Earlier this summer, I kept getting these calls on my cellphone from Discover Card asking for someone I don’t know. They wouldn’t say what the call is about other than for me to tell this person to call them back. I told them they have the wrong number, but they didn’t stop. Over the space of a week, they called me dozens of times. They started in the morning a few minutes after 8 am and repeating all day at two-hour intervals until 8 pm. I asked for advice on how to stop the calls, but the calls stopped on their own. For about a month. They started up again the next month and this time I followed the advice from that thread and talked to a supervisor and told them they were in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, section 806 Number 5 and section 804 number 3. He told me that that act only protected the debtor and since I wasn’t them, they can call me as much as they wanted until they got ahold of them. They stopped calling after that, though.
Wrong Number Caller: Is Sarah there?
You: Look, Sarah just isn’t ready to talk to you yet. She’s still really angry about what you did.
(Note: don’t actually do this.)
A coworker I had eons ago had a number one digit off from a radio station that did lots of contests. He was fond of telling wrong numbers that they’d just won tickets, or an album, or all kinds of things. I expect the radio station was not impressed.
My post from a similar thread last year.
It’s as if I am the only one in the world who gets this kind of call:
Phone rings.
Me: Hello.
Recorded Voice: To hear who’s calling, press 1.
So I pressed one and I get some lame-ass, far away voice with some lame-ass message such as:
“Tell her to give all the money back.”
It is invariably political, and always the caller is some asshole with some vague axe to grind.
After 6 or 7 of these, all from different assholes, I reported it to the phone company. They never heard of anything like it, and had no solution.
Preach it. JENNIFER WINTERS of NORTH CAROLINA, who had my number before me, I can’t wish you something truly awful, but I hope you get a very itchy infection in a very private place.
I’ve had this number for a year and a half now and I still get calls from her, from lots of people. I’ve started telling people, “This is no longer her number. She didn’t tell ANYONE that the number was changed, so if you reach her, tell her thanks a lot from me for all the inconvenience.”
But the worst is, as gigi says (and this has happened several times):
“Is Jennifer there?”
“This is no longer her number, it’s been reassigned.”
“Well, do you know her new number?”
How the fuck would I know her new number? If I knew her new number, I would call her and reach through the phone and smack her.
Ring
Me: Hello?
Cranky old witch of a lady: My television is broken. I want to get it fixed.
Me: That’s terrible. Unfortunately you’ve called a residence and not an appliance repair shop.
COWOAL: Oh. Click
Ring
Me: Hello?
COWOAL: My television is broken. I want to get it fixed.
Me: Yeah, you just called. Did you recheck the phone number?
COWOAL: I think I know when I am calling a wrong number. Click
Me: 
Ring
Ring
Ring
(This time I let the machine get it. The machine that clearly says “You’ve reached the Stickler Family, blah, blah, blah.” No mention of televisions, shops or repairs.)
COWOAL: Look, I just want my television fixed. Why are you giving me this runaround? Just send out a repairman today. Click
Oh well, it made for a surreal afternoon.
Our office number is one digit from a local cooking store. I have it memorized now and give it to them.
One time, my husband answered a random ringing pay phone with “This is Julio, where is my kilo?” in a bad bandito accent. The guy went nuts in Spanish. We think it really was a drug call…
Then you tell them that since they acknowledge that they do not have a business relationship with you, you want placed on their do not call list and if they continue to call you will report them to your state attorney general.
As a security guard years ago, we were one number off from a Domino’s Pizza. Friday and Saturday nights we would get calls from drunks wanting a pizza. The first time they called, we would tell them they had a wrong number, if they called back after that, we just took their order. 
A friend in college had an entire day of repeat collect call requests from a prisoner somewhere in the state prison. He started out polite. During the automated collect calling system self identification time, he said, “Pamela, it’s me. I want to talk to you.”
Well, since it was a wrong number and they were poor students, they didn’t accept the call.
The guy clearly thought Pamela was refusing to talk to him.
The calls escalated to “Pamela! Please talk to me!”
Eventually through the course of the evening they got desperate. “Pamela! Pick up the phone!” “PAMELA! I’M LONESOME!”
To this day I giggle a little inside when I hear the name Pamela.
My own faux pas - I thought I had the number of the dog kennel memorized. Not long before, the area had been split into two area codes, and we live fairly close to the split. I dialed the number with what I thought was the correct one.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is this Cozy Kennels?”
“WRONG AREA CODE.”
“I’m sorry!”
It was obvious by the woman’s response that I was not the first person to make that mistake. I felt bad for her.
Not a terribly exciting story, I’m afraid, but when I was a teen, I got a wrong call once and explained that they must be dialing the wrong number.
A couple of minutes later, I get a call again (this being in the ancient past, with no caller id) and answer, and the caller just hangs up. click Obvously it’s the same person, but doesn’t want to even waste 2 seconds of her precious life by saying sorry.
So another minute goes by and she calls again. I answer, even though I knew it’s her, and she starts asking a question. This time it’s my turn. click
Had she been polite, I would have been polite.
I got a new mobile phone number back in July, and my wife has been chonically calling the wrong number. The same wrong number. Last time it happened, she said the guy sounded pissed.
No.
But your situation and others like it does remind me of this Kids in the Hall sketch.
I think you got whooshed.
/Alicia Silverstone “As if!!!”
Years ago I lived in a neighborhood where the exchanges were 522 and 524. The local pizza shop was 522-1234. When I was working in the video store, a woman came in and identified her phone number as 524-1234. I asked her if she got many calls from people wanting to order a pizza. She looked at me like I was The Amazing Kreskin. “How did you KNOW?!?”
Write em a letter, & call em morons.
They’ll get the hint.
Years ago, I got a wrong number every couple of weeks from an elderly lady asking for Mrs. Wannell. I’d explain she had a wrong number, and she’d huff, “Well!” and slam the phone in my ear.
Finally, in annoyance, I looked Mrs. Wannell up in the phone book. Turned out two numbers were reversed from mine in her phone number. So next time her friend called, I politely explained that she’d misdialed, and this is Mrs. Wannell’s correct number.
“Well!” she huffed, and slammed the phone in my ear.
We kept this up regularly for over two years. She never did respond politely to me. It got to be quite funny.
Well, yeah, because you were being a complete bitch. Why were you forcing her to dial your number by mistake?
Some people’s “logic” processes astound me.
I had calls for Charlotte (from a man) about twenty times in three days. He was very annoyed when I explained that he had the wrong number. He finally quit calling when I told him that I was Charlotte’s new boyfriend and I was coming over to kick his ass.
Another time the phone company had reissued a phone number to me. The worst part is that the number used to belong to the same address as I had. Various people called asking for Grandma. I spent about three months explaining that the number had been reissued to these different people. For two weeks the same guy called every day. He really pissed me off by calling three times during …um… while my wife and I were occupied so the last time he called I said “Grandma? No, she died last week. She didn’t leave you crap in her will, and I suggest that you call your dad to find out why.” He never called back, and neither did anyone else looking for “Grandma.”
I say you teach them a lesson. When they call you back, fire up the Norwegian death metal at 110% volume and answer the phone, then in the middle of a syllable, put it right in front of the speaker.
Lok, this is completely irrelevant to the thread, but by any chance have you ever lived in Pennsylvania?