How did this cell phone mix up occur?

Factual Questions
1

Friday night I had a friend over, we’ll call her J. I don’t see her often, because she lives far away, and we were going to a wedding the next day for a college friend of hers. Anyhoo, I met her through a mutual friend, we’ll call S. S now lives in South Carolina. We tried calling him a few times, but kept getting his cell’s voicemail. So around…I want to say 12:30 am, we call him again on her cell phone. About two seconds after she hits send, I hear MY cell phone ring. Thinking she is just playing a joke on me, I don’t go to answer it. She told me she IS calling S, and showed me her phone’s screen. And yup, it said 'calling S’s and showed his cell number. So I go to answer my phone, because by a strange coincidence someone decided to call me at the same time.

When I grab my phone, the caller ID says that J is calling me. :confused: So already we’re confused, since her phone cleary says she is calling S. Being confused, I wait too long to attempt to answer, and her phone goes into voicemail. Only…not MY voicemail. It goes to S’s voicemail. We get his voicemail message:
“hey, this is S, I’m not near my phone, so leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

We then relate the story on his voicemail about how J called his number, buy my phone rang, but went to his voicemail. We knew he’d get a kick out of it, cause S and I often joke that we share a brain and are the same person split in two. Well, two seconds after we finish the voicemail and hang up, my phone makes three beeps. The same three beeps it always makes when I miss a call and they left a voicemail.

“No no no no no no no no no!” I says, not wanting to think for a second that I got the voicemail on S’s voicemail system. I dial up my voicemail service, enter my password, and BAM, there it is…the voicemail we thought we had just left S…on MY phone’s voicemail service.

How could this of happened? If all that had happened was my phone ringing instead of S’s, then I would just have said J’s phone book had a glitch. But when it stopped ringing, it CLEARLY played S’s voicemail intro, but then left a message in MY voicemail inbox. When we talked with him on Sunday, he never got that message at all, nor did he have a missed call at that time.

Does anyone know how something like this could happen?

2

Honestly, what you describe is pretty much impossible. Was there drinking involved in any of this?

There’s gotta be part of the story missing. Like the called accidently called you, realized the mistake, and tried again for the person he was supposed to call. But, instead of hanging up on you, he put you on a 3-way call. That would have left an identical voicemail on both yours and your friends phone, if you were on an accidental 3-way phone call. Your friend’s phone may not have shown a missed call if it was out of a service area. If J was from out of town and roaming, he may not have gotten a voicemail notification and may get it when they get back home.

That’s my best guess.

3

Of course, occasionally in our world, 1+1=6, so it might have been some weird bug in the computer system.

4

The "accidental three way calling’ scenario is the only one that makes anysense (though still doesn’t explain it 100%.) Howver, I know that I do not have three way calling enabled, and am pretty sure J does not either. And even if it did somehow go into three way, then S would have also received the voicemail, but he didn’t. And I personally heard S’s voicemail intro before leaving a message, so I know J wasn’t lying when she said it went into S’s voicemail, even though my phone rang.

5

Last time you visited “S”, you walked off with his cell phone?

6

If “S” call-forwarded to your phone number, it might explain at least part of this.

7

Only the person establishing the 3-way call needs 3-way calls enabled. The only piece of the puzzle missing, if my understanding of the situation is right, is why your friend didn’t receive the same voicemail you did? I don’t know… it could be lost in the system… it could be that your friend that made the call ended the 3-way call on accident in the whole “look at everyone’s cell phone screens” mess and only left the message on yours, or your friend accidently deleted the voicemail without realizing it. Any number of possibilities.

In today’s current cell phone technology, its impossible to get signals crossed like it used to happen in analog days. And even if there was some bizarro glitch in the system that connected a call dialed to one number to another number, what are the chances that this bizarro glitch connected 2 friends who are, I’m assuming, in the caller’s phone book?

I don’t think there’s any possible way that this ISN’T some weird operator-error-confusion-wrong-button mishap. A 3-way call gone wrong is my best guess.

8

Two things I would look at are, the outgoing call history on J’s phone and J’s phone bill at the end of the month, assuming it details the calls made. You maybe able to speed the process up by having J call the provider and getting the recent outgoing calls.

9

OK - here’s a possible scenario:

Is “S” a practical joker?
Is your voicemail well protected (i.e., password != 1234)?

