What screwy telephone calls do you get?

dazberry

Anyone here have a screwy telephone number or is it just that people are thick?

My home number is ex-directory, but without fail I get 2-3 calls (sometimes more) per day looking for a company - which naturally this isn't

For example, in the last 20 minutes 2 calls came in looking for:

CPM Marketing (number is very close).
Hopkins Merchantising

Also tend to get calls for Phonewatch. One Saturday a woman rang and couldn't quite understand that she wasn't talking to a phone watch representative and that I would not be calling out to her house to fit an alarm :rolleyes:.

Also tend to get a lot of calls from people trying to sell stuff, who is your marketing manager, who's in charge of administration etc.

If I have to say "sorry you have the wrong number", or "this is a residental number not a business" again I'll fookin' scream.

Anybody else get this ?

D.

SheroN

Always get numbers for the chipper up the road..numbers are only one digit out....we've started taking orders and all now....
"batter burger and chips please..."
"no bother boy, give us a few minutes"....

mycroft

My name starts with an "A" and I'm first in everyones phonebook.

Which means if a phone is in someones pocket, and the keypad isn't locked I get a call.

Happens three or four times a week, It's really fun if it's three in the morning and you're listening to someone leave a nightclub.

Or the memoriable time a friend left a voicemail of her having sex......

BuffyBot

Same happens at my house. Our number is similar to a large frozen food manufacturer, so at one stage we started to pretend it was the right number. The lack of deliveries/job application forms etc seemed to make people dial more carefully in the future

rymus

up to about 9 months ago I was getting persistent calls on my mobile from places such as New York, Thailand and other various locations in Asia.

They were all from various stockbrokers encouraging me to buy at least $5000 worth of shares in a company I've never heard of but were apparently the next big thing on the pharmaceuticals market. I just plain hung up on the pushy bastards several times, explained at length how incredibly not interested I was and tried pretty much everything short of using foul language. One guy from New York rang me at least 20 times within the space of 5 days, eventually forcing me to say something like "If you ever ring me again peddling this ****ing **** which I do not want, never requested a call for or couldnt care about, I'll fly over there, rip off your ****ing head and take a big steamy **** down your neck." Something like that. I got one more call from a guy in Thailand a few weeks later but a quick "**** off, I'm not interested" sorted that out.

It was all a bit like that film with Giovanni Ribisi (sp?) in it... cant remember what the name of it was now...

Big al

Eircom tend to recycle numbers that are no longer used, when my company moved they gave our old phone number to some house after about 6 months and every so often we get emails etc saying we tried calling but we get getting a house number, this despite how many times you might write/email people that you have moved and changed phones numbers

oneweb

Got a call last Sunday afternoon during my dinner asking if my DNS server was running. Ya wha? I don't run a DNS server. Anyway, they thought I was IrishBroadband and asking them how they had my number I found out they - very scarily - had my full name, address and telephone number. I'd never heard of the company from which the bloke was calling :dunno:

Reminds me, I must follow that up...

Dont be at yourself

Originally posted by SheroN
Always get numbers for the chipper up the road..numbers are only one digit out....we've started taking orders and all now....
"batter burger and chips please..."
"no bother boy, give us a few minutes"....

The exact same thing used to happen to us!

Big Ears

well we inherited our phone number from a local pub (oposite thing that happened to big al ). People still ring up for the pub about 12 years on know.

rymus

any ideas how long it is before a previously used number is thrown back into circulation?

gobby

i lived in germany for a while and every so often id get a call from a number i didnt know. of course, i dont speak much german and would just answer as if i was in ireland.

thing is once the germans discover they have called a wrong number they dont say like, 'oh sorry, wrong number', they just hang up. bloody annoying. i guess they cant live with the shame of having dialled an incorrect number...

vibe666

Originally posted by gobby
they dont say like, 'oh sorry, wrong number', they just hang up. bloody annoying.

have you tried re-enacting the scene from fawlty towers 'the germans' episode? probably wouldn't help, but it would be funny.

not quite the same, but i get calls every couple of weeks from eircom asking me if i'm happy with my internet service. fvckers rang today, and i ended up swearing at the silly cow over not being taken off their cold calling list even though i've asked about 6 times.

i ended up taking her name (Janine btw, if she calls you tell her to piss off) and telling her i used to work for them and if she didn't call i was going to get hold of her manager and give them an earful. it's surprising how much you can get from people when they think they might get in trouble.

