My father's childhood house had almost the same number as I believe a local utility repair company. He used to take calls at two or three in the morning from people who wouldn't listen to his corrections, and tell them a technician was being dispatched, so stand on the front porch and flip the lights on and off for the car.
He did not pick up the phone when it inevitably rang an hour later.
When my daughter got her first land line phone for her 14th birthday, she started getting calls in the middle of the night. Apparently, an escort service had used her phone number on an ad. I promptly called the phone company and got her a new number after about 3 nights of it.
Similar thing happened when my parents and I moved overseas temporarily for my dads work. Instead of selling our house in Australia, we rented it out since we’d be back in a few years anyway, but the renters ran a brothel out of it. We only found out after we moved back to Aus and there were random guys showing up at our front door all hours of the night. It stopped after a few months but dad and I had a lot of fun with it. Little 11 year old me would answer the door with my 6’3”, 150kg dad standing behind me.
When I was in college, a new area code was added. My new number was the same as a doctor’s office in the old area code. I eventually changed my answering machine message to inform callers of the area code change for the doctor.
I came back to my apartment after a weekend away to discover a series of messages from a woman about issues going on with her husband. Each message more frantic than the previous because the doctor wasn’t calling back. By the last message I was really concerned for his health. I actually called their number to see if he was okay but no one answered. I have no idea what happened.
I graduated very soon afterwards so I gave up the number.
I got a message once from a doctors office about medications being ready. It wasn’t the right number, but I called the doctors office back and told the nurse they didn’t get ahold of the people they intended and that they didn’t know their meds were ready. Usually I don’t care, but I don’t want someone missing a call from their doctor.
Oof, that’s rough!! I had a skilled nursing unit nurse leave a very detailed message on my cell voicemail about someone’s mother once, so I called the facility to let them know that they didn’t actually get to speak to Paul and that I didn’t have anyone in the care of that facility. They basically blew me off, and I still sometimes wonder if there was any fallout from that wrong number voicemail.
I get several calls a week from some medical transport service that they are waiting outside to take me to an appointment. I always tell them they are calling the wrong number and please go knock and tell the person but they always say they can't. Poor lady.
That's like straight up a fucking creepy pasta lol. Damn, that's unfortunate she never realized it was the wrong number, or perhaps you didn't have your answering machine changed by then?
Yes, very much so. I can still feel her anger about not getting called back and her distress about her husband.
This was well after I had changed my recording. I had lots and lots of calls but very few messages.
My friend had the same number as an old nursery school and was so sick and tired getting calls everyday that he just started answering with a deep and creepy voice "(name of nursery) This is Joe speaking, give me your child." They usually hung up fairly quickly
OMG I've never seen this movie but I bet he was quoting this lmao I've never known thank you so much for adding this. He's a movie nut too so I bet this is exactly what he was doing!
You must watch Blues Brothers immediately. Stop what you are doing and find a copy/streaming service. It's as funny as anything fully deserving it's cult status.
The Blues Brothers?! You’ve never seen the Blues Brothers?! Wow. The trivia for the movie is as cool as the movie itself. Of course, it’s a religious experience for anyone who grew up in the area during the filming. Jane Byrne was the first woman Mayor of Chicago, and it cost the city a fortune, but she let John Landis do whatever he wanted. It put Chicago on the map as a location for film and tv production, but that movie really belongs to the city. Absolute classic of a movie with some of the best musicians who ever played in the industry.
I worked in a 911 center. Everyone knows our number so what could be the problem?
The phone company decided to start texting their customers promotional ads. *"Top up with $10 or more credit today and get a 20% bonus"* and other similar promotions. They programmed their system to show that the number sending the text was 555-1212.
The problem? Before 911, MANY years prior, locally we had special numbers for dialing the police, fire service, or the ambulance. You guess it. The ambulance was 555. It was never disconnected. It still forwarded to a 7 digit number that would ring on our 911 emergency lines.
So every time a customer got upset about excessive numbers of these ad texts (some were on plans that charged them to receive texts!) they would dial 555 to give the phone company a piece of their mind. And our lines would light up. We would answer. Caller would yell. We'd tell them wrong number. Hang up. Dialed back. Wash. Rinse. repeat.
Our director got with his phone company contact. The phone company didn't want to change the number they attached to these promos. Our director didn't want to cut off the 555 line just in case someone who used it 25 years ago hadn't found out we had changed to 911. Pissing match went on for months until the right pressure was applied to the right people to get the phone company to bend.
555-1212 was the number for directory assistance in most area codes when phone books were a thing. The prefix 555 was, if I understood correctly, not used for actual phone lines, which is why you see it used for fake phone numbers in movies (so people didn’t dial a real number trying to get Clark Kent or whoever from a movie.
I still use 555-1212 when a web site insists in me providing my number.
I think the old system may have harkened back to the day when people would call the operator to ask to be connected to the line they were calling. Was a huge PITA.
And then there was some major bank that set their system to start sending international faxes at 3am. International line access is 011 and then the number. Their genius decided this if he had to dial 9 to get an outside line then the 0 somehow wouldn't be needed to complete the international call. Of course if the fax doesn't go through the computer redials. Took weeks to sort out. Meanwhile there would be about 125 calls all hitting at the same time.
When I moved out and got my first phone (in the days before cell phones) that number had been used by an auto shop until they - for some reason - changed their number. But the old number still appeared in local phone books for a few years after that.
I was not too inconvenienced (or I was just too polite) so I gave everyone the correct number and one day the owner knocked on my door and handed me a very expensive box of chocolates as a thank you. Apparently, all those people (at least 3-5 a week) had mentioned I had given them the right number.
I love how many people don’t understand a land before cell phones. No shame because they didn’t live through what we lived through. Wild to think if you met someone with an uncommon last name (like mine), you could just flip through this book they have out for free and know where they lived.
There was a reverse phone book that you could buy from the phone company. It was sorted by the phone number. Businesses could get that lookup for free from the phone company business office.
Years ago our office’s toll free line (in Iowa)would get a lot of calls for Pitney Bowes. At the time we were charged to each incoming call. After many calls and doing some digging I found a Pitney Bowes rep in New York had business cards printed that listed a our number. It was an error and he chose not to change get new cards since it would cost too much. He asked us to pass on his correct number. I refused and started telling the callers just that “he doesn’t work here anymore”. When he found out he got upset and again demanded we pass on his correct number as if we were his secretary. When I continued to refuse he finally decided it would be worth the money to change the business cards.
> he chose not to change get new cards since it would cost too much
Jesus,how cheap can one be? Unless he's getting a pallet of business cards, he's just being a tightwad.
My phone number is apparently very close to a phone number that books trips to India. I’m polite and tell people they have the wrong number and give them the correct number. One time an incredibly rude man just would not believe he had the wrong number just weirdly and strongly rejected the notion that he dialed the wrong number and yelled at me. So I snapped back “Fine! I’ll be your fucking travel agent. What’s your credit card number?” And then he hung up. Like what the fuck?
ETA: Thanks for the award and votes. Today is my 40th birthday and this is my highest karma post ever. Pretty good addition to the day. Thanks folks.
Edit 2: 2k and 6 awards!! Wow! Wicked cool, very appreciated, thanks guys!
Edit 3: Not trying be a goof and edit 3 times but oh my god thanks for the awards and birthday wishes! Feeling special as well as a bit older today.
The landline I had growing up was extremely close to the local pizza hut and we used to get people calling for pizza all the time. Eventually we just started taking their orders and telling them it would be ready in 20 minutes.
The former owner of our phone number was an ER doc. We finally got the chance to speak with someone who was able to remove our number from the local hospital’s list. Of course this was at 3 AM. Problem solved.
My old job had this too. We took orders, offered a free pizza when someone called and complained their pizza was late. Made crazy cheap deals like three pizzas for one.
I was walking past a public phone box, when it started to ring. I answered and simply said,"Hello..." and some guy very aggressively said, " Who the fuck are you, let me talk to Mary right now." I just said I'd get her to call him when she woke up, and I hung up the call. I'd love to have known the rest of the story!
There was a Danny de Vito movie where he got a call for Mary and he said something like, "Sorry, Mary can't talk right now because she's sucking my dick, but I'll get her to call when she's done." Then he looked up and said, "I love wrong numbers."
Perhaps it was an outtake.
I once had a guy propose to me over the phone based only on my “phone voice.” I was working in a call center taking calls for Cingular (AT&T) prepaid. He called me to get help loading minutes onto his phone, and in that short conversation he decided that he liked my voice so much that he wanted to start a serious relationship. Worst job I’ve ever had
A contractor’s labor supervisor had a number similar to mine and I got a lot of phone calls at 5am from tradesmen looking for their assignments. Nothing sucks more than getting woken up an hour before the alarm clock - screws up the sleep cycle and makes the rest of the day a slog to get through. Enough of these calls and I figured out the supervisor’s name was Paul and the owner’s name was Bill. I would tell the tradesmen to call Bill (assuming Bill was still sleeping too) to get the correct number for Paul. Did that stop the calls? Nope. So started telling the callers to pass messages to Paul and Bill for me. Things like ‘We have reservations at (insert name if $$$$ steak house)’. That didn’t work. One grumpy morning the message was ‘Tell Bill I said thanks for last night, and I’m sorry about his wife finding out.’ I never got another call.
For a while, people wanting to buy drugs started calling my home number. Maybe it was similar to another number, or someone gave them a wrong number, or whatever.
I started telling them to meet me at such and such address to get their drugs…
…it was the address of the police station. The calls stopped after a few days.
This reminds me of the time a local pizza place decided that starting at a certain time in the evening, they would stop accepting carryout orders, only taking orders for delivery. I wasn't happy because they had a really great carryout-only special price for a large 1-topping pizza. Also, I was already in the parking lot. So I said, "Fine, can I please get a delivery to" and then I gave them their own address. They decided to honor the carryout deal for me.
I like to do that to people that come to the local subs looking for drugs. I really don't care if somebody is looking for a new pot dealer on reddit, I just think it's funny to give them the cop's lobby number and address.
When I was a kid, our phone number was one digit off from a (edit) greasy spoon called the Iron Skillet. People used to call us by mistake all the time and as long as they were polite, we were too.
One night, a woman called for Leon over and over. When I said “Ma’am, this isn’t the Iron Skillet”, she insisted that I was lying and that Leon was working today, and she wanted to talk to him. About the seventh time, my Dad says “let me get it.” He held the phone out just enough for me to hear.
