I get those too Kythereia and write them off as telemarketer machines that just want to “speak” to my machine and not me (which is fine with me.) 
shrugs who knows?
If it’s a beep every few seconds, it’s probably a fax machine.
I recall many years ago, when I was still living at home and got a second phone line installed in my room, getting many messages left on my answering machine from a dating service saying that so-and-so saw my video and wanted to meet me. Odd considering I’d never signed up for any such service, no made any video. They never left a # for me to call back to tell them it was a mistake. Once I was home and was able to answer the phone and explain to them that this # was not the one of who they were looking for. Then I got some angry messages from somebody wanting the rest of the payment from me for some light fixtures I’d ordered. Things became clear, however, when I had a message from the city of Atlanta, Georgia District Attorney’s Office looking for (I forget the name now). Since they were the first and only ones to leave a call-back #, I called them back. It seem the fellow who had this # before me was a con-artist of some kind, and most definately on the run. He must have been really good if her could get so many women to want to meet him from just a video interview.
A few years ago, I got this call at the bookstore:
ring
Me: Hello, DC Books.
Caller: Hi, can you help me with raccoons?
Me: Well, we might have something on them in the nature section.
Caller: But you don’t know if you can help me with them?
Me: Our system’s not computerized, so you would need to come in and look to see whether we have any books about them
Caller: I don’t want to read about them, I really just need them trapped.
Me: Well, sir, we can’t trap them for you. We might have books with information on trapping them.
Caller: You mean this isn’t Ace Pest Control?
Me: No, this is a bookstore.
click
Giraffe, that’s one Logitech Cordless Elite Keyboard you owe me. Pretty sure you can get AHunter3 to split it with you.
My old home phone number used to be one digit off from the local assisted-living center for people with mental illness. Many years ago when I was eight or so, we received a series of desperate-sounding calls from a relative of one of the residents. I think we eventually figured out what was going on and gave him the right number.
But more currently, I received a bizarre text message the other week in a language that I cannot identify, though I assume it is Scandanavian. But I welcome any suggestions.
I put it to you, the collective, Dope, to let me know what it says. I don’t know how to make the little circle above the ‘a’ so I will mark those with á.
I’m really curious what it is about:
‘Pappa var pa landet han kunde ej bet förrän pá mándag han bet till din terapeft f nästa gáng samt hyran’
‘till din’ sounds English to me…
Cheers,
Daphne
Years ago, before caller id, I would get calls for a business at my home. I finally found out what the business was and that the phone number was one area code digit off (214 vs. 213 - must have been transcribed incorrectly, since those digits are not near each other on the keypad).
Me: “Hello?”
Caller: “… uh, I must have the wrong number.”
Me: “Are you calling XYZ company?”
Caller: {surprised} “Uh, yes.”
Me: “Their number is 214-123-4567.”
Caller: {confused} “Uh, thank you.”
Me: “You’re welcome. Goodbye.”
It’s so cute thinking how confused they are that a wrong number knew who they were calling and could give them the right number.
When he confirms the order, simply ask him to double, or triple it. Serves the exec right- besides, it’s fun. :eek:
I get recorded telemarketing announcements from someone named “Max Johnson”. I think it’s usually DishTV or something like that, but I just get the biggest laughs from the name. It’s like a really cheap, cheezy pornstar name, only that cheap, cheezy pornstars get much more respect than telemarketers.
Some years ago, I spent a very uncomfortable evening taking one phone call after another, no more than a few minutes apart, from people volunteering to give blood.
Not being associated with the Red Cross nor of a vampiric persuasion, I was rather mystified by these calls coming to my home. When I asked people why they were calling, they said they were just trying to help out with “the emergency”.
I finally found out that these people had seen my phone number on TV as part of an emergency call for blood donors following a major accidient of some sort. I had to work through several callers before I found one who remembered what station they had been watching.
It turned out that the call for blood donors had been aired on a channel from out-of-state that was picked up on the my area’s cable TV system. The station had shown the 7-digit phone number of a local (to them) hospital, a number identical to mine but in a different area code. People in my state were seeing the plea for donors and dialing the number as shown, not realizing that the broadcast was originating from half the country away.
I felt really guilty having to turn down all those would-be good samaritans.
This happened to me years ago except it went a bit like this:
My father told me that this woman, named Sarah was looking for me. Well I knew her from high school, which was a feew years before that. I didn’t know her that well so I was wondering why she wanted to talk to me.
A week or so later she called my father againand wanted me to call. I ended up calling her, she asked me how I was doing, then she wanted to know when she could see me again. She bitched me out when I told her I had no idea what she was talking about. The funny thing is I don’t know how she got my father’s phone number, we have a somewhat common last name, at least in my area. Very strange.
not as funny as some of the others, but it sticks out in my memory
growing up our phone number was one digit off the school district’s admin office; during the winter storms, we’d constant;y get calls at 6am, 7am, wanting to know if there was school today - one day my mom, in a particularly playful mood, told the callers “no”, when in fact she had already sent me off with my lunch knowing that classes were in session 
When I lived in Buffalo, I used to get two strange phone calls on my home phone.
1.) Apparently, some woman was giving out my number and writing bad checks. I would get calls from her creditors all the time. Occassionally, one would think that I was really her and start threatening me. I also got a call from a hospital trying to give her some test results. I figured she must have used my number so often that she mixed up the “fake” number with the real one!
2.) At least once a month I would come home to the following message on my machine:
“Hello. This is the principal at your son’s school. I’m calling to confirm that he was out of school today. Please give me a call back to confirm.”
The first time I thought it was funny in a what-a-clever-kid kinda way. But when it became habitual, I knew I had to report him. I wanted to call back, just to let him know what the kid was doing but he never left any identifying information. Finally, one day the secretary called and she left the school name. So I called and told them about the messages. I didn’t get anymore of those calls after that.
ROFLMAOSCOK 
you GO, girl! ;j 
Ok. I got the Rolling on the floor laughing my ass off…
What does the rest mean?
Well, Malcolm Jamal Warner called me just a few weeks ago!
Oh, no, wait. That was a pre-recorded “Get out the vote” message.
But it did kinda freak me out to hit the Play button on my machine and get ::Beep!!:: "Hello, this is Malcolm Jamal Warner… "
In a related story, I once got one digit wrong for the conference call I set up for my boss and 13 of his General Managers.
As they called in, one by one, they got ::breathy husky female recorded voice:: "Hello, Tiger… I’ve been *waiting * for your call… "
:eek:
We used to get calls at our home number from people dialing an 800 number for AARP. Never did figure out that one.
I also apparently have some upholstery place’s old number, and get calls for folks looking for them all the time.
I get this a lot. My name is spelled such that it’s first in everybody’s alphabetical cellphone phone-number list, so I get calls fairly often where somebody forgot to turn their keylock on and ended up accidentally calling me. Now that flip phones are getting more in vogue, it’s happening a little less often than before, but it still happens. For a while I kept getting such calls from a girl who had turned me down for a date–confused me for a little while because I would come home, see that she had called me, call her back and she’d deny ever calling me. Finally I asked her to look in her call history list–and she realized that she’d been leaving her keylock off at work and had been calling me.
Heh, I thought of that, too. Quite appropriate, really.