no really, its a wrong number

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My phone rang last night, and I let the answering machine pick up. A lady's voice came on and started to inquire about the "5th wheel" [camper trailer] that I had for sale. I don't own one of those, so therefore, I am not in a position to sell one. Well, I decided I had better pick up the call to let her know that she had the wrong number. The conversation went as such:

me: "I am sorry, you have the wrong number"
she: "no I don't"
me: "yes, you do."
she: "isn't this (quotes the last 4 digits of my home phone number)"
me: "That is the right number, but do you have the right three numbers in front of those 4?" (our city has at least 3 or 4 different exchanges now).
she: "oh".

Why is it so impossible for someone to believe they may have dialed the wrong number, and that I had no reason to lie about it?

I don't know. This is why my wife wonders whether the "neurotypicals" are the ones who are really screwed up.

My dad and I once had a harrowing evening about 11 years ago where some woman kept calling our house, all evening, looking for Raymond at the Cemetery. our number was XX3-34XX, and she wanted XX3-44XX.
But she kept *doing* it. "Raymond?!" "I'm sorry. You have the wrong number again." "Oh. Sorry." RING! "Raymond?!" . . .
It got to where we were playing chicken about who would answer the phone.
Finally, the phone rang. We were starting at each other, like, "You get it; I'm not getting it." So dad finally picked it up. It was a friend of his.
"John!" he gasped, "Thank God it's you!"

Ya... well alot of people think they are always right compaired to anyone else, really pisses me off some of the people who do stuff like that, like they somehow know something that you dont ya know...

I've never had this experience with anyone. All I've gotten was "Oh, sorry," and people have asked "isn't this (says the phone number which is not my number)" and I'd say no, then they say 'sorry' and hang up.

I got a wrong number that spoke no English. She kept yammering in Spanish and I was trying to tell her that she got the wrong number. Finally she said "ok" and hung up. Nothing beats my grandfather's experience, though. About four years ago he got a wrong number. After he told the guy he had the wrong number, the guy said "well f*** you old fart!" Gramps got mad and said "well then, f*** you young fella!" So for the next six hours this guy kept calling and calling, shouting obscenities, telling gramps about how he was gonna kill him, etc. Finally gramps unplugged his phone and the guy gave up.

The only thing worse than that is the wrong number I got from a machine. Apparently some machine (fax? Coke machine?) in a doctor's office had been programmed to call my number. It kept calling and calling, and all I'd hear is those computer tones that modems make for "handshaking". You can't tell a machine it's got the wrong number, and nobody was at the doctor's office (it was at night), so the machine called every couple of minutes. I finally had to unplug the phone.

I once read about a Coke machine that was equipped with a modem to let the distributor know when to refill it, but the number was wrong. One evening after the office had gone home, the machine called the number, but the number wasn't connected. So the machine kept calling and calling, and since the number was long distance, the company that rented the machine got a huge phone bill.

Our house and the movie theatre in town have very similar phone numbers, so we usually get calls from people ordering movie tickets

I got this random phone call at 2:00 AM a few months ago. This extremely drunk sounding girl kept insisting she had the correct number. She kept calling me by the name of the person she thought she was calling and begging me to "come pick her up". She also insisted that I was lying when I said I didn't have a clue who she was. I tried to be nice but eventually I just had to hang up on her.

Luckily I'm an insomniac so she didn't actually wake me up. That would've been seriously irritating.

Last edited by marshall on 24 May 2008, 12:15 am, edited 2 times in total.

One of our work numbers is close to a radio station's number. That can be funny sometimes.

i had to change a cell number because people thought i was covering for a guy named brian.

he owed someone rent (that guy... was mad...).
some other guy had tickets for him and his gf.
some girl called all in a panic and left a message.

and numerous others that didn't stand out quite so much.

hate phones. hate hate hate.

Its happened to me a few times before, that is the strange part. I don't know if it is my very young sounding voice or maybe I am missing some key piece of the conversation and am being too blunt. However, this happens to my answering machine as well.

There a was fellow who called for a solid week, looking for his daughter. The first few calls were light and happy, "give me a call back, I love you", etc. Well, I was hoping he would figure out that his daughter wasn't ignoring him, check the number, and we would all move on with our lives. This didn't happen. Over the week, the calls got more and more upset - he was mad that daughter was "ignoring him" and that she was "keeping him away from the grandchildren". After the most irate message (and up to that point, this was all still answering machine, no one had talked "live" yet) I decided to suck it up and call the man, and explain to him he needed to check his number. He wasn't home. So on my answering machine, I left a well worded outgoing message on how I wasn't his daughter, that he needed to check the number, and to stop calling. Never heard a word from the man again, anyway.