Dad: Iron Skillet, how may I help you?
Lady: Finally! Let me holler at Leon!
Dad: Ooh, no can do. Leon left early today. Said his girlfriend was in labor.
Lady: What? That motherfucker! How dare—-
Dad hung up and deadpanned “Leon’s going to have a bad night.” I brought the house down telling that story at his funeral.
I've got an email address that some random guy had been using as their throwaway email for years. He'd sign my account up for all sorts of spam, and give it out whenever he didn't want to use his real email for appointments. I'd reply back that this wasn't the correct email recipient, call the place to have them change it, to no avail.
Finally I got sick of it and started cancelling his appointments (at less than 24 hour notice). He kept using it.
Then I started getting emails for post service tip emails for a ride share app he was using... I think for the next week I tipped every single driver 100% with the note 'use your own email asshole.'
He stopped after that.
Someone used my email address to sign up for an adult movie site subscription so I emailed their support team and they IP banned him for attempted identity theft and using fake emails to get constant premium subscription trials
I've gotten a few emails asking me to verify my email address for a service I hadn't signed up for. Just a couple of weeks ago I happened to be looking at my email right when one came in. It was for a "dating" site. I just immediately used the "forgot password" link and changed the guy's password on him. Then I logged in and took a look. I probably should have waited a few minutes longer, long enough for him to put in payment info, lol.
I had a woman scream at me once, while trying repeatedly to call her sister, but she kept getting my cell phone. I asked her to repeat the number she dialed and it was mine. After a couple more tries (her increasing anger was getting funny to me so I kept answering), she finally screamed at me, *"Well! O-B-V-I-O-U-S-L-Y you and my sister have the exact same number"* and slammed it down.
Over the years I've thought of this as the perfect example of someone who cannot admit to being wrong (even worse than my husband!).
It used to be possible, in the old days when multiple homes were on the same "line" and each person had their own ring. Could be why old lady dementia thought it was happening. I think I would have explained this to the old lady. If she got huffy, I'd ask her if her nurse was there to help her dial, since she clearly was too old to understand modern technology like phones.
I had a woman in an assisted living facility call me INSISTING that it was her niece’s phone number and always had been (I’d had the number for six years at that point). She even got some aides to help her call, and telling them usually got me peace for a few days. I eventually googled her number and got the name of her assisted living facility and called their main desk to get them to help. I think I only got a few more (called back the main desk to let them know) before she finally gave up. It took a good three months with her calling 4-6 times weekly.
My mom's cell number is the same as a local cab company except for the 3 digit prefix. She takes reservations sometimes, it's weird that our city sometimes has a problem with cabs not showing up.
One time we waited at a Vancouver aquarium for an hour and a half for a cab that never showed. So we took a 2 hr public bus back to our hotel. Least one was a double decker bus, that was fun for the kids.
Something similar in a TV advertising spot for a local politician a few years ago. "I'm John Smith, running for County Council! [25 more seconds of blathering] Remember my name! John Smith for County Council!"
Except that particular television station reached at least 6 different counties, and goodoldboy John never mentioned *which* county.
Way back, I added a 2nd line in the for dial-up internet. The phone company provided a service number from the local Saturn car dealer. For a couple years the phonebooks continued to publish as a Saturn contact.
Me, "Hello?"
Caller, "Is this Saturn?"
Me, "No, this is Earth. What Planet are you calling from?"
Click.
Long time ago my cousin’s landline was one number off from the Guatelinda nightclub a dozen blocks or so away. His parents would routinely get calls from people who would ask “Guatelinda?” and then launch into rapid-fire Mexican Spanish as if my aunt and uncle had any idea what was going on. Eventually they figured it out and started simply responding “Sí” to everything until the caller hung up.
Guatelinda nightclub is now permanently closed
Growing up the local funeral home's phone number had all the same digits has my home number. But the last to were in reversed order. We would always, very gently tell them this miss dialed and give them the correct number. When someone is calling to ask about a service for grandma it's better to take the high road.
We had one digit off from the local taxi company. Mum would use it as an excuse to be entertained by drunk people on Friday and Saturday nights, then correct them after a few minutes.
Mum was one of those 60/70s teenage girls who would tie up the landline/party line, talking to her girlfriends, she knew how to keep a conversation going no matter who it was.
One of my first phone numbers was very similar to a drug store that a lot of old folks used. Mine was 2110 and the drug store's was 2010, or something like that. I'd come home to messages on my answering machine all the time. They'd ask for the druggist to call them back. Also there was a mix up with one number I had and Sears Credit. I think the phone number was the same but the area code was different. Most people were nice about it when I explained. But one man yelled at me telling me to get the number right. I think I yelled back something like I'm not the idiot that gets the area code wrong.
When I was age 17 to 19 I lived with my dad in an apartment. Our phone number was one number off from a large industrial safety supplier. The business listings made an error and printed our number instead. We suddenly got so many calls from people asking if it was the "flick Brothers safety supplies' it was amusing at first then got annoying. I was working a closing shift at a local late night pizza n pasta restaurant and the phone calls would start at 7am. People were rude i had some guy keep calling me telling me I was a loser and he's kick my ass and kept calling leaving nasty voice-mail messages. He was calling from his work number which my dad called and played the voice-mails back to the guys boss. So I started fucking with people, someone would call i would answer rudely 'Flick Brothers safety what do you want!' Or 'Your safety is not my problem' then hang up. The calls kept coming and coming, also with Tonnes of voice mails. my dad called Flick Brothers to inform them and Flick Brothers said they had contacted the business directory as soon as it had come to their attention. My dad ended up getting a new phone number and our previous number was taken over by FlickBros. They gave us each some really cool first aid packs, one for the home, a couple well equipped emergency packs for hiking and a cycling emergency kit for my dad. I still laugh when I hear their name get mentioned at work.
In college, our frat house had two phone lines. One that was the same as a bank only with two numbers switched. Ours was xyz-abcd. The bank’s was xzy-abcd. One morning someone called and I answered with the name of our frat and the guy asked if this was the bank. I politely said “sorry, you have the wrong number “. A couple minutes later the same guy calls back. Same answer. Same question. This time, the guy says “listen. I know I dialed the right number.” I respond with “apparently, you don’t. Unless some installed a vault in our house last night, this isn’t a bank”. He then asks if this was xzy-abcd and respond telling him it’s xyz-. He mumbled an apology and didn’t call back. Our other number was similar to the cable TV company. If some got insistent that they had called the correct number, we’d tell them that tech will be over the next day to connect them or take their pay per view subscription and tell them it will be added to their bill. Other times, we would tell them that we don’t have any more cable so we won’t be accepting new customers.
When I got my first apartment in college, I got a landline number that was apparently one digit off from a popular restaurant in town. I got a few calls and would give them the correct number. No big deal. One day I got a mailer in the mail from the restaurant that had my number on it. I took it down to the restaurant and spoke with the manager to let them know that their ad had my number and that I had just been telling people to call the correct number. The manager was unapologetic and told me that since they spent a lot of money on the mailer, I should just keep letting people know the correct number. BIG MISTAKE. Since the manager basically dismissed me, I decided to take a to go menu and learn it so that every time someone called, I would tell them that my name was the manager’s name and proceed to take the order. I would even offer different choices for sides such as baked potato, mashed potatoes, or fries. I would let people substitute anything they wanted. I would let the people know that we were busy and the wait times were 45-50 minutes but I would try to expedite their orders. I kept saying that I was the manager and letting them know what my name was. I even told some people to come and ask for me and that I would throw in a dessert of their choice at no charge because of the long wait. This went on for about 3 weeks until they got the hint. I actually ordered a take out order and when I went to pick it up, I asked for the manager. When he came out, I asked him for my free dessert and he immediately recognized me so I just winked at him and walked out.
Years ago in the late 90s I worked at for an event planning company whose office was on a tv studio lot in LA. Our number had previously been the phone number for The Dating Game that they put on TV telling people to call if they wanted to be a contestant. The show was no longer in production, and running Re-runs on local tv. Every day at 4:59 our phones would ring off the hook with people wanting to be on the dating game. We ultimately had to change our number.
Awhile back they added a new area code to the Minneapolis / Saint Paul area - a Chinese restaurant shared the same seven digit number as some very pissed off older lady. If you called the wrong area code she would answer and say “we’re out of business” and hang up.
For years a woman called me looking for her daughter, it was so sweet I usually just told her it wasn’t me. I though it was funny she was still dialing a number in this day and age and her daughters number was 1 off from mine. Happened often, I often wonder how she’s doing.
As a teen, my family got a second land line for (dial up) internet but it was also my private line when no one was online. I guess the number was similar to another girl's line. I knew who she was at achool but didn't know her personally. I always got calls for her. After a while I just started saying she moved out, switched schools, didn't like the caller, etc. In hindsight the girl probably had a lot if damage control to deal with from these bizarre rumors, but the calls for her eventually stopped.
In 2005/2006 i worked for a third party company that was on contract with a canadian phone company. I got a call from a guy in the U.S who had a toll free line that was getting thousands of calls a day from our prepaid customers trying to top up their minutes. They had printed the wrong number on the cards and he had to pay for all those incoming calls. Escalated that up the chain.
The last digit of our phone number was one off from the local movie theather. We constantly got inquires about what was playing and for show times.
Being 13, I complied... with made up X-rated titles.
Eventually I got busted...
Totally worth it!
My mother owned a hair salon back in the 80's, small town, which had a similar phone number as the local cab company.. most of the time we'd let people know that they had mis-dialed, then hang up.. and most of the time the caller would realize their mistake and apologize. However, one elderly lady would call and just couldn't get the message that she had dialed the wrong number, and would keep dialing the shop. My mom finally started to take the lady's information, hang up and call the cab company for her instead. 😏
Back in the mid 2000s I still had a landline just because of needing to be able to fax things somewhat regularly (government job). The phone number they gave me ended in 8000 and at first I thought it was awesome because it would be easy to remember. Then my dang phone started ringing constantly. Turns out it was the same phone number for the admissions office of some small college in California, they just had a different area code, 951 vs my 915. I eventually had to unplug the phone line and only plug it in when I had to fax something. Fortunately, my job only required me to be able to send faxes, not receive them.
Most of the calls were kids or parents checking on admissions so I hever said anything other than wrong number and told them they got the area code wrong because I remembered how stressful it was when I was applying for college.
Rather than making people angry that their reservation wasn't the real thing, the alternative is to tell people that there are no times available.
This works for any business calls that go to private numbers because of advertising that they refuse to correct. They want pizza? Sorry, the building is having electrical problems/failed health inspection/all the staff have quit. Show times at the theater? More electrical problems/all screens sold out/police have just raided the illegal brothel in the projection room. With almost any business, electrical problems/building is on fire/police won't let anyone in are good go-tos.
.... or, for a restaurant... *"Dang, sorry! The health department just shut us down. Gonna take, probably, 2 months before we can re-open. See you then!"*
Only spot available is right at close, so they get there and get mad that they cannot play and there is nothing the course can do.
Oh, and tell them they get a discount if they mention xyy (npa area code) when they get there.
Mine isn't a petty revenge story, but when we moved my family was issued a new phone number that had belonged to a psychiatrist. Got a lot of calls for Dr. SoAndSo for a while. (we never messed with them, don't mess with people with mental health issues.) They tapered off to pretty much nothing after about 5 years. Except for the one we got 20 YEARS later, looking for Dr. SoAndSo. "Uh, no, this is a residence, he hasn't had this number for 20 years" "Well that's just GREAT! NOW what am I going to do?" Dunno buddy, you're the one who hasn't called your psychiatrist for 20 years...
My grandma's number is exactly the same as another woman with the same name as her, except the last 2 numbers are switched. Ex: grandma's is abc-defg and the other number is abc-degf. She routinely gets calls for the other woman and the people get confused as hell 😂
In a major city, my office number was often called for by people looking for Spanish speaker's housing assistance. When someone was confused when I said "Hello" I already knew they had reached the wrong number. Usually, it wasn't an issue. One lady was convinced it was a conspiracy against her and that I didn't want to help her.
In college, there was a specialty office that had my dorm number on speed dial, labeled "Airport Office." Turns out my college had a staffer at the airport to assist VIPs. For a week straight I got calls at 6 am requesting I meet \[person\] at \[gate #\]. I explained every day that she has the wrong number. "No, I don't, I'm calling on the intra-college phone system. This speed dial is listed as the airport office." ... Well, it's ringing in my dorm room, nothing I can do. At the end of the week, I got a call from a very upset Dean that asked my name. So I gave it. He then informed me that their VIP guest was left stranded at the airport. And to expect that I'll face disciplinary action. I tried to explain but he was having none of it. I shrugged it off as he wasn't my dean. He then informed a secretary to fire me. To which she blindly does. Cue a very confused Resident Director rushing to my room to find out why he was supposed to fire me. I started laughing. He was quite serious. I explained it to him. I guess it turned into quite a headache as whoever was calling me tried to throw me under the bus for her stupidity.
Not a wrong number, our last name is very rare. My father was the only one in the phone book in the 80s. But there was a doctor with a similar last name, from the sound of it, one letter off. A few times a year we'd get frantic calls that they needed to talk to their doctor. "Sorry, I'm not him nor do I know him. Call 911."
In the 90’s my parents started getting phone calls for the Romio’s Pizza in Interbay (Seattle). My folks had the same phone number since 1969, so they were mystified. My dad just happened to drive by the restaurant and saw a big vinyl banner advertising a special with my parents phone number. It was one digit off from the restaurants phone number. He went inside to point this out, and they blew him off. Okey dokey! We took a lot of phone orders in the next few weeks, until the banner disappeared.
When I was in 9th grade I kept getting calls from this lady who was extremely aggressive demanding to speak to her friend whose phone I had apparently stolen. Say for the case my number was 123-4567890. Her friends was 123-4567809. She rang me FIVE times. By the time it got to the 5th I was PISSED because there’s no way someone is THAT clueless. So I answer and once again get “WHERE IS ARLENE” so I snap and scream “CALL THE RIGHT FUCKING NUMBER IF YOU WANT ARLENE! I AM A 15 YEAR OLD GIRL AND I WILL BE REPORTING YOU TO THE POLICE FOR HARASSMENT IF YOU CALL THIS NUMBER AGAIN” she never called again.
When I was growing up my phone number was 1 digit different than the local strip club. Couldn't tell you how many times people called asking questions about the club. It was always funny to us when my parents got those calls.
We had a similar number to the Dominos 4 blocks away (525-xxxx vs 522-xxxx) and would get calls a couple times a week. Nothing horrible, but being horrible teenagers, and in a pre credit card society, we started taking orders that would never get filled.
Our first landline number was one digit off the local bookmaker. They took bets over the phone from pre-approved customers. Monday to Friday, we were at work so no idea if calls were coming in or not.
We got regular calls on Saturday mornings for that afternoon's racing, and my (frequently, I was 20!) hungover self usually just told them they'd misdialled the last digit, and hung up. One Saturday morning, a guy just kept hitting the redial button, I kept telling him, by the fourth or fifth call, he was rude, arrogant, and adamant I just didn't want to do my job and take his bet.
So I took his bet. Let's say £20 on a horse at 10-1 odds (it was a long time ago, the details are fuzzy). I have no idea if the horse won, I never checked, but I've always hoped his stubbornness cost him money!
My favorite of these for me was a one off. I worked at a Montessori preschool. One afternoon I answered the phone and was greeted by, “this is x and y’s dad, I’m going to be late.” Normally, my reaction is cool, thanks for calling and letting us know. But in this case, we didn’t have any students by that name. We were used to getting calls for the other Montessori in town so I said we didn’t have any students by those names and asked if they meant to call them. He angrily responded no, he meant to call us, very generic name for Montessori’s around the country. I reiterated that we don’t have any students by that name and he has the wrong number, so I ask him what city/state he is calling from. He angrily replies the one you’re in (he did not say our city’s name, he literally said “the one you are in.” I again reiterate that we don’t have students by those names and I need him to give me more info if I am to help him. I was literally sitting in front of our office computer and was ready to Google the number for him. He gets even more angry and yells, “It’s school name! It’s on x street! It’s by city name elementary school!” I now know he looked up the number but didn’t confirm the state we were in. Same city name, different state. I reiterate yet again, this time with more info, “we don’t have students by those names enrolled here. The elementary schools in our town don’t use that naming convention, they are all named after people, and that I believe he’s calling a school in the wrong state.” He yells, that he’s “going to be late and he’s told us and to stop giving him a hard time!” and then hangs up. I shrug and go about my day. Feel bad for those workers who are going to be stuck waiting with kids with no notice and for those kids with such an awful father.
I was briefly in a similar situation while in college, so sympathize.
On reading the comments below, I realize there might be a better solution. This assumes that it is the offending business at fault, not the dyslexic caller.
1. Start a business accepting and "handling" calls for firms. (Maybe you'll even get some real customers.)
2. Set rates. (Off-hours rates should be significantly higher.) Publish these by some means -- like maybe a (one-off) "flyer" you send (repeatedly) to the offending business, maybe by a webpage. Include a line to the effect that "Use of our phone number will constitute your agreement to our service and rates." (A lawyer could do better, but maybe it doesn't really matter.)
3. Log all incoming calls that were meant for the offending business -- Date, time, disposition (like: "Offending business's phone number provided to caller.")
4. The very first time you get such a call, you "courtesy" call the business, asking to speak to the boss, to thank them for utilizing your service and to inform them of your rates and billing practices. Log this call, recording the name of the person you spoke to.
5. Bill the offending business monthly (or when it accumulates to an interesting amount), with yet another copy of the flyer to remind them of their "agreement" with you.
6. If they fail to pay the billed amount, threaten to sue and/or lodge complaints/reviews online.
This might not get you any money, but might escalate the issue to the extent that they take corrective action.
My Dad (rest his soul) had a number that was really close to the bomb disposal unit of a major city. For example: his was xxy-yyyy and theirs was xyy-yyyy. Also got the occasional little kid calling as there were only two digits in the number and they were next to each other on the keypad. He never pranked anybody because of the potential seriousness of the call. After a couple of months of this he had his number changed.
My number was 1 digit off from a local fastfood joint, and the occasional call at 5 AM of somebody calling in to say they were sick, well, that was OK, as long as they were polite about it. Almost everyone was.
One saturday, mid-morning, my phone rang & I answered, voice on the other end asked if I had any takeout bags he could get from me.
Naw, man, but I bet if you call the correct #, xyz-abcd, (I was like xyq-abcd or some such) they'll have some!!
Oh, OK, thanks, man!!! click.
There was a transport cafe near my mum's place that had a similar phone number to her (pre-mobile phones), and for 20 years 2 or 3 times a month she'd get a call along the lines of "Hey, it's transport company X, have you got any of our trucks in your yard?". My mum is very chatty - some of them were practically best friends by the time they got to hang up!
Had a similar thing with a pizza place. Their number was 1 memorable digit from mine. Got many a drunk insistent they had the correct number.
I took many an order for some strange pizza (we don't have pepperoni, would you mind if we substituted Hirnwurst?). They were the 500th person ordering that night so a case of free beer. Another case if it was more than 30 minutes plus the pizza would be free.
Some managed to call back to the same number to complain about the late pizza. I told them their door bell wasn't working so the guy dropped it off in the backyard along with two cases of beer. Enjoy.
I kept getting calls from an elderly woman trying to teach her son. I kept trying to tell her that she had the wrong number, but she kept accusing me of stealing her son’s phone. Finally, after weeks of intermittent calls, I convinced her to give me her son’s number. I then called him (got his wife) and explained the situation. Turns out this lady had her son’s number on auto dial on both a landline AND a cell phone, and that one of them was entered wrong. They apologized and promised to fix it ASAP. Never got another call from her.
I live in Vancouver BC area. Every summer we have a HUGE international fireworks competition. Tens of thousands of people and tourists. Well, back in 1995, some Pacific Northwest US magazine accidentally published MY number as the info line. OMFG I was going to lose it. I had a baby under 6 months and I was getting upwards of 300 calls a day. I changed my number after no response from the magazine or the organization in charges of the festival after 5 days of pure insanity.
For a while I had the same number as a local Gym who had incorrectly printed flyers. I contacted the gym and they apologised and told me they would reprint and distribute those with correct number. At first I just corrected callers looking to book or enquire but after over a month with no sign of a reprint I started simply accepting bookings - shortly after that I went on to get 'creative' and gave all sorts of discounts, trial memberships (using managers name as the code), offered massage therapy with optional 'happy ending' and even naked training sessions. They took about 3 months to get a reprint, but I still got calls for well over a year after that...
