Our fax machine called 911

[junebug87]

There's this radio station in my town and their phone number to call in goes something like 391-1873 and the "911" are right by each other. I was calling the station one day to request a song and I guess my phone was really sensitive and picked up on the 911 part. I hung up before I thought anyone had answered and went on my way, which involved blaring the radio in my house with my sister and singing.
Twenty or so minutes later, we get a knock at the door of my house, and there's a cop in there! It was sooo embarrassing, but he understood.

[Acolyte]

I almost discovered the hard way that my phone can dial 911 when the keypad is locked. Luckily I pulled it out of my pocket before it hit send. This is why is need a flip phone.

My old phone did that too, twice! It's really unnerving sitting around when I get a call from the police saying 'We just got a 911 call from this phone and nobody answered, is everything OK?', when my keypad was locked. Fortunately, I'm rid of that piece of crap.

[Horsetuna]

Well, the fax machine called 911 again yesterday,and then today, so I went through a nice little email to everyone after calling the police station and doing reseasrch online (Google 100 ways to mis-dial 911, btw)


This is what I emailed:

For the past few weeks, for some reason the fax machine has been dialing 911. Twice, officers have been sent to our office.

I called the police today to get more information to see if we would be fined if it happened again. Reassuringly, we will not be fined as it does happen by accident. However, we MUST be very careful when dialing.

the way the system is set up is we do NOT have to hit 'send' for it to dial 911. Our fax machine will dial the 9 automatically for us. The instant the second 1 is hit (by accident most likely), it starts to dial - regardless if you've hit SEND or not. (This I think is programmed into the telephone system of the city)

Therefore, be VERY careful when dialing long distance numbers.

Before you throw fax confirmations out, READ them. The first time we 'dialed' 911, they had sent a fax back asking us to call them to see if its' an emergency. Someone here removed the fax they sent and put it to one side without checking it. Because we did not call, they sent officers and phoned us (and I had to remain on the line with the dispatcher until the officers arrived).

The officers came again yesterday for the same reason.

Now, we're not in trouble, but this does tie up city services when responding to false calls. The police officer I spoke to reassured us there is NO fine for accidental faxings of 911. But we DO have to be careful. Before you toss that confirmation out, read it - is it from the police? If so, tell one of the receptionist girls so we can call them and call them back (or you can do it yourself. Just make sure to let us know).

If you think you dialed 911 on the fax machine, don't worry - Alert the admin staff (Me, Leslie, Krista) so we can keep an eye out for a fax or phone call from the police. The officer I spoke to on the phone today said you can call 266 1234 (hit 0 for a real person). However, this may mean waiting on hold, so just tell the admin girls first and watch the fax machine for a return fax and follow the instructions.

I put a sign on the fax machine so people are reminded when they send faxes.

if you have any questions, just let me know - if I don't know, I will find out for you.

I also now have to be the Fax Nazi and monitor all faxes sent out while I'm there. This is what the boss told me (though he didnt use the term 'fax nazi')

[Naaman]

We've got birds nesting in one area upstairs. Every now and then we get a call from the alarm company: "Your alarm in upstairs #2 just went off" Whoever's working at the time will explain about the birds and either reset it or explain why they can't reset it. One time I got a call "It's Bob from the alarm company, just calling to let you know the birds set off the alarm again".

It's all good, it's impossible for a person to trip that alarm without tripping any of the others.

My girlfriend had that at an tiny (converted garage) pharmacy she used to work at. It took 2 weeks of 3-4 AM calls from the alarm company + the 50 minute round trip to work out that their was a spider in the sensor.

Apparently a 1/2" spider inside the casing has the same shape as a burglar at 7'

[Gravekeeper]

Coworker did that one night. He meant to call 911 for for one of our emergency dispatches but then realized he had read his screen wrong and hung up on them.

So they send a couple officers down to the office. ;p One of them listened to his explaination while the other cheerfully went around the office "Searching for bodies" as he put it. <smirk>

[PepperElf]

omg... never thought this would happen but...

a long time ago I worked at a little discount store that went out of business after I left. We had to stay late one night to make a work-training video. I don't remember much of what it was about.

All I remember is that one of the guys was playing with one of the toy gun things we sold. And at one point he was playing that he had the manager at gunpoint but we were all laughing.

... and much to our surprise... a couple of cop cars came screaming into the parking lot.
apparently someone had seen the guy playing with the fake gun and had called the cops.

they spent a few minutes bitching us out - but there wasn't anything they could do since there wasn't anyone to arrest and no laws broken.

[BlaqueKatt]

while working in the gas station we wore alarms on third shift-they were about the size and shape of a garage door opener, with a plastic shield to keep the button from being accidentally pressed. We also found out they contained a mercury switch that activated if you moved like you were being attacked, or had fallen.

