Similar Phone Numbers and Crazy People

[blas]

Mike is right. I even updated my voicemail to get the choice to make it personalized, and it now says "This is blas, leave me a message!" and I still have had messages from random numbers "Hey Stacey, this is Mike, give me a call back!" or "This message is for Tim.....this is Douchebag McTampon and I have a temporary job available for you starting immediately" or whatever.

[KellyHabersham]

I've most likely mentioned this before, but since this thread brought it to mind...

When I'd been in my apartment, the first landline number I'd had previously belonged to a "Holly Dacek/Aldritch", and if you looked up the number in Google, it show up under her name and address. Where it got sucky was that I got involved in a long-distance relationship, the guy googled my phone number, and got all paranoid and pissed off because he thought I was lying to him about my identity.

[Misanthropical]

You don't need to change your number or call anyone back. It's on them to get the right number not you. It's their job to figure out how to call the company they are looking for, it's not your job to return calls all night.

I have had the same phone number for 7 years now and for 6 of those years I got collection calls for Jessica. My name is not Jessica and never has been. They would not get the message to stop calling since there is no Jessica here. I finally explained to them how to do a skip search and find her new number. I worked tracking down people trying to skip out on their bills in a collection agency so I knew all the data bases needed to find someone.

Jessica was apparently giving out her old phone number (now my number) to creditors, so I didn't feel the least bit guilty in telling them how to find her.

When I changed my cell phone number to a local number I started getting all kinds of calls for Renee, which is not my name either, but these rude women would just yell at me or ask me why she would give out my number if it wasn't hers. UGH! Now, my voice mail has my full name which can not ever be mistaken for Renee if you actually listen but I would still get messages for her on my voice mail. I'm actually getting tired of telling collectors how to find the person they are looking for, it's not my job anymore!

[EricKei]

And I'd still find messages that said something like, "Hi, this message is for (name other than Mike.) This is so-and-so, give me a call as soon as you get this."

There is only one proper response to this -- first, make sure that you have the person who left the message on the line, and then grace them with a quotation from the great sage, Gallagher:

"Are you THAT f***ing STUPID?!"

With any luck, problem solved.

[MoonCat]

grace them with a quotation from the great sage, Gallagher

"Are you THAT f***ing STUPID?!":

I favor this approach.

The problem with 800 numbers is that so many people do NOT dial the 1-800 part! God knows what they think those three digits for there for.

We had a customer who advertised apartments using a toll free # for people to call. Readers were dialing the number without the 800 part, so the calls were going to the number in our regular area code (in other words, instead of dialing 1-800-111-1234, they were just dialing 111-1234). The person who owned that number was pissed at us and at the advertiser, but there was nothing we could do. We can't make readers less stupid!

[Setsunaela]

When I lived in NC, we had the strangest situation.. we quickly discovered our phone number was transposed from another family across town. Instead of 555-1234 it was 555-1324. What made it strange was that our last name was one letter off from theirs (like jonson/jonsan) AND we lived on 1234 blah blah lane, them on 1234 blah blah street. Weird.
We usually would inform mistaken callers of the correct number and we know they did the same, and once a week or so we would arrange to exchange misdelivered mail and packages..

[EricKei]

WE had a similar odd problem for about a month after the power/phone service came on after Katrina. I live in a duplex/side-by-side double apartment. All incoming calls to my phone number went to the people on the other side of the house, and vice versa, for a good month or so. Thus, they were getting my relatives from the US, and we were getting their relatives from Israel >_<

[manybellsdown]

Oh, I totally forgot about the phone number I had in college, too. The college town had two prefixes, 685 and 968. Our number was 685-1234. The local pizza place was 968-1234. You can imagine the number of drunk college students trying to get pizza that called us.

[Caractacus_Potts]

I also don't see any reason why you should feel obligated to call any of these people back (and I would actually be hoping one of them was stupid enough to call again angry that they had not been called back just so I could laugh at them).

I never had a problem with any number being too close to my own but I do remember one funny prank call. I got called three times in about a fine minute period. No one would answer but I could hear what sounded like kids whispering and giggling in the background. I got fed up and used the call back feature to call the number and an older woman answered.

Me: Hi. Any chance you could please stop calling my number?
OW: What! What are you talking about? You called me, I didn't call you!
Me: I have received three calls from this number in the last five minutes.
OW: What are you talking about! I DIDN'T CALL YOU!1!
Me: I didn't think you did as you don't sound like a young kid. May I ask if there are any children in your house with access to the phone?
OW: (dead silence for about twenty seconds) I'll take care of it. (click)

I didn't get another call after that.

[manybellsdown]

I just keep coming back to this thread. I got another one of those contractor calls this morning - at least, I think that's what it was. When I said they had the wrong number, the lady asked for my social security number so that she could confirm who she was talking to. WTF who gives that out to random people that call?

I said "No", and hung up on her, and she immediately called me back. I let the machine get it.

[Ironclad Alibi]

We got our phone number back in the mid-70s. A luck would have it, it was one digit off from a local crisis hot line. That result in a few interesting phone calls.

This was in the days of 7-digit dialing, and no overlay area codes. I live in Virginia right next door to DC, which has its own area code. A quirk of the local phone system back then was if you dialed a Virginia number local to DC but used the DC area code, it would ring through to the Virginia number. One night I got several calls, including an operator assisted one, from someone in Bermuda trying to reach someone who wasn't me. The best I can figured out was they were calling my number in New York City. NYC's area code is 212, DC's is 202. (Or possibly NE New Jersey which is 201.) I figured the call was one digit off on the area code. Unfortunately this occurred to me after they stopped calling so I couldn't suggest it to the operator.

[MaggieTheCat]

Back when I lived with my parents in Wisconsin, I used to occasionally get calls for someone with the same, or similar name as mine.

My name is Margaret Smith (not actually my real name) and I usually go by Meg. Occasionally we would get calls for a "Meggie Smith" and my parents would hand the phone to me. It would always be some little kid, maybe 8-12 years old, and they'd always be like, "Uuuuh this isn't Meggie Smith!" Apparently some ten year old had the same name as me. The calls increased until I finally snapped at one of them, something like, "Look, my name is Margaret Smith, I'm 20 years old, go to (college), and am not related to your friend Meggie. Stop calling me! You have the wrong number!"

They stopped calling.

[MustangErin]

I used to get calls on my pager (yes, a pager, this was quite a while ago) for a construction company. It was getting kinda annoying that I did end up changing my message to say "You have reached Mustang. If you are looking for "construction company" do not leave a message. Again this is NOT "construction company". I still got a couple of messages.

Even if you change your message, some will probably not listen to it anyways so don't take the time to do it.

[PepperElf]

yeah i agree - no responsibility to call them back or change anything you're doing, unless you really really want to.

and the whole "drop the 1800" thing... yeah one of my friends in Hawaii said they would get that sometimes too.


On the flip side of things, sometimes when I've had to call customers to tell them "yo, pick up your shit computer"... every so often I'd get someone who'd answer and tell us "Stop calling me! I'm not that person!" So then I'd take the number off the system.


Once however... I think either the customer or - someone who lived at her house - thought it was a computer or perhaps a collector or something and they told me "she doesn't live here anymore". so when the customer finally came to pick up her computer she was upset that we "hadn't called her"... until my coworker read the note I'd put in the system.

CW: Whoever answered claimed you didn't live there.
(I didn't hear her reply if she made one)

[EricKei]

The thing with collection agencies is -- at least in the US -- they HAVE to ID themselves as collection agencies whenever they call. I think they can ASK if the target person is there, first, but they then must immediately give their spiel before proceeding.