Magic Monkey

Originally posted by rymus
<snip>

It was all a bit like that film with Giovanni Ribisi (sp?) in it... cant remember what the name of it was now...

Boiler Room

Töpher

My house only has 1 digit difference with a local police station!

- "I've just been robbed"
- "Good for you. Try calling the cops next time."

UGH!

uberwolf

my dads surgery and teh local pizzeria have v.similar numbers. Which led to my dads favourite line, sorry I do prescriptions not pizza's. urgh, not funny.

dahamsta

I get calls for the Chinese up the road regularly, just one digit out. I'd take orders but they're actually quite nice there. If they ever piss me off though...

adam

Faust

Originally posted by oneweb
Got a call last Sunday afternoon during my dinner asking if my DNS server was running. Ya wha? I don't run a DNS server. Anyway, they thought I was IrishBroadband and asking them how they had my number I found out they - very scarily - had my full name, address and telephone number. I'd never heard of the company from which the bloke was calling :dunno:

Reminds me, I must follow that up...

It would be funny if they were like : "Is your DNS server running?
you:yes...
them: Then you better catch it *giggle* *click*

Puck

I applied for a job through a recruitment/temping company last year. I apparently have the same name as one of their temps so I get the occasional call asking me what the situation is with my work, what my rate is, letting me know there's a staff party, etc.. Normally this wouldn't bother me that much at all but y'see recruitment agency people are a special kind of people... they come from the same level of Hell as marketting people and market researcers.

Everytime they call, as soon as I answer they rattle off their little speach they prepared earlier.

Them - "Hi John [like I'm some kind of old friend] this is blah at blah blah blah, blah temp blah blah recruitment blah blah blah.... "

Me - "You hav..."

Them - "Blah blah blah blah..."

Me - "You have the wrong number!"

Them - "Blah bah... huh? This is John XXXXX isn't it?

Me - "Yes but I think you have two John XXXXX on your system and I'm not the one you're looking for."

What follows can sometimes be a question and answer session while I try to explain to them that two different people can have the same name and not know each other or have anything else to do with each other.

It's their little rehearsed speaches that annoy me most. As soon as I answer they just fly into them regardless of the person on the other end of the line. I can imagine them breathing deaply and chanting their lines just before they dial my number and then spewing out their lines as soon as the phone is answered.

The latest one really took the biscuit. The recruitment agent was so bothered by the fact that her little speach might actually be interupted and she would have to interact with another person and think on her feet that she called my voicemail directly and left her little speach on there. This cost me money to access.

Mossy Monk

i get the undertakers, Avonmore and the local hospital sometimes. dont get Avonmore all that often anymore though

dudara

In my last house, we had a recycled number from the tax revenue. That was fun!!!

Sposs

Once got a black guy (with very bad english) screaming down the phone at me about his rights because he thought i was the eastern health board

rymus

Originally posted by Magic Monkey
Boiler Room

Thats the one.. cheers

Bard

Used to get calls for Hotpoint all the time in my parents house.

Basically went:

Them: "Hello, can I speak to Sales/Support/Maintenance please?"

Me: "Er, we don't have a Sales/Support/Maintenance"

Them: "Oh... well can I speak to the person who sells/repairs/maintains your washing machines?"

Me: "Huh? Is there something wrong with our washing machine?" / "Huh? Our washing machine isn't for sale!" / "Oh you mean my dad? I'll get him for you now..."

Them: "This is Hotpoint, isn't it?"

Me: "I think it's obvious it's not..."

Them: "*click* buzz..."

Victor

From a ten (or so) year old: "Daddy!"
Me: "Not me."

Used to work for a firm where one partner shared a name with a solicitor.

