I’ll see your Jennifer Peters and raise you Edward and Ruth Wachenfeld. Deadbeat mofos.
I lived for about three months on the Navajo Reservation, in a homestead with no electricity and poor cell phone reception. I had a cell phone to make my mom feel better, but for it to actually get any reception I had to climb the tallest hill then climb a tree on top of that hill, and then I had maybe two bars. About once a week I would climb climb climb to check my voicemail. Now, my message was long and included my name and the number they called, so callers had plenty of time to hang up before the beep if they were not meaning to call me. Every damn week I had three or four messages, none of them for me, and rarely for the same person more than once. Often, the message would start, “Wow, Sally, you sound so different on the phone!” or some such ridiculousness. For the love of god, people, the message started with my name! I couldn’t skip messages, so I had to sit in the tree, listening to all of them, just in case something happened and someone tried to call me.
As for my most recent wrong number, I don’t answer the phone if I don’t recognize the number, figuring if it’s important they’ll leave a message. I love caller ID.
And I thought I was determined because in high school, I used to bicycle to the next town in order to use a pay phone to call a girl and avoid long-disctance charges.
I used to work at a liquor store whose name was similar to another business in town that sold vitamins, suppliments, organic foods, and sometimes fresh seafood. People would often call us thinking they reached the other place.
Our store owner had a pretty good sense of humor so he gave us free reign to mess with any wrong numbers for the other business. A common question we’d get was “do you have crabs?” so we’d answer something like “no, I bought the cream and they went away” or “yeah, and boy does it itch!” It became such a running joke that new employees were always filled in how to field these calls appropriately on their first day.
Another time a woman called asking if we had anything to help her mother with menopause. The boss told her “we have a whole store full - does she like vodka?”
If they were asking for something specific - “Do you have any cascara sagrada?” we’d tell them that not only did we have it, but it was on sale at half price today only.
The owner of the other store must have hated us.
About twice a month I get a phone call from what sounds like a little boy, maybe 7-10 years old, looking for his friend. I always say “sorry, I think you have the wrong number” and he says “…okay!” and hangs up. Once, I saw a missed call and thinking it was a business call returned it. The kid’s mom answered and we had a mutual laugh over the whole thing.
By the way, here’s a funny “wrong number” story by Art Buchwald, which in my pre-SDMB days I used to repeat as fact until I saw the light of the Straight Dope:
Woman in Tennesee exacts vengeance on a nearby motel with an almost identical telephone number.
I might have missed a doozy today…there was a Mexican number on my caller ID.
Currently getting about a call a day for “Morton [same last name]”. The messages left tend to mention debt collection and an ongoing federal investigation in ominous terms. Never call while we’re actually in, though.
A while back someone called asked for Janice (IIRC). Sorry wrong number.
The same number continues to call us about once a week though they never say anything. Wishful thinking that Janice will eventually answer if they just keep trying?
Got a lot of calls as a teenager from stoned people trying to call a pizza place across town with a one-digit difference. If anyone immediately called back, I took their order.
Oh, and then there’s the girl that called asking if I knew where Steve was…
and then called back a few hours later to set my mind at ease by putting Steve on the phone to show that he’d been found.
We live in the house my husband was raised in, so this house has had the same phone number for close to 40 years. We get a wrong number phone call from the same little old lady at least once a week. I guess she misdials a number close to ours. Poor thing is so sweet and apologetic when I say “Ma’am, you’ve gotten the SCL residence again”.
I get more wrong numbers on my cellphone. I get voicemail messages for “Rashaun”, which isn’t my name (on the voicemail message) and my voice doesn’t sound remotely male.
Once I kept getting calls from a young-sounding guy who was dialing the correct number. I kept telling him that “Cherie” wasn’t at this number and never had been at this number, and a hour or a day later he would call back. I finally said “Look, dude, I hate to break it to you, but if this is the number you got from some chick in a bar she totally was trying to get you to leave her alone.”