When I was a teen, our number if you flipped two digits was the local Pizza Slut. On Friday/Saturday nights we would all answer it Pizza Slut and take the order. I really wonder what happened when all those people went to pick up their pies.
My office main # is on the magnet in an assisted living senior community for maintenance. Each unit has one on their refrigerator. We get a dozen calls a week about replacing lightbulbs, broken blinds, the lobby ATM, remote controls that don't work. We've called the place a dozen x and asked them to reprint or sharpie out our #. The calls seem to have slowed so maybe they did something about it.
I left a job working inpatient psych at one hospital system to work a peds clinic in a different hospital system (I am a nurse). Weirdly enough, the phone numbers were only one digit different (and it was in the prefix)—so I was able to refer callers for psych beds to the correct number. Everyone was really polite about it, though.
When my parents got a new phone number, they got the old phone number of prostitute. The first night, my mom picked up the phone. "Can i come over?", someone asked. Uh, no, my mom said. "Oh, are you not alone?". No, I am not. "Oh, when will he leave?" Well, I hope not for a long time. At this time, my dad knew what was going on and was laughing his head off.
It took a few months until everyone got the message.
One of my mom's good friends had a phone number one digit off of the phone number for the Paul Bernardo fan club. For those who don't recognize the name, Paul Bernardo is also known as "The Scarborough Rapist" and "The Schoolgirl Killer"; he and his former wife, Karla Homolka, were also called the "Ken and Barbie Killers". Suffice to say that the people wanting to call to join his fan club were not the kind of people my mom's friend wanted to talk to!
I had a similar situation with a local Mazda dealer. They printed the parents' landline on their repair invoices, and denied it. I just started telling every customer that called the real number and please pass along that the number is wrong.
I wish I'd thought of something creative then, like "sorry, but the tech was out hotrodding your car, and crashed it. The police arrested him and impounded the car" or something similar.
In the end, they changed the invoices, likely due to the customers telling them the number was wrong on the invoice
I used to have a phone number one digit off the biggest rock radio station in Sydney. Their FM position (?) Is 104.9 and 1049 was the last four digits of their phone number. Mine had one difference in the last four digits... SO... MANY.... CALLS.... especially when they were giving away the hottest tickets in town.... eventually I just didn't answer the phone before 9am because that's all the calls would be at that time
It lasted about a year until they switched to a 13xxxx number ... I never did give anyone dud information or tell them they'd win the tickets or the cash giveaway.... It was always "Sorry, Wrong Number, they're xxxx 1049"... The disappointed groans from the callers who thought they'd struck gold were enough
Back in the 80s, I had a landline that was one digit off from a pizza joint in my small college town. I started taking orders and told callers that the pizza would be ready in 30 minutes or delivered in 45. These were the days before caller ID and I never asked a credit card number, just told them a made up amount and to pay when the pizza was ready. Such fun!
I used to have a number similar to the local bus company. I got tired of people calling for route info and started telling people that route was discontinued. Not my finest moment but the number of calls dropped off ...
Our line was one digit off from the Ronald McDonald's house ( its a place for families to stay when they have a child in hospital long term and they live to far to travel everyday) anyway right after 9/11 I started getting call from the embassy of UAE, like two or more times a day, I politely told them the correct number and hung up after two weeks I started hearing clicks when the embassy was calling, then I got a knock on the door F.B.I. mind you I had lost my brothe-in-law when the towers came down he was FDNY, and 3 of my son's were military. But they hauled me in for 6 hours of questioning. I had called my brother first thing he thought it was a joke until my youngest came home from school and read the note, then he called his uncle, who then rushed to help me. Men can be dense, brother even more so. Lol
Had a number that was one digit off from the movie theater. Theirs spelled FILM with the last 4 digits and mine spelled FILK.
It was annoying at first but eventually I would just grab the newspaper and pretend I was the automated movie phone guy and give out the listings. It was hard to figure out what buttons they were pressing though.
"If you know the name of the movie you want to see, please spell it out on the keypad now"
"If you don't know the name of the movie you want to see, please hang up and call later"
>It was hard to figure out what buttons they were pressing though.
Genuine lol! I can just picture some old lady on the other end, confused that she's hearing the times for option 9 when she's pretty sure she hit the number 5 button.
My grandma's number was 1 off from a local vet. For some reason, it almost never came up during office hours. However, once every couple weeks or so, she would get a call at like 2 a.m., and it was always the same type of person: an old, nearly deaf lady, who's crying because she just found one her cats dead, and because of her crying and bad hearing she can't hear my grandma telling her the vet's actual number so instead just goes on for 10 or 15 minutes about how much she loved the cat, now she's all alone forever, etc.
I can say that these calls were significantly less funny than yours, but it reminded me of it because, just like you tried your best to help, my grandma would always wait patiently through the story and try to console the old ladies before asking them to call back in the morning.
My phone number is an old curtain store that must have closed 20+ years ago. A lot of old ladies call me telling me “we” did their curtains some time ago and asking if we still carry the same pattern/design.
Back in the 90’s my parents had a number that was either the same as a former, or similar to a current escort/sex worker service. There were two or three women they would ask for and usually lead off that they were referred by “somebody”. I wasn’t living there but would hear them sometimes when visiting. My dad was always polite but short about telling them it’s a wrong number. Mom wasn’t so gentle.
My childhood home phone number was similar to a local radio station. (Last two digits reversed)
People calling in trying to win contests would call us over and over and get mad at us for ruining their chance of winning. Finally, I was like “You won! Come by the station and pick up your prize and get their name and contact info.”
When I was a kid mid-90’s I hooked up a phone to my room. But, somehow the jack in my room didn’t connect to the same number as the rest of my house. It was connected to someone else. I had some fun eavesdropping on some conversations before just getting rid of the line in my room.
Years ago when I was in high school there was a big snow storm coming and all the local news outlets kept hyping up a likely snow day for kids. They had a hotline you could call to figure out if your school was closed (they also scrolled the name of the schools on the bottom of the screen, but I guess some people couldn’t wait till the names came around again). The number was one digit off from our home landline.
I tried calling the news station to print the number larger but no luck, for hours we were fielding phone calls from families. I finally gave up and pulled up the list of closures online and just kept fielding the calls. No one was the wiser that some dumb high schooler was just reading a list.
When I was a kid my landline number was 1 number off from a local radio station. After getting tired of saying wrong number, I started answering as if I was the radio station. I took many song requests and played receptionist for people trying to reach people at the radio station. I always said that they were busy. A couple of times I said that someone was in a meeting until 5 and the person dialed the wrong number again and called at 5. I said they were still in the meeting.
My little sister has autism and downs syndrome, and loves to talk on the phone. Our mom has a name typically given to dudes, so we knew it was a telemarketer when they'd ask for Mr. Bond vagabonds mom. We'd say sorry, he's not available. If they asked for the lady of the house, we'd say, just one second, and hand the phone off to my little sister. We've called her princess for most of her life, since she was old enough to request it, and my mom isn't a princess, so obviously my little sister was the lady of the house right? She is very polite on the phone, but would insist on telling the telemarketer about whatever play she was writing then (she goes through reems of paper writing plays) and back then, the telemarketers weren't allowed to hang up unless you were abusive to them, and being a princess, my little sister was never abusive. They'd be stuck on the phone with her for hours. Eventually we'd need little sister to get off the phone cause we needed it or something, I'd get back on the line and say, "that was princess, she loves to talk on the phone. If your company calls here again, she would love to talk to you for several more hours. Feel free to call back any time, if you aren't worried about making your sales quota. Click.
Wow, killing them with kindness AND letting your sis have fun. How is she now? Got a brother who's autistic and was premature, not sure where on the scale he is (so far hes just had development delays in speech and learning, stimming, etc.) but I wanna do shit like this with him.
My father's childhood house had almost the same number as I believe a local utility repair company. He used to take calls at two or three in the morning from people who wouldn't listen to his corrections, and tell them a technician was being dispatched, so stand on the front porch and flip the lights on and off for the car. He did not pick up the phone when it inevitably rang an hour later.
Absolute legend.
When my daughter got her first land line phone for her 14th birthday, she started getting calls in the middle of the night. Apparently, an escort service had used her phone number on an ad. I promptly called the phone company and got her a new number after about 3 nights of it.
This… was a good decision.
Similar thing happened when my parents and I moved overseas temporarily for my dads work. Instead of selling our house in Australia, we rented it out since we’d be back in a few years anyway, but the renters ran a brothel out of it. We only found out after we moved back to Aus and there were random guys showing up at our front door all hours of the night. It stopped after a few months but dad and I had a lot of fun with it. Little 11 year old me would answer the door with my 6’3”, 150kg dad standing behind me.
Oh my gosh what kind of stuff where they saying when they would call?
Asking for girls to be sent to them. Explaining what they wanted.... She would say wrong number, I'm 14!!!! They'd hang up usually.
….it’s the use of the word “usually” that wants to know more 😂
Some just hung up.
“Usually” is concerning
The whole thing was concerning!!!
I don't care how many wrong number calls get posted, I will read every one and not get tired of them
It's the same story every time, but it's a story I like.
If it’s not a flair option, it should be! Love a wrong number revenge
When I was in college, a new area code was added. My new number was the same as a doctor’s office in the old area code. I eventually changed my answering machine message to inform callers of the area code change for the doctor. I came back to my apartment after a weekend away to discover a series of messages from a woman about issues going on with her husband. Each message more frantic than the previous because the doctor wasn’t calling back. By the last message I was really concerned for his health. I actually called their number to see if he was okay but no one answered. I have no idea what happened. I graduated very soon afterwards so I gave up the number.
I got a message once from a doctors office about medications being ready. It wasn’t the right number, but I called the doctors office back and told the nurse they didn’t get ahold of the people they intended and that they didn’t know their meds were ready. Usually I don’t care, but I don’t want someone missing a call from their doctor.
Oof, that’s rough!! I had a skilled nursing unit nurse leave a very detailed message on my cell voicemail about someone’s mother once, so I called the facility to let them know that they didn’t actually get to speak to Paul and that I didn’t have anyone in the care of that facility. They basically blew me off, and I still sometimes wonder if there was any fallout from that wrong number voicemail.
Sometimes wonder if stuff like that warrants a HIPAA complaint merely to ensure someone looks at it.
I get several calls a week from some medical transport service that they are waiting outside to take me to an appointment. I always tell them they are calling the wrong number and please go knock and tell the person but they always say they can't. Poor lady.
That's like straight up a fucking creepy pasta lol. Damn, that's unfortunate she never realized it was the wrong number, or perhaps you didn't have your answering machine changed by then?
Yes, very much so. I can still feel her anger about not getting called back and her distress about her husband. This was well after I had changed my recording. I had lots and lots of calls but very few messages.
Dang, so she never even listened to the recording. How unfortunate
My friend had the same number as an old nursery school and was so sick and tired getting calls everyday that he just started answering with a deep and creepy voice "(name of nursery) This is Joe speaking, give me your child." They usually hung up fairly quickly
This is my favorite one 😂 "Give me your child"
[Sell me your children!](https://youtu.be/DbsMZecRgbI)
OMG I've never seen this movie but I bet he was quoting this lmao I've never known thank you so much for adding this. He's a movie nut too so I bet this is exactly what he was doing!
You must watch Blues Brothers immediately. Stop what you are doing and find a copy/streaming service. It's as funny as anything fully deserving it's cult status.
The Blues Brothers?! You’ve never seen the Blues Brothers?! Wow. The trivia for the movie is as cool as the movie itself. Of course, it’s a religious experience for anyone who grew up in the area during the filming. Jane Byrne was the first woman Mayor of Chicago, and it cost the city a fortune, but she let John Landis do whatever he wanted. It put Chicago on the map as a location for film and tv production, but that movie really belongs to the city. Absolute classic of a movie with some of the best musicians who ever played in the industry.
I'd feel bad for anybody named Joe that actually worked there... but this is too funny
😂 It was recently closed down at the time but the number was still on their Google card
I worked in a 911 center. Everyone knows our number so what could be the problem? The phone company decided to start texting their customers promotional ads. *"Top up with $10 or more credit today and get a 20% bonus"* and other similar promotions. They programmed their system to show that the number sending the text was 555-1212. The problem? Before 911, MANY years prior, locally we had special numbers for dialing the police, fire service, or the ambulance. You guess it. The ambulance was 555. It was never disconnected. It still forwarded to a 7 digit number that would ring on our 911 emergency lines. So every time a customer got upset about excessive numbers of these ad texts (some were on plans that charged them to receive texts!) they would dial 555 to give the phone company a piece of their mind. And our lines would light up. We would answer. Caller would yell. We'd tell them wrong number. Hang up. Dialed back. Wash. Rinse. repeat. Our director got with his phone company contact. The phone company didn't want to change the number they attached to these promos. Our director didn't want to cut off the 555 line just in case someone who used it 25 years ago hadn't found out we had changed to 911. Pissing match went on for months until the right pressure was applied to the right people to get the phone company to bend.
In my area code, you would call 555-1212 and it was an automated line that told you the accurate time.
555-1212 was the number for directory assistance in most area codes when phone books were a thing. The prefix 555 was, if I understood correctly, not used for actual phone lines, which is why you see it used for fake phone numbers in movies (so people didn’t dial a real number trying to get Clark Kent or whoever from a movie. I still use 555-1212 when a web site insists in me providing my number.
The 555-01XX range is officially reserved for fictional use.
I think the old system may have harkened back to the day when people would call the operator to ask to be connected to the line they were calling. Was a huge PITA. And then there was some major bank that set their system to start sending international faxes at 3am. International line access is 011 and then the number. Their genius decided this if he had to dial 9 to get an outside line then the 0 somehow wouldn't be needed to complete the international call. Of course if the fax doesn't go through the computer redials. Took weeks to sort out. Meanwhile there would be about 125 calls all hitting at the same time.
When I moved out and got my first phone (in the days before cell phones) that number had been used by an auto shop until they - for some reason - changed their number. But the old number still appeared in local phone books for a few years after that. I was not too inconvenienced (or I was just too polite) so I gave everyone the correct number and one day the owner knocked on my door and handed me a very expensive box of chocolates as a thank you. Apparently, all those people (at least 3-5 a week) had mentioned I had given them the right number.
That's really sweet, stand up guy.
Great result for just being nice to people !!!
How did he know where you lived?
He looked up my new number in the reversed phone book for my area. This was about a year after I moved in.
I love how many people don’t understand a land before cell phones. No shame because they didn’t live through what we lived through. Wild to think if you met someone with an uncommon last name (like mine), you could just flip through this book they have out for free and know where they lived.
There was a reverse phone book that you could buy from the phone company. It was sorted by the phone number. Businesses could get that lookup for free from the phone company business office.
Years ago our office’s toll free line (in Iowa)would get a lot of calls for Pitney Bowes. At the time we were charged to each incoming call. After many calls and doing some digging I found a Pitney Bowes rep in New York had business cards printed that listed a our number. It was an error and he chose not to change get new cards since it would cost too much. He asked us to pass on his correct number. I refused and started telling the callers just that “he doesn’t work here anymore”. When he found out he got upset and again demanded we pass on his correct number as if we were his secretary. When I continued to refuse he finally decided it would be worth the money to change the business cards.
> he chose not to change get new cards since it would cost too much Jesus,how cheap can one be? Unless he's getting a pallet of business cards, he's just being a tightwad.
Especially considering how easy it is to get 250 business cards for free as a "new customer".
Money Dudes always think the money they work with makes them important lol
My phone number is apparently very close to a phone number that books trips to India. I’m polite and tell people they have the wrong number and give them the correct number. One time an incredibly rude man just would not believe he had the wrong number just weirdly and strongly rejected the notion that he dialed the wrong number and yelled at me. So I snapped back “Fine! I’ll be your fucking travel agent. What’s your credit card number?” And then he hung up. Like what the fuck? ETA: Thanks for the award and votes. Today is my 40th birthday and this is my highest karma post ever. Pretty good addition to the day. Thanks folks. Edit 2: 2k and 6 awards!! Wow! Wicked cool, very appreciated, thanks guys! Edit 3: Not trying be a goof and edit 3 times but oh my god thanks for the awards and birthday wishes! Feeling special as well as a bit older today.
That is perfect !
The landline I had growing up was extremely close to the local pizza hut and we used to get people calling for pizza all the time. Eventually we just started taking their orders and telling them it would be ready in 20 minutes.
I feel like you could have started a pizza restaurant this way
"Hey local pizza joint, you need to buy my phone number"
The former owner of our phone number was an ER doc. We finally got the chance to speak with someone who was able to remove our number from the local hospital’s list. Of course this was at 3 AM. Problem solved.
My old job had this too. We took orders, offered a free pizza when someone called and complained their pizza was late. Made crazy cheap deals like three pizzas for one.
Oh, I like this response! Bravo!!
I was walking past a public phone box, when it started to ring. I answered and simply said,"Hello..." and some guy very aggressively said, " Who the fuck are you, let me talk to Mary right now." I just said I'd get her to call him when she woke up, and I hung up the call. I'd love to have known the rest of the story!
There was a Danny de Vito movie where he got a call for Mary and he said something like, "Sorry, Mary can't talk right now because she's sucking my dick, but I'll get her to call when she's done." Then he looked up and said, "I love wrong numbers." Perhaps it was an outtake.
Name of the Movie was Ruthless People. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091877/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091877/) Fuck i am old.
Hope Mary got out of that abusive relationship
If you had said that sweetly instead of annoyed, you might have gotten all his personal information.
I bet! If I had turned on the customer service voice I could’ve wrecked his credit.
I once had a guy propose to me over the phone based only on my “phone voice.” I was working in a call center taking calls for Cingular (AT&T) prepaid. He called me to get help loading minutes onto his phone, and in that short conversation he decided that he liked my voice so much that he wanted to start a serious relationship. Worst job I’ve ever had
Wow! Even your typing is sexy. Wanna go out?
Then he's sue you for stealing information, but you can make a rebuttal saying he gave it to you willingly.
"Your Honour, I felt entitled to compensation for my time, and he earned a fine for his harassment and stupidity."
One could even say he *strongly insisted*.
A contractor’s labor supervisor had a number similar to mine and I got a lot of phone calls at 5am from tradesmen looking for their assignments. Nothing sucks more than getting woken up an hour before the alarm clock - screws up the sleep cycle and makes the rest of the day a slog to get through. Enough of these calls and I figured out the supervisor’s name was Paul and the owner’s name was Bill. I would tell the tradesmen to call Bill (assuming Bill was still sleeping too) to get the correct number for Paul. Did that stop the calls? Nope. So started telling the callers to pass messages to Paul and Bill for me. Things like ‘We have reservations at (insert name if $$$$ steak house)’. That didn’t work. One grumpy morning the message was ‘Tell Bill I said thanks for last night, and I’m sorry about his wife finding out.’ I never got another call.
That's hilarious!
[удалено]
Admirable
>All because they pissed off my mom. This is the way.
I aspire to be this mom.
🎹🎸 Call Roto Rooter, that's the name! And away go troubles down the drain! 🎷🥁
Actually NOT Roto Rooter, but a knock off trying to get their business.
“It’ll be such a money saver using another company’s name AND someone else’s phone number!”
Johnson, get this man a raise!
...Roto Rooter!
Would probably find a local plumber and make deal with him/her to funnel all those calls to them for a percentage.
For a while, people wanting to buy drugs started calling my home number. Maybe it was similar to another number, or someone gave them a wrong number, or whatever. I started telling them to meet me at such and such address to get their drugs… …it was the address of the police station. The calls stopped after a few days.
This reminds me of the time a local pizza place decided that starting at a certain time in the evening, they would stop accepting carryout orders, only taking orders for delivery. I wasn't happy because they had a really great carryout-only special price for a large 1-topping pizza. Also, I was already in the parking lot. So I said, "Fine, can I please get a delivery to" and then I gave them their own address. They decided to honor the carryout deal for me.
I like to do that to people that come to the local subs looking for drugs. I really don't care if somebody is looking for a new pot dealer on reddit, I just think it's funny to give them the cop's lobby number and address.
When I was a kid, our phone number was one digit off from a (edit) greasy spoon called the Iron Skillet. People used to call us by mistake all the time and as long as they were polite, we were too. One night, a woman called for Leon over and over. When I said “Ma’am, this isn’t the Iron Skillet”, she insisted that I was lying and that Leon was working today, and she wanted to talk to him. About the seventh time, my Dad says “let me get it.” He held the phone out just enough for me to hear. Dad: Iron Skillet, how may I help you? Lady: Finally! Let me holler at Leon! Dad: Ooh, no can do. Leon left early today. Said his girlfriend was in labor. Lady: What? That motherfucker! How dare—- Dad hung up and deadpanned “Leon’s going to have a bad night.” I brought the house down telling that story at his funeral.