We got an extra number in that office that was the same as a taxi rank with the last few numbers transposed. Some guy (American accent) phones looking for a taxi form the American Embassy to the Airport. I tell him that we were surveyors not taxi drivers and tell him to get the Aircoach from across the road, cheaper, as quick, more practical. A few months later the same guy phones back looking for a taxi. I say "from the American Embassy" and he says "why yes, well actually it's just around the corner, but how did you know?". I reply "remember we're the surveyors, no the taxi drivers, go across the road and get the bus".

inaccessibleisl

I get phonecalls in the middle of the night from the same b@stard.
"please check your messages, you have one new message" I did and there was a message from someone, but they didn't ring me to tell me to check my messages. But who did? Someone out there is tapping my phones. I'll get ye one day.

sceptre

Originally posted by Sposs
Once got a black guy (with very bad english) screaming down the phone at me about his rights because he thought i was the eastern health board

He sounded black, right?

Sposs

Of course he could have been from Cavan even

seamus

In eircom I got a couple of people ringing me on the wrong line (ie the expensive one), going mad because they couldn't get through on the subscription no ("I pay for this service", etc etc), all they heard was strange noises before it hung up. It usually turns out they were ringing the dial-up internet number :rolleyes:

In the old place I used to work in, weird calls were par for the course. Most Irish people have no idea how a paging system works or how call divert works. So trying to explain that no, I'm not the solicitor responsible for getting your scumbag son slung in jail, or that I'm not John Magnier, millionaire horsey-type person, was a regular feature.

Colleague had a 30 minute call of an old man reading parables and verses from the bible, when he though he was speaking to Cardinal O'Connell.

angelofdeath

Originally posted by mycroft
My name starts with an "A" and I'm first in everyones phonebook.

Which means if a phone is in someones pocket, and the keypad isn't locked I get a call.

same here, like about three times a day, its really annoying, i just dont bother hanging up anymore, let them waste their credit

oneweb

Originally posted by Victor
From a ten (or so) year old: "Daddy!"
Me: "Not me."

LMAO Good one.




...but how can you be so sure :eek:

neoB

Just about the first of the month, peoples call my number asking "Yeah is this ABC Liquors? Lemme get...." I wish my house was the liquor store ffs. But then again there wouldn't be a drop left :P

kano476

my friends house fone is one digit off one of the local taxi numbers so at like 2 in the morning ppl ring up looking for taxi's and my friend always tells them that they'll be down in 5 mins. so funny when ppl ring back 20 mins later wondering where their taxi is

Walter Ego

Originally posted by Einstürzende
My house only has 1 digit difference with a local police station!

But on the plus side 998 or is it 1000 is a handy number to remember.

You should really consider changing it to 112:D

tinkerbell

Originally posted by mycroft
My name starts with an "A" and I'm first in everyones phonebook.

Which means if a phone is in someones pocket, and the keypad isn't locked I get a call.

Happens three or four times a week, It's really fun if it's three in the morning and you're listening to someone leave a nightclub.

Or the memoriable time a friend left a voicemail of her having sex......

haha, that must've been one hell of a voicemail to get!!!

I once got a phonecall on my mobile from some skanger woman "haalloo, can i get a taxi roight?" And to jus play along, I said "where you located?" "I'm fram da nurdsooiiide in Duuubliin". I was like "uhh first off, I ain't a taxi, second off, I'm about 150 miles away from Dublin". Hehe, that shut her up

nlgbbbblth

anytime someone dials my phone and it's a wrong no I always play along

"John?"

"Yes"

it's very funny when the penny drops

dazberry

[OT] Many moons ago in my teenage years a friend of mine used to think it was cool to answer the phone with the phrase: "City morgue, you kill'em, we chill'em".

Naturally his parents weren't too happy about this, but when his father rang one day to say that their granny had died it sort of put an end to it :eek:.

In fairness, it was better than the "I listen to the red hot sounds of Sunshine 101"

D.

dazberry

Originally posted by nlgbbbblth
anytime someone dials my phone and it's a wrong no I always play along
"John?"
"Yes"
it's very funny when the penny drops

LOL - I got a call one day... sort of went like this:

> Darren? (phonetically it was Darden)
< Yeah
> No, Darren (Darden)
< Yeah (me/lowers pitch)
> Is that Darren (Is daht Darden)
< Yeah, who is this?
> Darren (Darden) [a second name]
< Nah, sorry you've the wrong number
> Ah sordy bud [hangs up]

That was a mind fooker

D.