At my old apartment I kept getting calls for the previous holder of that number. This happened for 5+ years. I think I finally looked up the persons new number and started giving it out. (I probably should have called that person and told her to tell people she hasn’t had that number for a long time)
I’ve gotten restaurant calls (same number, different area code)
Enterprise rent-a-car rang my doorbell today, said I had ordered a rental car. it was for ### street east (apartment 4) rather than my house which is ### street east (house, no apartment number). I occasionally get mail for ### street west (various apartment numbers) - I sometimes hand forward them (the two streets are parallel and it just one block over) though if it is junk I just recycle it.
Brian
See my post #11. Likely the guy they were looking for was **listed **as your neighbor.
My parents, brother and I had just gotten home and there were a couple of messages on the machine.
“You bastard! You didn’t tell me you were married, you son of a bitch! I wouldn’t have slept with you (cue my mother giving my father The Look, times 20) the other night.” We all burst out laughing. We’d been car camping, with my uncle and his family. “Smooth move, Dad! How’d you pull *that *off?” There was another message, “Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was married.” At work the next day, one of my dad’s coworkers confessed to using his name at the bar that night. Yeah, he was married, too. Apparently, they had some sort of rotating roster of names, and since my dad was out of town that weekend…
At my last job, the main number was same as an 800 psychiatric emergency number. If people dialed without the area code, they got our office and would start blurting out their problems, most of them pretty bad. And then there were the people who were trying to reach our Atlanta office, 480 area code, misdialed information, and reached our office, 408 area code. Those people were really confused, since they had reached the right company, just the wrong city.
When I was a thoughtless young teenager, my parents had a phone number that differed one digit from the number of a resort hotel. Understandably, I guess, we got a lot of calls for that hotel and we always gave the caller the right number. An astonishing number of people would immediately call right back. One day when I was home alone, the same idiot called several times in a row; the last time he called, I answered with the name of the hotel and proceeded to make reservations for the jerk. As I said, I was a thoughtless teenager at the time.
While talking to a non-Doper friend about this thread, she told me her wrong number story. It’s one of the best I’ve heard yet.
She used to get regular calls to her home number, usually at the weekend, usually in the evening. There were a range of callers, all of them asking for the ‘removal service’. She would politely say ‘Sorry, wrong number’ and hang up.
All the calls, however, piqued her interest. Late one Saturday night, the phone rang:
Friend: Hello
Caller: Is the the removal service?
Friend: No, you have a wrong number. But I have a question - removal of what?
Caller: Removal of corpses.
Friend: I really can’t help you there. Good luck.
A few months ago I got a voicemail on my cell phone from someone who had apparently reversed the last 2 digits of the phone number they were trying to call and got me instead.
To be fair, I did the same thing when I first got my cell phone. To test it, I called it several times from my land line. On one try I made the error but hung up as soon as I realized my mistake. I guess that wasn’t quick enough because a few minutes later I got a call back from them on my land line. I just let my answering machine take it and didn’t call back to explain.
A few nights back, around 2:00 am, the phone rang. Since no good news comes in the dead of night, I hurried to the phone. The machine picked it up, & I heard a bleary lady slurring the following: “Jerrie, it’s your mom. When did you get an answer-answer–one o’those machines? You know it’s me, now come & pick me up at the bar. There’s lights outside & I don’t wanna go back to jail. Get your ass over here!”
I felt like calling back, just to get the rest of the story.
Is there some way I can block an entire area code? I know no one in the 714 area code. I do no business with anyone in the 714 area code. I’m fine with all of Orange County slipping into the sea if it means I won’t get another late-night call from someone who thinks I’m running some sort of service that lets them call Southeast Asia.
I’m not.
About three days ago. Guy looking for his GF.
A few days ago.
Our number is very similar to the district nurse’s. People try to book appointments through me.
When was the last time I received a wrong number phone call? When was the last day I didn’t receive one?
Got a particularly stupid one just yesterday while at work. My favorite kind: the ‘uncouthe inquisitor on endless repeat mode’ variety. You know, the kind that repeatedly insists (nay, accuses) you of having called them and refuses to say a thing until they know exactly who you are …
A: “[Company name here], can I help you?”
C: “Yeah, who’s this?”
A: “Who is this?” :dubious:
C: “You called my number. Who is this?”
A: “I can’t help you if I don’t know who you are.”
C: “Yeah well, you called me and I don’t know who you are.”
A: “Well, at least we can agree on that, eh?”
And I hang up. Morons of the world unite. :rolleyes: