Wrong number

[Dan T in MO]

Just read thru the small town thread and it jogged my memory.

Many years ago, our phone number was 4939. A local beauty salon was 3949. It was not uncommon for us to get several wrong numbers a day. Well, one time my Dad answered the phone. An older lady asked if she could get an appointment. Dad told her she had the wrong number. Wouldn't you know it. That old biddy started arguing with Dad and insisted she had dialed the right number. After several minutes of trying to explain to her that he was not a hair dresser and her insisting that he was, he finally gave up and booked an appointment for her.

If you ask him about it today, he'd laugh and say his only regret was not being at the beauty parlor when she showed up.

 

[Dick2]

A kid dialed the wrong number (ours) one day and asked for "Bridget". I told him that she wasn't here. He asked where she was. I told him that I didn't know; that I had kicked her out! He asked where she went and I told him that she might show up at his house.

The kid was buying the whole line; I would have liked to have heard the conversation when he finally talked to Bridget.

 

[grs0820]

A young kid called one day, asked for some girl, Told him dhe in the bedroom with some one, He kinda wimped and hung up, Call later and asked again, told him she was with two fellas in the back, Three or so times he called, At the end of the day he called again , told him he had the wrong number, Wouldn"t believe me, Insisted to talk to her, About to cry, we was,...Never believed he had the wrong number

 

[Mike M]

Mom and dads phone number is really close to the local kentucky fried chicken. They used to get calls but not so much lately for some reason ? Maybe because of preprogramed phones ?

I wish I'd of thought to take orders !!! That would of been funny , but mean. LOL

 

[John T]

When they ask who they are talking to my response is WHO DID YOU CALL. Pull the old Seinfeld trick, say you are busy now but if you give me your home phone number I will call you back later. The old Laugh In line, is this the party to whom I am speaking?? Sometimes when the caller asks if they can speak to my wife (and I sort of know its a telemarket call etc) I SIMPLY SAY NO YOU CANT. If they follow up and ask but is she there etc., I say yes shes here but you cant speak to her. They usually give up after that.

John T NOT a politically correct kinda guy

 

[jm.]

Dan this one actually happened to me. There was a guy one small town over that was a pretty good golfer and gave a few lesson to folks , exact same first and last name as mine. Phone rings one night nice talking lady says she wants to get some golf lessons. I told her I did not give golf lessons. She says well I talked to your daddy at church Sunday and he told me I would have to "BEG YOU". Took me quit a while to convince the lady she had the wrong person.

 

[Zachary Hoyt]

Our number is one digit off from the local hardware store and we have gotten a lot of calls. Sometimes it takes a minute to figure out because the caller may ask about lumber or something that we sell but they are surprised when I say I will have to cut it for their order and then it usually is clear what happened. I kept getting calls from an aggressive telemarketer who wanted to speak to "Mr. Harrison". There was a Miss Harrison here before we came but she got married and left and there is no Mr. Harrison here, nor ever was except maybe when her father was visiting, I guess. I told him several times that there was no Mr. Harrison but he kept calling back and asking. Finally I told him "I am Mr. Harrison and I do not want to hear from you ever again" and he went away.
Zach

 

[the tractor vet]

At one time we would get calls for Carriage hills food from people calling off work due to being drunk. for all three shifts at all hours . I got to the point that i would tell them ok and that i have them marked down . Now on the other line we get calls all the time for Wal Marts. On Christmas day the calls are hot a furious and they want to know if we are open . Ye we are is what i tell them . I will bet they are really hot when they make the drive only to find out that Wal Marts is closed . Now as for the Carriage Hills food calls they have stopped , i guess this is because they are now employing shell we say south of the border employees.

 

[Mike M]

Maybe you should of gave her some lessons ? If nothing else done the old Karate Kid thing of wax off and wax off.

 

[waltdavies]

I have two numbers that we get Walmart is 90 Nd we are 60 at the end these people always appoligize and go their way. The other one is Napa they have two stores one in Dallas and one in Monmouth. Dallas is 623 and Monmouth is 838 and the last 4 digest are the same as mine. One night about 10:00 I get this guy all out of breath asking "how late are you open" I told him midnight as I just starting to watch a movie. Always wonder about these guys.
When we moved here there was a Dr. Davies this old lady called me 3 times so I finally made an appointment for her
Dr Davies moved away right after that one.
Walt

 

[mb58]

It really is true that in the south, people will call the wrong number and have a conversation anyway. About a year ago an old guy in our neighborhood called my number by mistake. I know him but I"m pretty sure he doesn"t know me, at least by name. I told him who I was and he told me who he was trying to call. Then he went right into a lengthy conversation about his wife"s illness and their troubles with medicare..blah..blah. Got him off the phone after about ten minutes.(without being rude)
On a funny note, when I answer the phone and someone says, "Who"s speaking?", I always say, "Beats me. I don't recognize your voice." Most of the time it takes them a few seconds to recover.