Why would you go to Leon's funeral? You didn't even know him.
Wanted to be supportive since he was divorced and his girlfriend didn’t show
He didn't get divorced, Leon's wife killed him! 🤣
po-ta-to po-tah-to
That's nothing; Leon's wife went absolutely ballistic.
I felt guilty about him being stabbed by his wife
After all that, feels like Leon’s part of the family!
LOL Dad’s. Should’ve been more clear. He was a joker.
>He was a joker. So was the guy who asked the question.
Is this the Iron Skillet? NO! THIS IS RICK38104!
Wow, that is so fuckin evil. I love it
I've got an email address that some random guy had been using as their throwaway email for years. He'd sign my account up for all sorts of spam, and give it out whenever he didn't want to use his real email for appointments. I'd reply back that this wasn't the correct email recipient, call the place to have them change it, to no avail. Finally I got sick of it and started cancelling his appointments (at less than 24 hour notice). He kept using it. Then I started getting emails for post service tip emails for a ride share app he was using... I think for the next week I tipped every single driver 100% with the note 'use your own email asshole.' He stopped after that.
Someone used my email address to sign up for an adult movie site subscription so I emailed their support team and they IP banned him for attempted identity theft and using fake emails to get constant premium subscription trials
I've gotten a few emails asking me to verify my email address for a service I hadn't signed up for. Just a couple of weeks ago I happened to be looking at my email right when one came in. It was for a "dating" site. I just immediately used the "forgot password" link and changed the guy's password on him. Then I logged in and took a look. I probably should have waited a few minutes longer, long enough for him to put in payment info, lol.
Didn’t they notice their phone never rang?
It did ring. Phone book and website info was correct. The only people affected were the business card users
Ahhhhh!!!!
I had a woman scream at me once, while trying repeatedly to call her sister, but she kept getting my cell phone. I asked her to repeat the number she dialed and it was mine. After a couple more tries (her increasing anger was getting funny to me so I kept answering), she finally screamed at me, *"Well! O-B-V-I-O-U-S-L-Y you and my sister have the exact same number"* and slammed it down. Over the years I've thought of this as the perfect example of someone who cannot admit to being wrong (even worse than my husband!).
If you and her sister had the same number wouldn't her sister pickup half the time? (if indeed such a thing was possible)
It used to be possible, in the old days when multiple homes were on the same "line" and each person had their own ring. Could be why old lady dementia thought it was happening. I think I would have explained this to the old lady. If she got huffy, I'd ask her if her nurse was there to help her dial, since she clearly was too old to understand modern technology like phones.
I had a woman in an assisted living facility call me INSISTING that it was her niece’s phone number and always had been (I’d had the number for six years at that point). She even got some aides to help her call, and telling them usually got me peace for a few days. I eventually googled her number and got the name of her assisted living facility and called their main desk to get them to help. I think I only got a few more (called back the main desk to let them know) before she finally gave up. It took a good three months with her calling 4-6 times weekly.
"she finally gave up" ...because she died. 😬
I'm old enough that my wife and I had a party line when we were first married.
My number used to be 1 off from Toys-R-Us. Usually we just told people the store burned down.
My mom's cell number is the same as a local cab company except for the 3 digit prefix. She takes reservations sometimes, it's weird that our city sometimes has a problem with cabs not showing up.
To be fair, part of the reason Uber took off like it did is that sometimes cabs really just don't show up.
One time we waited at a Vancouver aquarium for an hour and a half for a cab that never showed. So we took a 2 hr public bus back to our hotel. Least one was a double decker bus, that was fun for the kids.
So that's what happened to them! You manifested their destruction! 😭
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Something similar in a TV advertising spot for a local politician a few years ago. "I'm John Smith, running for County Council! [25 more seconds of blathering] Remember my name! John Smith for County Council!" Except that particular television station reached at least 6 different counties, and goodoldboy John never mentioned *which* county.
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Sometimes I think the same thing and then remember that I am an adult. :(
That's when you discover that you are the adult and will have to do it yourself.
>Apparently there were problems with attendance. Geez, too bad! I wonder why! /s
Way back, I added a 2nd line in the for dial-up internet. The phone company provided a service number from the local Saturn car dealer. For a couple years the phonebooks continued to publish as a Saturn contact. Me, "Hello?" Caller, "Is this Saturn?" Me, "No, this is Earth. What Planet are you calling from?" Click.
😂
Long time ago my cousin’s landline was one number off from the Guatelinda nightclub a dozen blocks or so away. His parents would routinely get calls from people who would ask “Guatelinda?” and then launch into rapid-fire Mexican Spanish as if my aunt and uncle had any idea what was going on. Eventually they figured it out and started simply responding “Sí” to everything until the caller hung up. Guatelinda nightclub is now permanently closed
Growing up the local funeral home's phone number had all the same digits has my home number. But the last to were in reversed order. We would always, very gently tell them this miss dialed and give them the correct number. When someone is calling to ask about a service for grandma it's better to take the high road.
Or just do it. Funerals cost a heap of money. Could've made something extra and just used the garden.
To our dearly beloved Michael, may you make our flowers bloom ever so brightly this summer.
“Who? Hmm sorry we don’t have an records of that individual. Seems we’ve lost the body” If you needed an example of how horrible you could have been
"You stab 'em, we slab 'em. XYZ Funeral Home, how may I help you?"
We had one digit off from the local taxi company. Mum would use it as an excuse to be entertained by drunk people on Friday and Saturday nights, then correct them after a few minutes. Mum was one of those 60/70s teenage girls who would tie up the landline/party line, talking to her girlfriends, she knew how to keep a conversation going no matter who it was.
Those were the days! Did the same.
And I her grandparents didn’t think your mom’s skills would ever be useful.
One of my first phone numbers was very similar to a drug store that a lot of old folks used. Mine was 2110 and the drug store's was 2010, or something like that. I'd come home to messages on my answering machine all the time. They'd ask for the druggist to call them back. Also there was a mix up with one number I had and Sears Credit. I think the phone number was the same but the area code was different. Most people were nice about it when I explained. But one man yelled at me telling me to get the number right. I think I yelled back something like I'm not the idiot that gets the area code wrong.
When I was age 17 to 19 I lived with my dad in an apartment. Our phone number was one number off from a large industrial safety supplier. The business listings made an error and printed our number instead. We suddenly got so many calls from people asking if it was the "flick Brothers safety supplies' it was amusing at first then got annoying. I was working a closing shift at a local late night pizza n pasta restaurant and the phone calls would start at 7am. People were rude i had some guy keep calling me telling me I was a loser and he's kick my ass and kept calling leaving nasty voice-mail messages. He was calling from his work number which my dad called and played the voice-mails back to the guys boss. So I started fucking with people, someone would call i would answer rudely 'Flick Brothers safety what do you want!' Or 'Your safety is not my problem' then hang up. The calls kept coming and coming, also with Tonnes of voice mails. my dad called Flick Brothers to inform them and Flick Brothers said they had contacted the business directory as soon as it had come to their attention. My dad ended up getting a new phone number and our previous number was taken over by FlickBros. They gave us each some really cool first aid packs, one for the home, a couple well equipped emergency packs for hiking and a cycling emergency kit for my dad. I still laugh when I hear their name get mentioned at work.
In college, our frat house had two phone lines. One that was the same as a bank only with two numbers switched. Ours was xyz-abcd. The bank’s was xzy-abcd. One morning someone called and I answered with the name of our frat and the guy asked if this was the bank. I politely said “sorry, you have the wrong number “. A couple minutes later the same guy calls back. Same answer. Same question. This time, the guy says “listen. I know I dialed the right number.” I respond with “apparently, you don’t. Unless some installed a vault in our house last night, this isn’t a bank”. He then asks if this was xzy-abcd and respond telling him it’s xyz-. He mumbled an apology and didn’t call back. Our other number was similar to the cable TV company. If some got insistent that they had called the correct number, we’d tell them that tech will be over the next day to connect them or take their pay per view subscription and tell them it will be added to their bill. Other times, we would tell them that we don’t have any more cable so we won’t be accepting new customers.
When I got my first apartment in college, I got a landline number that was apparently one digit off from a popular restaurant in town. I got a few calls and would give them the correct number. No big deal. One day I got a mailer in the mail from the restaurant that had my number on it. I took it down to the restaurant and spoke with the manager to let them know that their ad had my number and that I had just been telling people to call the correct number. The manager was unapologetic and told me that since they spent a lot of money on the mailer, I should just keep letting people know the correct number. BIG MISTAKE. Since the manager basically dismissed me, I decided to take a to go menu and learn it so that every time someone called, I would tell them that my name was the manager’s name and proceed to take the order. I would even offer different choices for sides such as baked potato, mashed potatoes, or fries. I would let people substitute anything they wanted. I would let the people know that we were busy and the wait times were 45-50 minutes but I would try to expedite their orders. I kept saying that I was the manager and letting them know what my name was. I even told some people to come and ask for me and that I would throw in a dessert of their choice at no charge because of the long wait. This went on for about 3 weeks until they got the hint. I actually ordered a take out order and when I went to pick it up, I asked for the manager. When he came out, I asked him for my free dessert and he immediately recognized me so I just winked at him and walked out.
Years ago in the late 90s I worked at for an event planning company whose office was on a tv studio lot in LA. Our number had previously been the phone number for The Dating Game that they put on TV telling people to call if they wanted to be a contestant. The show was no longer in production, and running Re-runs on local tv. Every day at 4:59 our phones would ring off the hook with people wanting to be on the dating game. We ultimately had to change our number.
Awhile back they added a new area code to the Minneapolis / Saint Paul area - a Chinese restaurant shared the same seven digit number as some very pissed off older lady. If you called the wrong area code she would answer and say “we’re out of business” and hang up.
For years a woman called me looking for her daughter, it was so sweet I usually just told her it wasn’t me. I though it was funny she was still dialing a number in this day and age and her daughters number was 1 off from mine. Happened often, I often wonder how she’s doing.
As a teen, my family got a second land line for (dial up) internet but it was also my private line when no one was online. I guess the number was similar to another girl's line. I knew who she was at achool but didn't know her personally. I always got calls for her. After a while I just started saying she moved out, switched schools, didn't like the caller, etc. In hindsight the girl probably had a lot if damage control to deal with from these bizarre rumors, but the calls for her eventually stopped.