If the answers are “yes” and “no”…

“S” sees “J” is trying to call. Knows J is with you.
“S” rings into your voicemail and changes (rerecords) your intro in his voice.
“S” sets call forwarding to your number.
“S” waits … say 10-30 minutes.
“S” rings into your voicemail and deletes personal intro (reverting to the Provider’s default – something like “you have reached…”)
“S” Cancels call forwarding.

If you have a personal voicemail intro, you can either prove or disprove this scenario by checking if your voicemail intro is now the provider’s default.
If not, you will be none the wiser…

Note I said “possible” scenario, not “plausible”!

10

I have had my cell phone calls get crossed more than once recently, so it can happen. Just a few weeks ago I was trying to call my boyfriend using speed dial, and a woman picked up. I said, “Sorry, wrong number”, hung up the phone, and tried the boyfriend again. While we were talking, someone beeped in with a number I didn’t recognize and left a message. When I checked it later, it was my boyfriend’s daughter, asking why I’d called her and hung up! Now, we are all on the same phone plan, but I never call his daughter, and I don’t have her number programmed into my phone. My call history did not show her number as being dialed out. How did I get her when I pressed send from my boyfriend’s contact screen (as I had done many, many other times with no problem)?

Another weird thing: There have been at least two instances in the past six months when I have been trying to call someone, only to have someone else (who doesn’t know me or the other person) answer the call. At the same time, the person I trying to call picked up and got a call from the wrong person, even though their caller ID says the call is from me.

Bah, I hope that made sense. Anyway, my point is that signals do still get crossed sometimes.

11

You made a mistake. Being on the same plan doesn’t mean anything in the cell phone system… there’s 1. no way for the system to “cross” phone calls like that without call forwarding set up to do so. And even if that was possible, 2. The odds of you hitting someone you actually no are so astronomically small that it can’t be a system error. It’s operator error. Sorry to be the one to tell you.

I know the mistake I make sometimes. I have speed-dials set up, so I’ll press and hold “4” to get a hold of my buddy. After 2 or 3 seconds, the call tries to connect and the person’s name I’m calling flashes on my screen. A few times, I’ve thought “oh crap, I hit the wrong number”, then hit “end” a few times. If I then immediate hit speed-dial “5”, the correct person’s name pops up, but my phone still connects to the number I tried dialing before. Even while on the phone with speed-dial 4, speed-dial 5’s name is on my cell phone screen. Operator error, and I’ve made that one a few times.

Perhaps you didn’t actually speed-dial your boyfriend, but instead hit “send” twice? the first send could have brought up a missed call list, and the second “send” would have connected to the number at the top of the list. Mistakes like that are easy to make and not always obvious.

This is more similar to the “wires crossed” thing that used to happen with analog phones. It should be a thing of the past, unless you’re in an analog area when that happened to you. That’s possible if you’re out in the boonies.

12

hehehe…yep, “crossed lines”. :wink:

13

Umm, nope, not even close. I don’t call his daughter, never have called his daughter, her number was not in my phone at all. Period. I didn’t dial her number or anyone else’s. I brought up my boyfriend’s number and hit send. Plain and simple. And by “same plan”, I meant that all our phones are on one bill. I thought maybe that had something to do with it.

As for the other thing, I don’t think that Tallahassee, FL counts as the boonies, but YMMV. :wink:

14

Should be, but ain’t.
I’ve tried to speed dial my friend, got some random guy, all the while the phone is telling me I’m connected to my friend.
On digital
In the middle of town.

<On preview, :smiley: Susie, Ah reckon Tally jes may be the boonies. ;)>

15

Nope, on the same bill doesn’t mean the system will magically connect you to another number on that bill. It’s just not the way things are set up. In the case of the mystery boyfriend/daughter, there’s no way its anything but operator error in some way, shape, or form. Check your outgoing calls when you get a bill, and I bet you’ll see her on there. Maybe the daughter’s number was in your phone when your boyfriend called you from it one time that you don’t remember? Maybe you got a call from her, didn’t recognize the number and didn’t answer it, so it showed up in your missed call log? Maybe the nice man at the cell phone store put in the boyfriend and his daughter’s number into your phone, figuring you’d do some inner-circle calling? Many options. I don’t think (read: I’m sure of) this is system error.

