New phone number baggage

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In the last year and a half, I got a company cell phone and set up new phone service for the house I moved into last year. Two new phone numbers. The word ‘new’ isn’t quite right though since these numbers are obviously well used.

I’ve got a hypothesis that both previous owners lost the numbers when they didn’t pay their phone bills because even a year and a half later, I’m STILL getting calls from various debt collecting agencies asking for these two individuals. Usually they’re nice enough and tell me that they will have the number removed from their system but some try calling back after 3 to 4 months to try again. The last one was nice enough to call at 6AM last Saturday morning. Argh!

I’m thinking that this has to be common since both of my new numbers just happened to have this same problem.

2

And international as I got this with my current number - which was the listed fax number for a local company.

As in - listed on the mail and business cards they were still sending out three years later.

I had a new baby when I got that number and it would ring up to 18 times a day on the 20th of the month waking her, I didn’t have a fax machine so I’d get all the repeat calls as their machines kept trying and trying and trying.

Occasionally I’d get an irate person ring up to insist that I turn the fax machine on. They were usually frustrated and abusive by that stage and for some reason, refused to believe that I was not the business they were attempting to call.

I called my phone service provider, who said they could not help without a $60 change of numer fee.

I called the company secretary who in a very bored tone, said she’d sort it out.

The calls stopped for a couple/ three months and then started again (new stationary print run, apparently - old phone numbers)

I called the company secretary who in a very bored tone, said she’d sort it out.

The calls stopped for a couple/ three months and then started again (new stationary print run, apparently - old phone numbers)

I called the company secretary who in a very bored tone, said she’d sort it out.

The calls stopped for a couple/ three months and then started again (new stationary print run, apparently - old phone numbers)

Repitition is not an accident.

I called the manager of the comany and gently pointed out that every single customer who called me, ended up sharing my opinion that his company was a pack of useless, braindead morons who couldn’t be trusted to get a simple phone number right.

Not one single call since.

Wish I’d thought of that earlier.