Blog · 31 August 2026 · 3 min read
A South African phone number is written at least five ways
082 123 4567. 0821234567. +27 82 123 4567. 27821234567. (082) 123-4567. All the same person.
Most import tools accept one of those forms and reject the rest, so you upload five thousand contacts and three thousand “fail” for no reason anyone can see.
Connect24 reads all of them. Every row is normalised, deduplicated and matched to a person — 082 123 4567 and +27 82 123 4567 are the same customer, and they are only ever messaged once.
When a row genuinely can’t be used
You get the line number, the value, and what is wrong with it — not a count. A rejected row you can find is a typo; a rejected count is an afternoon in a spreadsheet.
Small thing. It is the difference between a list you can use and a list you are afraid of.