Tom Lowe <tel@cdsdb1.att.com> (03/13/90)
stank@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (Stan Krieger) writes: > So, in order to make sure that the error > wasn't one of my dialing or the telcos switching, I asked the person > if I had reached (516) etc.; she said "no". OK, so I called that > number again, and of course the same person answered. > Now, I can almost understand people not wanting to give away their > phone number to a person who reached them by mistake, but if I already > have their phone number, and tell them what it is, it means I didn't > reach them by mistake, so at that point what difference does it make? In many business environments, people don't necessarily know exactly what number they are answering. It may be a pots line that is used exclusively for a toll-free number (although no restrictions on calling the pots number), or part of a hunt group or any one of other strange arrangements. At one of my former jobs, my phone could potentially be reached by dialing 3 or 4 different numbers, and I had no idea which number had actually been dialed. Then again, maybe they were just lying to you. Tom Lowe AT&T tel@cdsdb1.ATT.COM
tad@ssc.UUCP (Tad Cook) (03/15/90)
Stan Krieger asked about why someone would lie to him when he has dialed a wrong number (but not misdialed) and wants to verify the number with them by asking "have I reached (x-number)?"...then they say "no", and he calls back and gets them again. I have had this happen, and here is what is really going on. You have accurately dialed what was originally a wrong number, but it comes on as part of a group of lines into a business. Like where I work, our main number is 881-7000. If that line is busy, it rotates to the next line, and the next line, etc. Each line has its own number, and it is not consecutive, like 881-7001, etc. So the receptionist or whoever answers our phone at work, says, "no, you haven't reached 881-7459, this is 881-7000." She is not lying, she just doesn't know what the number is for the third line in the trunk group, or whatever you have come in on. Tad Cook Seattle, WA Packet: KT7H @ N7HFZ.WA.USA.NA Phone: 206/527-4089 MCI Mail: 3288544 Telex: 6503288544 MCI UW USENET:...uw-beaver!sumax!amc-gw!ssc!tad or, tad@ssc.UUCP
king%cell.mot.COM@uunet.uu.net> (03/19/90)
And here's my obligatory Persistent Wrong Number horror story: A few years back, I was running a BBS out of my dorm room. For various reasons, I shut it down after only three months. Within that period of time, it seems some helpful person listed my board on a national service (I think it was Compu$erve, but I can't say for sure). Middle-of-the-night calls were a common occurrance through the rest of the school year; as a matter of course I started shutting the ringer off at night. How do I know calls persisted? I sometimes forgot to hit the switch before I went to bed... :-( I curse the Commodore engineer who decided their modems should generate carrier in ORIGINATE mode without first checking for an answering carrier! A friend of mine was running a board out of his dorm room, too. His was up for several years, and was quite popular. When he graduated he recommended that the phone number be retired for a while, for the sanity of the next occupants of the room. The university didn't listen to him. I hear that the new occupants were quite mystified (and upset!) over strange calls at all hours of the night, with either silence or a weird squealing on the other end of the line. I think they finally got the number changed. If there's a byte of data in the computer but no | Steve King (708) 991-8056 pointer is pointing to it, then it isn't really | ...uunet!motcid!king there. | ...ddsw1!palnet!stevek