It's not that hard

[Dreamstalker]

OH and I've had a few calls where when I answer, they go "Hey, it's Me." and i go "I'm sorry? Who are you?"

I've gotten a few of those, calling for a Reverend Somebody. Turns out the number they wanted wasn't even in the same area code (HOW do you screw that up?).

[Megg]

About six months after I got my phone, I got a series of calls (I missed the first 3) from a mom trying to wish her daughter a Merry Christmas / happy birthday/ happy new year. I finally answered on the 4th call and let her know she had a wrong number, but it made me feel bad. That woman had not spoken to her daughter in at least 6 months, and that made me sad.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Our phone number is one digit off of a crisis hotline. We occasionally get a call for them, but they're generally understanding about getting a wrong number. Many years ago my wife got a hotline call in the middle of the night from a woman contemplating suicide. The woman was so distraught at getting a wrong number she was going to go through with it. My wife convinced her to stay on the line by telling her to wait a minute, she woke her up and couldn’t just leave her hanging like this. They talked for almost two hours. The woman finally said that if a complete stranger would talk to her for so long in the middle of the night, then she wasn’t so alone, wasn't going to kill herself and was going to call her therapist.

Another time years ago I got a phone number that used to be a doctor's number. I would constantly get calls for the doctor, with the callers just assuming I was the doctor and start talking. They generally reacted well when informed of their mistake.

[Andara Bledin]

My personal phones have never been particularly interesting, although we have some jerk giving our land line out to their creditors, of late. That's really annoying.

My work, however, has about 30 incoming lines, and at some point some medical place mis-printed their lab number as one of our incoming lines. It was about a year before we stopped getting those calls.

Another line used to be a contact number for some baking mix company. For several years while I was still working reception, I'd get about 1 call every two or three months. I suspect people were using really old baking mixes and then trying to call the number on the packaging.

^-.-^

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I've gotten a few of those, calling for a Reverend Somebody.

Reverend Jim?

[Toujin]

Our phone number is one digit off of a crisis hotline. We occasionally get a call for them, but they're generally understanding about getting a wrong number. Many years ago my wife got a hotline call in the middle of the night from a woman contemplating suicide. The woman was so distraught at getting a wrong number she was going to go through with it. My wife convinced her to stay on the line by telling her to wait a minute, she woke her up and couldn’t just leave her hanging like this. They talked for almost two hours. The woman finally said that if a complete stranger would talk to her for so long in the middle of the night, then she wasn’t so alone, wasn't going to kill herself and was going to call her therapist.

Kudos to your wife for handling that so well!

As for me, I once got a call from someone who thought we were a 7-11. Since it was late at night, I was kind of grumpy and annoyed when I told him that this was a home phone number, and not a convenience store.

Guy's response: "Why are you getting angry?! I'm the one who dialed a wrong number..."

Occasionally, I we get phone calls here looking for someone named Gloria. The caller on the other end sounds like an elderly woman, and when I tell her that no one with that name lives here, she politely apologizes and hangs up, so no worries.

[Cat]

Oh! I have two good stories like this:

An old ex of mine used to live in the Netherlands, and his # was 1 digit off the local, umm...."friendly services." He got some rather interesting calls late at night

Whilst at school, I would get wrong #s on my cell, I just let them go to voicemail, and it was the same person, who spoke Spanish. I finally let my roomie listen to one, to try to translate.....her expression was great, smile, laughing...the last message was about a woman giving birth, and that it was going along fine....lol They never called after that one

[Megg]

Oh, I totally forgot the absolute weirdest thing that ever happened to anyone I know. I am still not 100% convinced it wasn't one of his buddies playing a trick on him. Actually, I kind of hope it was.

See, we went to Disneyland recently. While standing in the smoking area, my hubby's phone rang. He answered "This is *hubby*" like he always does. The person on the other end apparently had a Spanish accent. All he said was, "We have your sister Consuelo!" in a very "menacing" voice, according to hubs. Then he hung up. Hubby did not recognize the number, nor the area code. I sincerely hope that if that was a real call, they found Consuelo's real sibling, and they were able to pay the ransom. It was triply weird since it happened at Disneyland.

[Andrew B.]

Reverend Jim?

Taxi reference FTW.

[TOLady]

I have a consulting business that uses an invisible fax/phone, whereby I can access faxes (converted to .pdf) and voice-mail (converted to .wav) from anywhere there's a computer. Unfortunately, although I pay a flat fee, if there is an overage, I have to pay/message.

Also, unfortunately, some asshat decided that it would be a good idea to use my phone/fax as his "business" contact, or at least I'm assuming. After he had taken possession of a rather large quantity of whatever it was that he purchased (actually, it was a spraybooth and boy are they expensive), he promptly reneged on payment of same.

Over the next several months, I received increasingly threatening voice-mails and emails from a collection company.

After repeatedly calling and speaking to the same person, over and over again, telling her that I didn't know this person, that this was my phone/fax and not *asshat* and that it was costing me every time she called or faxed I finally had to resort to guerilla tactics.

One weekend, after listening to my voice-mails - with another 5 from her - I looked up her company on the internet and proceeded to call the CEO, VP and CFO - 5 times each - informing them of what had been happening and that if the calls continued, I would stop being so nice. Of course, this was at 3am so the calls went straight to voice-mail, which I then followed up by sending a fax to all 3 fax machines listed on their website - 10 times each.

Strangely enough, the calls and faxes stopped after that.

[ottid]

The faxes one reminded me of one my Mum had recently.

She doesn't have a fax machine and someone kept trying to send her a fax. Now, you might try two or three times one day and then put it down to a wrong number or something from a business trying to contact someone else, starting at around 7am. Except this happened numerous times on numerous days, including a Public Holiday

Mum has caller ID so I even did a google search for the number to see if we could tell what business or what not it was coming from, couldn't find it, but going by the area code it was from the other end of the country, and we don't know anyone there at the moment.

Mum ended up calling Telecom and telling them about this. The person or company then got a message from Telecom to stop trying to send a fax to said number. It was black listed or something, something about being malicious I think, but I could be wrong, in fact I probably am...

[Ironclad Alibi]

I recalled another odd lot of wrong numbers we received. (Names changed, etc.) I’ll call myself Ben and my wife Karen. When I met my wife at a party which she attended with a friend, Gail. A year or so after we were married, I got a phone call.

Caller: “May I speak to Karen?”
Me: “She’s not here.”
Caller: “Oh, this is Gail.”
Me: “Yes?”
Caller realizes I don’t recognize her.
Caller: “Is this Ben?”
Me: “Yes.”
Caller: “Colonel Ben Jones?”
Me: “No.”

What happened was there was another Ben and Karen Jones in the area, but those wanting to call them found our names in the phone book. We got so many phone calls for them over the years that we felt like we were old friends with them. One day a caller told my wife that they had gotten a divorce. We haven’t gotten any calls for them since then.

[wolfie]

Turns out the number they wanted wasn't even in the same area code (HOW do you screw that up?).

Easy - 7-digit dialing. Had that happen frequently when I was a kid. Someone across the dividing line had a property for sale, and gave a phone number. We happened to have the same number (but different area code, of course). People who drove past the property for sale, and were interested, but lived on our side of the dividing line would call when they got home.

If they had called from a phone near the property for sale, they would have got the right person (phone company treating 7-digit number as being intended for same area code as line they're calling from). Since they called when they got home, the phone company's computer treated it as being intended for their home area code, and connected them to us.

[KellyHabersham]

I think some woman must've given my landline number out to creditors (or she just had the number before I did), because for awhile this year, I was getting auto-dialer calls from a collection agency, asking to speak to Michelle Gilberts/Gilvros. (the last name was hard to understand) Eventually I got tired of it, and called the number they left to let them know that I was not the person they were looking for, nor did I know anyone by that name. The woman whom I spoke with was very nice and apologetic about it, and the calls stopped after that.

[MergedLoki]

My last year of college I lived in an apartment on my own so I got a landline and for a few months I kept getting messages left (if i wasn't theer to answer the phone). in some language that well... wasn't english.. No clue what the language was but nothing I recognized.

anyways... the thing is... ok. i'm assuming whoever you're calling cannot speak english as YOU cannot speak english.

If the answering machine picks up.. and it's a voice you dn't recognize in a language you can't speak would you not think 'hey shit this MUST not be the right number'

other thing, I kept getting calls from some collection agency about my credit card... I did not HAVE a credit card at this point and time... after repeatedly saying 'person X does NOT live here, you have the wrong number' finally i called this agency's higher up office and told them 'stop friggin calling me you guys have the wrong person'. calls finally stopped.