 

[johndeerefan]

Our number was 1 digit different from the local appliance store. People would always call wanting to know if we had their part in or could work on something. We always told them yea we can fix it or yes their part was in. I would have loved to been in that store to see their reaction. That store is out of business now lol.

Our first digits are now 526-xxxx. We had this mexican call at all hours of the night wanting to speak to a certain woman. Turns out after doing a little research he was suppose to be dialing 532-(same as ours). Late one night I finally had enough and let him have it and for him to dial the right da*? number. Haven't heard from him since.

 

[ShadetreeRet]

That's a good reply to "who's speaking?", I'll have to remember that!

 

[old]

Yep know what you mean. My phone number is the number Lewis Electric had many years ago and I still get calls for them but they have been out of business for 10 plus years now. Sad thing is some times you tell them they got the wrong number and then they want you to give them a good number for them or prove your not them

 

[ShadetreeRet]

One night I received a call from an obviously inebriated man, wanted to know what time the next show started. I don't think my number was even close to that of the local movie house, but I told him he had the wrong number. Five minutes later, same thing. Third time, told him wrong number, said I would give him number he needed. I gave him the number for the local Police Department!

 

[DaninKansas]

I guess the South of the Border employees don't call in drunk.

 

[dgasper]

Along that same line, a young man called and asked if "Rosie" was home. I said no, she just left for Reno with her boyfriend. CLICK!

 

[Goose]

I got a call one evening from a lady who asked for "Bill". I advised her there was no "Bill" here, or who should be here. She asked is this 402-XXX-XXXX? I replied it was. She said she'd check the number.

Several minutes later, same lady called, went through the same routine.

Minutes later, we went through it for the third time. By then, we were almost friends.

Some minutes later she called and said, "I found out what my problem is. I should be calling 404 area code instead of 402". 402 is Nebraska and 404 is Georgia. She actually wasted another long distance call to tell me she found out what her problem was.

 

[bobs old iron]

at least she felt better letting you she goofed, i've done it also, if someone who was nice on the other end wouldn't think i was stupid...

 

[Anonymous-0]

For years, I would get calls asking for a woman with my last name.. several times a week.. some finally started getting rude, DEMANDING to speak to her.. I finally got fed up and told several callers that she ran off with a man, and went into some details I cannot type here. Told them to tell her to never come back, if they talked to her. No idea who she was, but the calls stopped in a hurry..

 

[Ted in NE-OH]

Back when Direct Distance Dialing (DDD) was first going in my phone number was 216-275-1212. When Erie Pa. got DDD i got all of the information calls to the 216 area code from Erie Pa. They were calling 216-555-1212. My phone could not do anything. Told many operators, no help. One day a newspaper reporter called for information and I got the call. I explained the situation. She wrote a newspaper article about this. The phone people in Erie Pa. read the article and fixed the problem.

 

[ericlb]

i have it too, my phone number has 2 numbers reversed from the area ford dealer, customers call all the time, i use caller id to answer only the numbers i want

 

[JMS/.MN]

There were two people in two towns near me with my first and last name. One was a well driller, got many calls for him before he died. Other fellow was puzzled when a redi-mix truck showed up at his place and he wasn"t pouring concrete. We wondered what happened when the truck showed up an hour late.

 

[PJH]

Telemarketer called, no identification, asked to talk to Linda. I said she can't come to the phone. He said why not. I said she's drunk - again - actually still - she can't even hold her head up. He mumbled something and hung up. Linda was staring wide eyed at me the whole time. When I told her what was going on, she said What if that had been the preacher. I said - preacher needs to identify himself just like every one else.

 

[Hay hay hay]

Used to know a guy that got a huge amount of wrong numbers for a single lady in town. He always said, "she can't come to the phone right now, she's upstairs with a customer." It ceratinly caused a reaction.

The Lady?...changed her number...shortly thereafter.

