Lost Number on Tracfone

I bought a Tracfone a couple of months ago and was reasonably happy
with it until the other day when I noticed that suddenly no one could
call me and I couldn't call out. I called Tracfone customer service
and was told that, due to a "system failure" a bunch of phones in my
A.C. had been spontaneously de-activated. So, now I had to
re-activate. The catch is: they told me I can't get my original phone
number back again. Is that S.O.P.? In the time I've had that number I
have already dispersed it to a lot of important contacts so now I've
got to cast back and re-contact all these people and give them the new
number? No way to transfer calls over from the old number? Just
wondering.

Tracfone re-activated me (w/new number) + gave me 100 free minutes to
make up for the inconvenience but its still a pain in the neck to try
to think of everyone I've given the old number to. Also, it does not
fill me with confidence about Tracfone's system that it could do this
in the first place. I wonder how many calls I missed????