The second problem does sound like a legitimate system issue. It sounds more like an analog system error, however. You weren’t traveling out of the area when it happened in some remote area? If you’re on Verizon, I know Florida is 1900mHz which has low building penetration, so if you were in a basement or deep in an interior of a hospital or something, you could have switched to analog and not known it, if an analog signal was stronger than the digital one.

As for a digital screw up like harmless suggests… I’m out of ideas. Call forwarding could have screwed that up… or… I dunno… Is your voicemail speed-dial set up to insert your password for you? Like on my phone, I have the speed-dial set up to dial 86, then pause, then 1234, then 1 for “get new messages”. I suppose the phone could accidently skip the "" and dial 861-2341. That’s slightly more plausible than a digital system sending the call to the wrong number.

16

You seem very sure that what I am describing is impossible, but I am just as sure that her number wasn’t then, nor had it ever been, dialed from my phone. It happened just as I said it did. My boyfriend hadn’t used my phone to call her, I didn’t misdial, his name was the one that was showing when I hit send. I have no idea how it happened, but it wasn’t any of the reasons you have listed so far. Got any other theories?

17

I think that the same explanation applies to both the OP and to Susie. The lines didn’t get switched, the phones themselves did. In the OP’s case, bouv and S somehow ended up with each other’s phones. So J calls S’s phone number, S’s phone rings, S’s phone shows J calling, nobody answers, so J gets S’s voicemail, and when the message is done, S’s phone beeps to indicate a new message. All perfectly normal and exactly the way the system is supposed to work, except for the minor detail that bouv is carrying S’s phone.

Likewise, in Susie’s case. She calls her boyfriend, and boyfriend’s daughter answers his phone. I presume that they’re both in the same house?

18

My theory is that you’re mistaken and/or not giving me the whole story. It’s not your fault… it’s a tricky technology and all. However, my time in cell phone sales/repairs taught me that virtually every error you guys are describing was somehow an accident that the user committed. I mean, c’mon… the phone system getting messed up and calling your boyfriend’s daughter? That simply doesn’t make sense.

I’m not calling you stupid or anything. I’m just saying a mistake was made. A button was hit that you didn’t mean to hit. It’s easy to do when you’re driving and dialing and not paying 100% attention. It happens to everyone. I even noted earlier in this thread how it happens to me. I’ve figured out how to prevent it, and guess what… I still sometimes call a friend I didn’t mean to call while the friend I DID mean to call’s name appears on my phone.

While working for Verizon, I was constantly re-creating these mysterious “system errors” in front of the customers to show them how the mistake was made. I never saw a case of the digital system connecting to the wrong number because the system is set up to not do that. The analog system was, and whoever developped the digital one figured out how to not do that anymore. I don’t know how else to describe it without getting overly technical and annoying about it.

Sorry if I’m offending anyone, but all these things can easily be figured out as operator error. If you don’t want to admit it, that’s fine. But it’s not always the system’s fault.

19

I know it doesn’t make sense, and I don’t think you are calling me stupid, but I am really wondering about this now. It wouldn’t have been one button that I would have had to push mistakenly to call the daughter, it would have been seven. Really, it was my phone, and I know what numbers I had in it. No one had programmed her number into it (I am the only one who put any numbers into it, and I would also have seen her number if it was added to my call list later. Really). His daughter doesn’t live with him. He’s a truck driver and was three states away, and there’s no way she was with him. When she called me back, her number showed up as the one calling me. I reviewed all my call lists up, down, and sideways after this happened for some sort of explanation and her number wasn’t listed except as the missed call from when she called me back.

What I’ve related here is really all there is to it. No one-armed man, no single bullet…I’ve changed nothing and I’ve left nothing out. What on earth would I have to gain from that? I have no doubt that most of the time these sorts of things are the fault of the user, and I know that there must be a reason it happned. I’m just saying that you haven’t hit on it yet, because none of your scenarios apply here. No offense meant from my end, either.

20

There’s an old detective trick for getting two suspects to talk that involves initiating a three-way call with yourself in the middle and the two suspects on either end. According to the literature, there’s a decent chance no one will adress the issue of “Who made this call?” and start talking about the weather and then segue into what they expect the other one wants to talk about. [1]
Some of my friends* used to do the prank phone call version of this on strangers. A variation of the prank phone call trick was to call two people you knew and listen. Yet another is to pick to people in the phone book with the same last name.

[1] I’m not a cop or a private detective, so I don’t know how well this works.
Not me, I SWEAR!!!