Some diabetic testing supply company calls my office direct line about once a week. This is especially annoying because we don’t give out or back line numbers; everyone has to go through the receptionist, to make sure legal staff don’t talk to people we’re not supposed to (ie., represented by counsel and too stupid to call their own goddamn attorneys).
It’s an autodialler. Pressing any number makes it hang up on you, so I can’t even get hold of a live person to tell them to fuck off.
My last number, which I had for five and a half years, apparently belonged to a deadbeat. Because even after that long, I’d still get monthly calls from debt collectors looking for him.
My current number used to belong to some Hmong guy. I’m coming up on two years, and I still get a call for him about once a month. I used to answer and they’d start speaking Hmong even when I answered the phone in English. Now I no longer bother answering. About half the time they’ll leave a message, which I promptly delete.
I had my house for 11 years (1991-2002) with the same number the whole time. Every now and then I’d get a call for some kid, which was strange that it went on for so long because I’d have thought she’d have grown up in that time. Well, maybe it was different kids, but it was fucking annoying to have little kids screaming in my answering machine for whatshername to PICK UP NOW!!! And then calling back every 2 seconds to 2 minutes until I’d pick up the phone and tell them they had the wrong number.
Yeah, and I was just posting about it in another thread! It’s gotten to the point where I don’t answer my phone half the time unless the number is already in my contact list or I’m expecting a stranger’s call (job hunting). Telling people they have the wrong number doesn’t seem to help.
Heather owed money to a UK based collection agency. I heard from them once a week for all three years I owned my prior cell phone.
When I bought a cell phone, I mentioned to the salesgirl I’d like a special number with five 5’s or something, but they were so expensive. So she offered me her own number for $8 or so: it had four 0’s in it. I asked whether I’d get wrong calls, but she said she had several numbers and used this one for outgoing.
I get lots of wrong calls; don’t know if they’re looking for that girl, or the four 0’s make misdialing easy. It’s bad when it’s a woman calling and she hangs up hearing my wife’s voice ( :smack: ); fortunately there are a lot of men who call and hang up also.
My husband’s cell number used to belong to a preacher. It took 2 or 3 years for those calls to stop.
In the last month or so, we keep getting calls from a collection agency looking for Stephanie… something - it’s always a message on our answering machine which says, oddly enough “If you are not Stephanie… something, please do not listen to this message.” I have to wonder if it’s a human calling who just switches on the recording when the machine picks up. Not that it’s a big deal to just hit the delete button when the computer starts speaking.
It’s an autodialer, and the “don’t listen to this message” is legal mumbo-jumbo to get around the confidentiality laws.
Mine wasn’t a cell phone, but when I lived in Miami I used to have a number which had previously belonged to one Carlos García. In two years there were only two or three truly-mistaken calls for him, but every time one of the long-distance carriers had a cold-calling campaign, they’d call me four times: for myself and for him, both in Spanish and in English.
They never solved it, and also never were able to give me a better rate for calls to Spain than I already had.
When I moved to NC from Chicago the number I was given must have been recycled. Between arranging to sell my house and clearing it out I had to spend most of October and November shuttling back and forth, and just about every time I checked my answering machine at the new place there was a message for “Karen” which was obviously from a collection agency. There was also at least one call from a prison, I think in California, asking if I would accept a collect call. The calls for Karen continued, in spurts, over the next year or so. When I bought my house two years ago I decided to get a new number even though AT&T said they could transfer the old one to my new address.
I get calls from a security company alerting me that there’s been an alarm tripped at Staples location number 238 (or something). I’m guessing the previous holder of this number was a manager at the store.
While I had my first cellphone, the police came by twice asking to know if I knew someone that the previous owner of the number was connected to (a missing person I think).
Your number wasn’t 867-5309 was it? 
Really though, did you ever try Googling the number to see if it appeared in some song, movie, video game, etc?
Or could your number have potentially spelled something interesting when translated into letters? My sister had an interesting semester when she got a dorm room with a phone number that ended in 3825 (which can spell “FUCK.”)
No, but in a similar vein I have a pretty common name and therefore a pretty generic gmail address. It’s amazing the things that get sent to me - the filming plan for the next day’s shoot of a tv show, a stern request asking for my late report on the mysterious-sounding “island three,” a pornographic drawing emailed from someone’s cell phone, and many more.