upload your customer list as a CSV before the holiday send. The same API key checks the address and email on the order. We don't store your validation data.

In the 20,000-credit pack, a mobile number check costs $0.015 (pricing). You can start with 100 free credits (1,000 if you sign up by November 30, 2026) for 14 days, no credit card, and run last year's undelivered texts through it.

How many of last December's texts reached a phone that could read them?