How did we find this out?

it seems one night during shift change whilst maneuvering amongst the second shift workers and their registers/drop safes I moved in a strange manner(ducking and bending sideways)-there happened to be an officer in the store doing paperwork(we let them use the unused counter in video-known to dispatch as the "video annex office"). He comes up to the counter and says dispatch just radioed an alarm trigger-none of us had pushed it so we determined it was my movements(it was later confirmed by the manager that our alarms did have a mercury switch in them), that set it off-he radioed that he was "responding from the "video annex office" and everything was fine. dispatch rather than call off the alarm(very slow night), told the officer to time the response of other units in the area and the number of responders-within 3 minutes we had no less than 20 cops cars in our lot. Dispatch was amazed, I gave them all coffee and thanked them profusely-the one response I got that actually made me kinda tear up was the one cop that looked me in the eye and told me "you are the sweetest cashier I've ever known, I was actually terrified of that call, because if anything ever happened to you on my watch, I'd never be able to live with myself."

Sadly he did have to respond to an actual robbery when I was working-the assistant manager was beaten with a crowbar, he was the first responder and the first thing he saw was me covered in the AM's blood(I was on the phone and attempting to administer first aid/stop the bleeding from massive head trauma), he didn't leave my side for the rest of my shift(yes the boss made me finish out my shift, terrifed and blood soaked-I quit within a few weeks of that), though it is kind of nice to have a nice armed guard standing next to you for 5 hours(he was behind the counter with his arm around me the entire time), while you recover from shock, while both you and the police are afraid of the perp returning-especially because I knew him and had physically stopped the attack on my AM.

[Flood]

My old Cell phone, which was not a flip phone or otherwise hid the keypad when not in use, when set to locked, would still allow you to dial 911 (or *8 which would tell the cell tower to route you to the nearest police department instead of the one the area code was set to, or so they tell me). During the standard course of simply bumping around in my pocket, my phone dialed 911 (or *8) about once or twice a week until I finally got pissed off enough to get a new phone. A flip phone that hasn't done it since.

[Fiyero]

I used to work at a petrol station. One day the silent alarm was somehow activated (I know I didn't touch the button, nor did my colleagues). The police didn't phone first and 3 police cars turned up, one officer came in and when he saw nothing was going on he waved the others away.

[jb17kx]

The GSM standard emergency services number is 112, which in Australia redirects to 000, in the UK 999, and so on.

In Australia it was originally publicised because it could force a phone to use any carrier's network to make a call, even if the phone lacked or had a void SIM.

Now that most phones are localised to accept 000 as another emergency number it is not as widely known.

[edible_hat]

There was a problem with some phones in Australia. Our emergency number is 000, on some mobile phones that's a reset code or something. Basically dialling it does something other than call the police so they had to introduce a second emergency number for mobile phones, I can't remember what it is though!

[Toujin]

I read somewhere, possibly Snopes.com, that some really old cellphones will dial 911 on their own.

[VenomX]

I was once a security guard at a bank.

This was my job duties:
- Each morning I was to do a walk around of the inside before the workers got there.
- Let the workers in as they arrived.
- Walk the workers to/from the drive thru which was not part of the main building.
- Walk the workers to the drive up ATM two times a day, also not part of the main building.
- Help customers, mostly business accounts, carry change out or in.
- Rest of the day I was to make sure only customers used our parking lot and to walk into the bank now and then to make sure all was OK.

The parking lot was on the side of the building and was where my little building was. The main doors surrounded by many windows was facing a main street with little to no parking.

One day I was walking into the bank from the parking lot side and just looked towards the main doors and I seen a police officer peeking around the corner and then another on the other side. We had like 20 customers in the bank at the time. The phone was ringing because everyone was busy with customers.

I just wave at the police, they step out and I see the guns drawn, I start walking quickly to the doors and open them.

PO: Everything OK?
Me: Yeah, why whats up?
PO then moves me aside and they enter with guns still out and look around.

Seems the holdup alarm went off and 911 was tring to call and noone would answer so they sent the police. Instead of coming to me outside in my little building to see if I knew anything or to keep me outside they waited until I entered then peeked inside. They all parked on the main street side and didnt cover the parking lot side doors.

If they had came to me or even pulled into the lot I could have used my phone to call inside. I could have even forced a line to answer inside by just hitting speaker then an extension number. It would have gave us instant contact to the inside and we could have heard everything going on.

We never did find out how the alarm went off. The only clue we had when it went off was a small flashing light on the box that held the film. That bank used photos when the alarm went off, didnt have video. The police were not happy the bank didnt answer the phone when they called. I understand but all employees were busy and they didnt have someone that just answered the phone.

[edible_hat]

We've got birds nesting in one area upstairs. Every now and then we get a call from the alarm company: "Your alarm in upstairs #2 just went off" Whoever's working at the time will explain about the birds and either reset it or explain why they can't reset it. One time I got a call "It's Bob from the alarm company, just calling to let you know the birds set off the alarm again".

It's all good, it's impossible for a person to trip that alarm without tripping any of the others.

[Caveat Emptor]

When I worked at a supermarket past 11PM, I was sometimes given a "watch" that had a panic button. When pressed hard, it would activate the silent alarm and summon the police. The experienced cashier on nights told me she once accidentally and unknowingly pressed it. She was alone and she heard a "Psst!", turned around and saw a sheriff's officer wielding a shotgun pressed against the wall near the door. She followed him, and there were half a dozen cops in the vestibule all wielding shot guns. They apparently thought there was a hostage situation when they didn't get a response to calls to the (empty) office.