 

[Bryan inIowa]

Not a wrong number but I bet they wished they would have thought about their listing . Cedar Rapids phone book from few years back, listing for Betty Jean Good. in the book it was "BJ Good , Swallow ct ne " bet they got few crank calls

 

[old popper]

Before the "don't call list" a telemarketer called me on Sunday evening at suppertime. Went like this ...Do you own your home?..Yes, are you interested in having siding installed? ...Yes, do you install windows too? Why yes. Good, I'll want all new windows,..do you do roofing? Not normally, but we could get a crew that does. Good I said, I'm getting ready to declare bankruptcy, and I want all this done first! Believe it or not....he hung up on me. LMAO

 

[Bill Radford]

When I was in college some old ladies used to call asking for Mr Martin. Several times I would patiently explain that this was not Mr Martin's house and they had dialed the wrong number.
I finally told one of them that I was Mr Martin's grandson and he had passed away last night and that several of the ladies were bringing meals and baked goods over to his house for the family.
Bet that old dude ate real good for a couple of days.
No more wrong numbers after that.

 

[notjustair]

I got an number in college that got lots of calls for some lady's name. Can't even remember what it was. I was real nice the first 75 times it happened. Finally I had it. I started telling them that she had died. It only took about a week for the calls to stop. I'm betting someone was real surprised when they saw her down at The Beehive getting her hair set up purdy.

 

[Chuck MA]

years ago I had a phone number one digit off from a pizza house got tired of telling people wrong number just stated saying yup be ready in 10 minutes, after while the calls stopped.

 

[Gambles]

Years ago, I knew a guy who had a phone number similar to a K-Mart auto center. A couple of times a week, somebody would call him wanting a price on a set of tires. He would always quote them a price and the price was just too fantastic to turn down. When they would show up, they would take it out on the supervisor.

 

[old-9]

Old, I was an electrician for seemed like forever. We had stickers we were to put on all electrical panels, with our name and phone number. It was good for business.

Joe

 

[old-9]

this is a great one!!
Tom Mabe

 

[old]

Bad thing is most of the calls I get for them are from bill collection places and those guy can be flat out rude

 

[wisbaker]

One of my dad's aunts lived in a city with two telephone exchanges (432 & 433) K Mart had a number on the 432 exchange, hers was the same number on the 433 exchange. It didn't bother her at all, she's put stuff on sale, tell 'em K mart was closed today or they couldn't sell fire extinguishers (or what ever wanted) on Friday due to a State law. I think when her mind started to go (or she got really bored) If she could figure out the race or nationality of the caller she would indicate that K Mart wouldn't sell to Blacks, Jews, Arabs, Mexicans or whatever the heck she figured them out to be. In all fairness if someone called and when they didn't hear "Thank You for calling K-Mart" asked if they had the right number she'd politely tell them what they had done.

My brother has an interesting hobby, wasting telemarketer's time, he especially likes alarm companies. He talked one alarm company into a $1,000 rebate on the system (gift card) the only stumbling block was he wanted them to have it installed in three days (within the cooling off period) his intention was if they were dumb enough to give him a gift card AND install the alarm system within the cooling off period he'd have a gift card and they'd have to come and un-install an alarm system, he did allow he'd give back the (already spent) gift card. Some people thing my brother is a jerk.

 

[fixerupper]

One Saturday night a year ago I started getting cellphone texts from what I think was a teenage girl and she was wanting se$. I texted back that she had the wrong number. I didn't want to get involved with this in any way. She kept it up for awhile, then quit. The next day she sent a text apologizing. That was a case where an innocent man could have ended up in jail if it was handled wrong. Jim

 

[Paul from MI]

Years ago when fax machines just came out one of our customers got our fax number programmed wrong, and were trying to fax to one of the older ladies in town. Somehow she figured out what the problem was and showed up in the shop wanting to talk to the office manager. He apologized profusely for our customers error, BUT SHE HIT HIM WITH HER PURSE ANYWAY!

 

[770 D gal]

After my mothers stroke, she took to calling friends and family at all hours (day and night). For the longest time I was unaware of what was going on; until one evening the phone rang and I answered to a VERY irrate man wanting to know why someone was always calling him from my number. It turned out my mother was attempting to call a brother with a 304 area code but she was dialing 301. After figuring out what happened and explaining it to the man, he was very understanding and appreciative that I would do what I could to insure that she would not continue to make those late night mistakes!!!

 

[Anonymous-0]

One place I worked had a number one digit off from local ob/gyn clinic. Yep, we'd get calls wanting to make exam appointments. Some got real irate, insisting they'd dialed the right number and we just didn't want to help them and they were going to come down to the office and tell our boss what they thought of our attitude.