Tommy Vercetti

A couple of years ago I started getting calls and voicemails from a woman who apparently was getting married soon, she thought she was phoning a DJ from what I could gather. She was leaving long messages and stuff (I stopped answering because I tried to explain many times that she had the wrong number) about the wedding. Anyway this went on for 3 or 4 weeks and the last one I got was something along the lines of "you never got back to me and now the reception is ruined wah wah wah" filled with various expletives.

ColinM

Originally posted by sceptre
He sounded black, right?

Oh give over, sceptey! Yeah, right like it was just as likely to be a regular Irish PAYE worker who just happened to have a Nigerian accent.

Victor, I really liked the taxi story.

nlgbbbblth, I took to doing this as well after repeatedly explaining to people (and the same people) that they had dialled the wrong number didn't work. I began to treat it like prank calling, except they paid for the call. I used to get loads of calls from people thinking they had called a doctor's surgery. I used to apoligise and tell them that they had the wrong number. They would argue with me and tell me that they had dialled correctly and that they dialled the number listed in the book. I would explain that they had made an elementary mistake by reading the number listed underneath the one they wanted. I even explained to some of them what an "error of parallax" was. They'd even ask me for the correct number, and to save my time and theirs in case they had something life-threatening, I actually had the correct number sellotaped to my phone.

Some people just would not accept that I was not a doctor, no matter how clearly I explained the situation to them. I decided that if these people were so thick as to demand medical advice from me, then they would get it. The more annoying they were, the more creative and potentially injurious advice I gave them.

kmart6

Originally posted by Einstürzende
My house only has 1 digit difference with a local police station!

- "I've just been robbed"
- "Good for you. Try calling the cops next time."

UGH!

haha

I cam imagine me doing the same

oneweb

Originally posted by dazberry
[OT]"City morgue, you kill'em, we chill'em".

OMG, one of the stockroom lads (sort of manager but not quite) often answered the phone like that, until - completely out of the blue - customer calls started diverting to the stockroom :eek:

ToxicPaddy

My parents number is one number off what used to be the local butchers number
and this old dear used to ring almost every single saturday morning to ring in
her order for her pork chops and her "nice piece of lamb for the Sunday dinner"..

When we used to explain to her that this isnt the butchers, she'd apologise and
hang up, then ring back about a minute later, after, im sure, checking the phone
number and dial it incorrectly again... lol

It was very funny and went on for years, until the butcher retired and closed his
business..

Miguel_Sanchez

I moved house and had to change phone number. Because I was working from home I kept the old number on the exchange and had it permenantly forward on to my mobile. Eircom assured me that the forwarding was set up and working fine.

I rang it one day to check and was very surprised to find that my mobile didn't ring but instead someone answered. When I asked them their number it turned out to be different from mine but yet dialling my number still got them.

Got on to eircom and they sorted it out.

A few weeks later a different thing happened. When some eldery woman in Galway rang anyone my number came up on their caller ID so I got lots of voice mails and calls from people wondering did Auntie Margaret have a new phone number.

Agent Smith

Originally posted by SheroN
Always get numbers for the chipper up the road..numbers are only one digit out....we've started taking orders and all now....
"batter burger and chips please..."
"no bother boy, give us a few minutes"....

so it's you.....



grrrr

cyclopath2001

I know of once where a UK bank (might have been Midland) sent letters to all their Irish customers giving a customer service number for corporate credit cards, without the UK prefix. They had their customers faxing the Irish Revenue instead.....sending in confidential details about their company credit cards!

exCrumlinBoyo

I'm from Dublin but Live in Florida in the US. If anyone has ever lived here they will know what its like with getting calls from telemarketers.

Well one day I got a call and they piss me of really bad. The lady calling said to me "Can I speak with Bessy? " I said wha ? She said again, "Can I please speak with bessy" ? Holding my laughter I said hang on a minute please and I will get her just now. I shouted to my wife "Samantha call bessy in will ya" and my wife said. "where is the dog ? " That's right the telemarketer was calling up to speak with me fcuking dog. I could not stop laughing when I said. Bessy our dog in on her way in, you will have to excuse they delay because she is rather old and takes her time coming in to the house to get the phone. Oh.. by the way she does not speak english so how are you going to speak with her ? I will hold the phone so you can both chat !

Well let me tell you.. I have never laughed as much in my life and I could feel the womans face burning on the other end of the phone and I could imagine she wanted the ground to swallow her up. She just hung up in the end.