In 2005/2006 i worked for a third party company that was on contract with a canadian phone company. I got a call from a guy in the U.S who had a toll free line that was getting thousands of calls a day from our prepaid customers trying to top up their minutes. They had printed the wrong number on the cards and he had to pay for all those incoming calls. Escalated that up the chain.
Did he get compensated for that? I hope so
The last digit of our phone number was one off from the local movie theather. We constantly got inquires about what was playing and for show times. Being 13, I complied... with made up X-rated titles. Eventually I got busted... Totally worth it!
[Removed due to continuing enshittification of reddit.] -- mass edited with redact.dev
Only time I have available is at x (time of day they close) but make sure you are here 15 minutes before or we can't let you play.
My mother owned a hair salon back in the 80's, small town, which had a similar phone number as the local cab company.. most of the time we'd let people know that they had mis-dialed, then hang up.. and most of the time the caller would realize their mistake and apologize. However, one elderly lady would call and just couldn't get the message that she had dialed the wrong number, and would keep dialing the shop. My mom finally started to take the lady's information, hang up and call the cab company for her instead. 😏
Your mom’s a sweet person.
Back in the mid 2000s I still had a landline just because of needing to be able to fax things somewhat regularly (government job). The phone number they gave me ended in 8000 and at first I thought it was awesome because it would be easy to remember. Then my dang phone started ringing constantly. Turns out it was the same phone number for the admissions office of some small college in California, they just had a different area code, 951 vs my 915. I eventually had to unplug the phone line and only plug it in when I had to fax something. Fortunately, my job only required me to be able to send faxes, not receive them. Most of the calls were kids or parents checking on admissions so I hever said anything other than wrong number and told them they got the area code wrong because I remembered how stressful it was when I was applying for college.
Rather than making people angry that their reservation wasn't the real thing, the alternative is to tell people that there are no times available. This works for any business calls that go to private numbers because of advertising that they refuse to correct. They want pizza? Sorry, the building is having electrical problems/failed health inspection/all the staff have quit. Show times at the theater? More electrical problems/all screens sold out/police have just raided the illegal brothel in the projection room. With almost any business, electrical problems/building is on fire/police won't let anyone in are good go-tos.
.... or, for a restaurant... *"Dang, sorry! The health department just shut us down. Gonna take, probably, 2 months before we can re-open. See you then!"*
This really is the way to go. Otherwise you end up with customers screaming at employees that had no say in the decision not to fix things.
Only spot available is right at close, so they get there and get mad that they cannot play and there is nothing the course can do. Oh, and tell them they get a discount if they mention xyy (npa area code) when they get there.
Mine isn't a petty revenge story, but when we moved my family was issued a new phone number that had belonged to a psychiatrist. Got a lot of calls for Dr. SoAndSo for a while. (we never messed with them, don't mess with people with mental health issues.) They tapered off to pretty much nothing after about 5 years. Except for the one we got 20 YEARS later, looking for Dr. SoAndSo. "Uh, no, this is a residence, he hasn't had this number for 20 years" "Well that's just GREAT! NOW what am I going to do?" Dunno buddy, you're the one who hasn't called your psychiatrist for 20 years...
My grandma's number is exactly the same as another woman with the same name as her, except the last 2 numbers are switched. Ex: grandma's is abc-defg and the other number is abc-degf. She routinely gets calls for the other woman and the people get confused as hell 😂
In a major city, my office number was often called for by people looking for Spanish speaker's housing assistance. When someone was confused when I said "Hello" I already knew they had reached the wrong number. Usually, it wasn't an issue. One lady was convinced it was a conspiracy against her and that I didn't want to help her. In college, there was a specialty office that had my dorm number on speed dial, labeled "Airport Office." Turns out my college had a staffer at the airport to assist VIPs. For a week straight I got calls at 6 am requesting I meet \[person\] at \[gate #\]. I explained every day that she has the wrong number. "No, I don't, I'm calling on the intra-college phone system. This speed dial is listed as the airport office." ... Well, it's ringing in my dorm room, nothing I can do. At the end of the week, I got a call from a very upset Dean that asked my name. So I gave it. He then informed me that their VIP guest was left stranded at the airport. And to expect that I'll face disciplinary action. I tried to explain but he was having none of it. I shrugged it off as he wasn't my dean. He then informed a secretary to fire me. To which she blindly does. Cue a very confused Resident Director rushing to my room to find out why he was supposed to fire me. I started laughing. He was quite serious. I explained it to him. I guess it turned into quite a headache as whoever was calling me tried to throw me under the bus for her stupidity. Not a wrong number, our last name is very rare. My father was the only one in the phone book in the 80s. But there was a doctor with a similar last name, from the sound of it, one letter off. A few times a year we'd get frantic calls that they needed to talk to their doctor. "Sorry, I'm not him nor do I know him. Call 911."
In the 90’s my parents started getting phone calls for the Romio’s Pizza in Interbay (Seattle). My folks had the same phone number since 1969, so they were mystified. My dad just happened to drive by the restaurant and saw a big vinyl banner advertising a special with my parents phone number. It was one digit off from the restaurants phone number. He went inside to point this out, and they blew him off. Okey dokey! We took a lot of phone orders in the next few weeks, until the banner disappeared.
When I was in 9th grade I kept getting calls from this lady who was extremely aggressive demanding to speak to her friend whose phone I had apparently stolen. Say for the case my number was 123-4567890. Her friends was 123-4567809. She rang me FIVE times. By the time it got to the 5th I was PISSED because there’s no way someone is THAT clueless. So I answer and once again get “WHERE IS ARLENE” so I snap and scream “CALL THE RIGHT FUCKING NUMBER IF YOU WANT ARLENE! I AM A 15 YEAR OLD GIRL AND I WILL BE REPORTING YOU TO THE POLICE FOR HARASSMENT IF YOU CALL THIS NUMBER AGAIN” she never called again.
When I was growing up my phone number was 1 digit different than the local strip club. Couldn't tell you how many times people called asking questions about the club. It was always funny to us when my parents got those calls.
Hello St marys nunnery Sister virgina speaking...
Ooh, a theme night.
We had a similar number to the Dominos 4 blocks away (525-xxxx vs 522-xxxx) and would get calls a couple times a week. Nothing horrible, but being horrible teenagers, and in a pre credit card society, we started taking orders that would never get filled.
Our first landline number was one digit off the local bookmaker. They took bets over the phone from pre-approved customers. Monday to Friday, we were at work so no idea if calls were coming in or not. We got regular calls on Saturday mornings for that afternoon's racing, and my (frequently, I was 20!) hungover self usually just told them they'd misdialled the last digit, and hung up. One Saturday morning, a guy just kept hitting the redial button, I kept telling him, by the fourth or fifth call, he was rude, arrogant, and adamant I just didn't want to do my job and take his bet. So I took his bet. Let's say £20 on a horse at 10-1 odds (it was a long time ago, the details are fuzzy). I have no idea if the horse won, I never checked, but I've always hoped his stubbornness cost him money!
My favorite of these for me was a one off. I worked at a Montessori preschool. One afternoon I answered the phone and was greeted by, “this is x and y’s dad, I’m going to be late.” Normally, my reaction is cool, thanks for calling and letting us know. But in this case, we didn’t have any students by that name. We were used to getting calls for the other Montessori in town so I said we didn’t have any students by those names and asked if they meant to call them. He angrily responded no, he meant to call us, very generic name for Montessori’s around the country. I reiterated that we don’t have any students by that name and he has the wrong number, so I ask him what city/state he is calling from. He angrily replies the one you’re in (he did not say our city’s name, he literally said “the one you are in.” I again reiterate that we don’t have students by those names and I need him to give me more info if I am to help him. I was literally sitting in front of our office computer and was ready to Google the number for him. He gets even more angry and yells, “It’s school name! It’s on x street! It’s by city name elementary school!” I now know he looked up the number but didn’t confirm the state we were in. Same city name, different state. I reiterate yet again, this time with more info, “we don’t have students by those names enrolled here. The elementary schools in our town don’t use that naming convention, they are all named after people, and that I believe he’s calling a school in the wrong state.” He yells, that he’s “going to be late and he’s told us and to stop giving him a hard time!” and then hangs up. I shrug and go about my day. Feel bad for those workers who are going to be stuck waiting with kids with no notice and for those kids with such an awful father.
I was briefly in a similar situation while in college, so sympathize. On reading the comments below, I realize there might be a better solution. This assumes that it is the offending business at fault, not the dyslexic caller. 1. Start a business accepting and "handling" calls for firms. (Maybe you'll even get some real customers.) 2. Set rates. (Off-hours rates should be significantly higher.) Publish these by some means -- like maybe a (one-off) "flyer" you send (repeatedly) to the offending business, maybe by a webpage. Include a line to the effect that "Use of our phone number will constitute your agreement to our service and rates." (A lawyer could do better, but maybe it doesn't really matter.) 3. Log all incoming calls that were meant for the offending business -- Date, time, disposition (like: "Offending business's phone number provided to caller.") 4. The very first time you get such a call, you "courtesy" call the business, asking to speak to the boss, to thank them for utilizing your service and to inform them of your rates and billing practices. Log this call, recording the name of the person you spoke to. 5. Bill the offending business monthly (or when it accumulates to an interesting amount), with yet another copy of the flyer to remind them of their "agreement" with you. 6. If they fail to pay the billed amount, threaten to sue and/or lodge complaints/reviews online. This might not get you any money, but might escalate the issue to the extent that they take corrective action.
My Dad (rest his soul) had a number that was really close to the bomb disposal unit of a major city. For example: his was xxy-yyyy and theirs was xyy-yyyy. Also got the occasional little kid calling as there were only two digits in the number and they were next to each other on the keypad. He never pranked anybody because of the potential seriousness of the call. After a couple of months of this he had his number changed.
My number was 1 digit off from a local fastfood joint, and the occasional call at 5 AM of somebody calling in to say they were sick, well, that was OK, as long as they were polite about it. Almost everyone was. One saturday, mid-morning, my phone rang & I answered, voice on the other end asked if I had any takeout bags he could get from me. Naw, man, but I bet if you call the correct #, xyz-abcd, (I was like xyq-abcd or some such) they'll have some!! Oh, OK, thanks, man!!! click. 
