It's my phone number!!

[Syndrn]

I just remembered this one, it happened a while ago.

SC: Your customers are calling me and I want you to stop it. I looked your phone number up in the phone book and you have my phone number.

Me: *Note: He did calll me...* I'm guessing that someone is mis-dialing our phone number and getting your number by mistake. Our phone number is xxx-xxxx.

SC: I know that - that's my phone number and I've had it for 20 years. I want you to fix this!

Me: Okay, well we have had this phone number for 10 years. Our number is xxx-xxxx. I'm sure someone just mis-dialed.

SC: I told you I know the phone number, I've had it for 20 years. You are going to have to call the phone company and fix this. *click*

Yeah, right, I'm going to call the phone company. A few days go by when he calls again.

SC: I told you to fix the problem, your customers are calling me.

Me: Our number is xxx-xxxx. In fact, you have now called me on this number twice. I'm sure the phones are fine and that we don't have your number. I'm not going to call the phone company because I think the numbers are fine, you've had yours for 20 years and we've had this one for 10. My only suggestion to you is to call the phone company if you think you have a problem.

He hung up and never called back again. The number in the phone book and advertising is right too.

[Becks]

Ah, but it's YOUR fault (and the store's) that customers misdial. Didn't you know that? For some reason, you control your customers. Well, how they dial the phone, anyway. Everyone knows that once customers are actually in the store, they own YOU.

[Witch of Endor]

Is it possible that he's seeing a phone book misprint, where your business is listed with his number, and therefore your customers are calling him? You actually have two different numbers (obviously) but the listing is wrong.

Even if that's it, he's still barking up the wrong tree and needs to call whoever publishes the phone book.

[tendomentis]

I knew a guy once that would ALWAYS mix up the last two digits of a phone number. Without fail. What's more, he didn't even know he was doing it. He had been in a car accident and had suffered some brain damage, but this was the only real sign of it I ever saw stand out (he had some trouble sometimes sorting out more than 5 or 6 choices...he would lose track of the first and second choice after getting to the fifth).

Maybe not sucky intentionally?

[bean]

Here's a better one.

The phone number at the Papa John's I worked at was 123-7272 (PAPA). The number for one the next city over was 124-7272.

One night someone in the other store's delivery area called - I got the address and told him he had called the store in the next city and gave him the correct number. He swore he dialed the correct one, I told him he didn't

A minute later, he calls back. I tell him he's misdialed again. He starts swearing and tells me that my "phones are messed up and I need to fix them now!". This went on a couple more times - and the guy was very, very drunk. He also told me he thought I was lying (why would I do that?) and demanded I "transfer his call" to the right store. I wasn't in a call center, I was in a store with your typical small office phone system (Nortel) and had no way to "transfer" a call. He also demanded my manager - I got to pull the "I am the manager!" line (he called back and got someone else, asked for the mgr, and got me again).

The kicker? Verizon (then GTE) was the carrier in the city my store was in. The carrier for the next city was SBC (then Southwestern Bell). We were in the same area code. Even on the off chance that there was a problem with the phone company, we were on a different telco entirely - at one point the area I was in was a long distance call from the next city.

[Andara Bledin]

Ooh, people who can't believe they've dialed a wrong number really get me steamed.

There are two numbers out there that are close enough to our main number where I work that people have been reaching us in error since I started working here.

One of them is for Hormell foods. Some call-in number on the back of the boxes of one of their lines of product.

The other one is actually a mis-print in some medical facilities information that they pass on to patients. So, we'll get people calling in asking about lab results, prescription information, and sometimes looking for other numbers.

I think they must have fixed it a couple of years back since we've gotten very few of those calls for a long time.

^-.-^

[Kara]

Our customer service shortcut number you can dial from your handset is the same as another major provider. The difference is what network your phone is connected to. So when customers are roaming, we get their people and they get ours. It's annoying and I think our bigshots and their bigshots are just waiting for the other company to change the number, so it will probably never change.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Even if there was some problem with the phone lines getting crossed somehow, what makes them think you can just "fix" it? It'd be a problem with the phone company; if that were the case, wouldn't you be having the same problem? duh.

The pay phone in Store1 was very close to the office of the nearby high school. I'd occasionally answer it just to make it stop ringing and once or twice the person didn't believe me when I told them they'd called a pay phone.

[JustaCashier]

On my last job, when my coworker first started working there, her home phone number was just one digit away from my home phone. IE: hers was 123-4577, mine, 1234578. And this is in a fairly well populated community with around six phone prefixes at the time.

Mike

[AZangel]

I lived with my grandmother for a couple of years and we had the problem of them twisting the numbers as well. We were getting calls for an Eyewear store. Most people we got were polite about it. I called the place itself and told them. The calls eventually stopped.

[draftermatt]

The company I work for constantly gets calls for a Doctor's Office.

"Company name may I help you"
"Is this the doctor's office"
or "My name is... I'm a paitent of... and I'm having these (very descriptive problems).
Ma'am this is a concrete company.

She called right back too. Really I felt sorry for her since she was in pain.

[Banrion]

In a twist of strange and unusual, when I was a kid, and still lived in the same city as my grandmother, our phone number was only 1 digit off of both of my grandparents numbers. Our number was 123-1234, my mom's mom was 123-1235 and my dads mom was 123-2234. This isn't a really small town with only 200 people and 50 phone numbers either. Very strange indeed.

[reformedwaitress]

People used to think it odd because if they were trying to call my cell phone and misdialed the last number, they would likely get my mother, my sister or my father. Our numbers were all one off from each other like -- 123-4560, 123-4561, 123-4562 and 123-4563. Though it wasn't so odd when you thought about the fact that was 1) got them all at the same time from the same company and 2) got them like 10 years ago (maybe more now) when they were creating new numbers in the Atlanta area and there were some sequentials available.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Two weird coincidental phone conversations I've had:

(while trying to place a collect call from a restricted phone number out of town)

Me: Hi, I'm trying to reverse the charges of this call to blah blah blah
Operator: Okay, ma'am. Hold on just a second (or whatever he said, I don't remember.)
Me: (guy sounds familiar as hell) Bill?
Operator: Hi, Kinkoid.
Me: Holy crap, what are the odds?
Operator: Pretty good, actually. There's only four of us sitting here.

And here I was thinking it was a room full of operators. It's not, evidently. I knew my friend worked as an operator, I just never imagined I'd actually, you know, GET him.


Another weird conversation that happened was this:

I answer phone.
Me: Hello?
Caller: Hi, I'm looking for Sgt. Blah Blah at Such and thus Army recruitment office.
Me (guy sounds kind of familiar) Sorry, sir, you have the wrong number.
Caller: Oh, I'm sorry.
Me: No problem.

(we hang up. Phone rings again.)
Me: Hello?
Caller: Kinkoid? It's Hank.
Me: HanK? That was you that just called?

What are the odds of him dialing up someone he knew in a wrong number?

[protege]

Hehe if you really want to have fun...does anyone remember "party lines?"

Up until last year, my grandmother still had one. The way the phones were set up, was that you could occasionally overhear other people on the phone. However, if we picked up, all they'd hear was a click. Try again later, and the line would be clear. Annoying, and yes, some people would purposely spend all day listening in on conversations. Prime candidates to mess with

The only reason she still had it, is getting it ripped out was expensive, and Grandpa always felt that if "it worked" he saw no reason to change it...no matter how crude. Eventually though, she didn't have a choice--the phone company did it when they *finally* upgraded the lines