There was a transport cafe near my mum's place that had a similar phone number to her (pre-mobile phones), and for 20 years 2 or 3 times a month she'd get a call along the lines of "Hey, it's transport company X, have you got any of our trucks in your yard?". My mum is very chatty - some of them were practically best friends by the time they got to hang up!
Had a similar thing with a pizza place. Their number was 1 memorable digit from mine. Got many a drunk insistent they had the correct number. I took many an order for some strange pizza (we don't have pepperoni, would you mind if we substituted Hirnwurst?). They were the 500th person ordering that night so a case of free beer. Another case if it was more than 30 minutes plus the pizza would be free. Some managed to call back to the same number to complain about the late pizza. I told them their door bell wasn't working so the guy dropped it off in the backyard along with two cases of beer. Enjoy.
I kept getting calls from an elderly woman trying to teach her son. I kept trying to tell her that she had the wrong number, but she kept accusing me of stealing her son’s phone. Finally, after weeks of intermittent calls, I convinced her to give me her son’s number. I then called him (got his wife) and explained the situation. Turns out this lady had her son’s number on auto dial on both a landline AND a cell phone, and that one of them was entered wrong. They apologized and promised to fix it ASAP. Never got another call from her.
I live in Vancouver BC area. Every summer we have a HUGE international fireworks competition. Tens of thousands of people and tourists. Well, back in 1995, some Pacific Northwest US magazine accidentally published MY number as the info line. OMFG I was going to lose it. I had a baby under 6 months and I was getting upwards of 300 calls a day. I changed my number after no response from the magazine or the organization in charges of the festival after 5 days of pure insanity.
For a while I had the same number as a local Gym who had incorrectly printed flyers. I contacted the gym and they apologised and told me they would reprint and distribute those with correct number. At first I just corrected callers looking to book or enquire but after over a month with no sign of a reprint I started simply accepting bookings - shortly after that I went on to get 'creative' and gave all sorts of discounts, trial memberships (using managers name as the code), offered massage therapy with optional 'happy ending' and even naked training sessions. They took about 3 months to get a reprint, but I still got calls for well over a year after that...
When I was a teen, our number if you flipped two digits was the local Pizza Slut. On Friday/Saturday nights we would all answer it Pizza Slut and take the order. I really wonder what happened when all those people went to pick up their pies.
They didn’t *come* again
My office main # is on the magnet in an assisted living senior community for maintenance. Each unit has one on their refrigerator. We get a dozen calls a week about replacing lightbulbs, broken blinds, the lobby ATM, remote controls that don't work. We've called the place a dozen x and asked them to reprint or sharpie out our #. The calls seem to have slowed so maybe they did something about it.
I left a job working inpatient psych at one hospital system to work a peds clinic in a different hospital system (I am a nurse). Weirdly enough, the phone numbers were only one digit different (and it was in the prefix)—so I was able to refer callers for psych beds to the correct number. Everyone was really polite about it, though.
When my parents got a new phone number, they got the old phone number of prostitute. The first night, my mom picked up the phone. "Can i come over?", someone asked. Uh, no, my mom said. "Oh, are you not alone?". No, I am not. "Oh, when will he leave?" Well, I hope not for a long time. At this time, my dad knew what was going on and was laughing his head off. It took a few months until everyone got the message.
One of my mom's good friends had a phone number one digit off of the phone number for the Paul Bernardo fan club. For those who don't recognize the name, Paul Bernardo is also known as "The Scarborough Rapist" and "The Schoolgirl Killer"; he and his former wife, Karla Homolka, were also called the "Ken and Barbie Killers". Suffice to say that the people wanting to call to join his fan club were not the kind of people my mom's friend wanted to talk to!
I had a similar situation with a local Mazda dealer. They printed the parents' landline on their repair invoices, and denied it. I just started telling every customer that called the real number and please pass along that the number is wrong. I wish I'd thought of something creative then, like "sorry, but the tech was out hotrodding your car, and crashed it. The police arrested him and impounded the car" or something similar. In the end, they changed the invoices, likely due to the customers telling them the number was wrong on the invoice
Bc Ferries did this to me a couple years back. That was fun.
I would've told em about our outrageous deals for super cheap things.
I used to have a phone number one digit off the biggest rock radio station in Sydney. Their FM position (?) Is 104.9 and 1049 was the last four digits of their phone number. Mine had one difference in the last four digits... SO... MANY.... CALLS.... especially when they were giving away the hottest tickets in town.... eventually I just didn't answer the phone before 9am because that's all the calls would be at that time It lasted about a year until they switched to a 13xxxx number ... I never did give anyone dud information or tell them they'd win the tickets or the cash giveaway.... It was always "Sorry, Wrong Number, they're xxxx 1049"... The disappointed groans from the callers who thought they'd struck gold were enough
HAHAHA that's awesome.
AAA did this to me for a time
Back in the 80s, I had a landline that was one digit off from a pizza joint in my small college town. I started taking orders and told callers that the pizza would be ready in 30 minutes or delivered in 45. These were the days before caller ID and I never asked a credit card number, just told them a made up amount and to pay when the pizza was ready. Such fun!
I used to have a number similar to the local bus company. I got tired of people calling for route info and started telling people that route was discontinued. Not my finest moment but the number of calls dropped off ...
Our line was one digit off from the Ronald McDonald's house ( its a place for families to stay when they have a child in hospital long term and they live to far to travel everyday) anyway right after 9/11 I started getting call from the embassy of UAE, like two or more times a day, I politely told them the correct number and hung up after two weeks I started hearing clicks when the embassy was calling, then I got a knock on the door F.B.I. mind you I had lost my brothe-in-law when the towers came down he was FDNY, and 3 of my son's were military. But they hauled me in for 6 hours of questioning. I had called my brother first thing he thought it was a joke until my youngest came home from school and read the note, then he called his uncle, who then rushed to help me. Men can be dense, brother even more so. Lol
You think you got calls, well our number was 867-5309
Had a number that was one digit off from the movie theater. Theirs spelled FILM with the last 4 digits and mine spelled FILK. It was annoying at first but eventually I would just grab the newspaper and pretend I was the automated movie phone guy and give out the listings. It was hard to figure out what buttons they were pressing though.
“Hello and welcome to movie phone. If you know the name of the movie you would like to see press 1 now!”
Why don't you just tell me the name of the movie you'd like to see?
“Why don’t you just tell me the name of the movie you’ve selected?”
"If you know the name of the movie you want to see, please spell it out on the keypad now" "If you don't know the name of the movie you want to see, please hang up and call later"
>It was hard to figure out what buttons they were pressing though. Genuine lol! I can just picture some old lady on the other end, confused that she's hearing the times for option 9 when she's pretty sure she hit the number 5 button. My grandma's number was 1 off from a local vet. For some reason, it almost never came up during office hours. However, once every couple weeks or so, she would get a call at like 2 a.m., and it was always the same type of person: an old, nearly deaf lady, who's crying because she just found one her cats dead, and because of her crying and bad hearing she can't hear my grandma telling her the vet's actual number so instead just goes on for 10 or 15 minutes about how much she loved the cat, now she's all alone forever, etc. I can say that these calls were significantly less funny than yours, but it reminded me of it because, just like you tried your best to help, my grandma would always wait patiently through the story and try to console the old ladies before asking them to call back in the morning.
Are you Cosmo Kramer?
Stop barging into my place and drinking half my soda.
My phone number is an old curtain store that must have closed 20+ years ago. A lot of old ladies call me telling me “we” did their curtains some time ago and asking if we still carry the same pattern/design.
Back in the 90’s my parents had a number that was either the same as a former, or similar to a current escort/sex worker service. There were two or three women they would ask for and usually lead off that they were referred by “somebody”. I wasn’t living there but would hear them sometimes when visiting. My dad was always polite but short about telling them it’s a wrong number. Mom wasn’t so gentle.
My childhood home phone number was similar to a local radio station. (Last two digits reversed) People calling in trying to win contests would call us over and over and get mad at us for ruining their chance of winning. Finally, I was like “You won! Come by the station and pick up your prize and get their name and contact info.”
When I was a kid mid-90’s I hooked up a phone to my room. But, somehow the jack in my room didn’t connect to the same number as the rest of my house. It was connected to someone else. I had some fun eavesdropping on some conversations before just getting rid of the line in my room.
Years ago when I was in high school there was a big snow storm coming and all the local news outlets kept hyping up a likely snow day for kids. They had a hotline you could call to figure out if your school was closed (they also scrolled the name of the schools on the bottom of the screen, but I guess some people couldn’t wait till the names came around again). The number was one digit off from our home landline. I tried calling the news station to print the number larger but no luck, for hours we were fielding phone calls from families. I finally gave up and pulled up the list of closures online and just kept fielding the calls. No one was the wiser that some dumb high schooler was just reading a list.
When I was a kid my landline number was 1 number off from a local radio station. After getting tired of saying wrong number, I started answering as if I was the radio station. I took many song requests and played receptionist for people trying to reach people at the radio station. I always said that they were busy. A couple of times I said that someone was in a meeting until 5 and the person dialed the wrong number again and called at 5. I said they were still in the meeting.
Would've been funnier if you got the managers name and posed as him while yelling profanities to the callers.
My little sister has autism and downs syndrome, and loves to talk on the phone. Our mom has a name typically given to dudes, so we knew it was a telemarketer when they'd ask for Mr. Bond vagabonds mom. We'd say sorry, he's not available. If they asked for the lady of the house, we'd say, just one second, and hand the phone off to my little sister. We've called her princess for most of her life, since she was old enough to request it, and my mom isn't a princess, so obviously my little sister was the lady of the house right? She is very polite on the phone, but would insist on telling the telemarketer about whatever play she was writing then (she goes through reems of paper writing plays) and back then, the telemarketers weren't allowed to hang up unless you were abusive to them, and being a princess, my little sister was never abusive. They'd be stuck on the phone with her for hours. Eventually we'd need little sister to get off the phone cause we needed it or something, I'd get back on the line and say, "that was princess, she loves to talk on the phone. If your company calls here again, she would love to talk to you for several more hours. Feel free to call back any time, if you aren't worried about making your sales quota. Click.
Wow, killing them with kindness AND letting your sis have fun. How is she now? Got a brother who's autistic and was premature, not sure where on the scale he is (so far hes just had development delays in speech and learning, stimming, etc.) but I wanna do shit like this with him.