John Cowan <cowan@marob.masa.com> (01/03/90)
In article <2492@accuvax.nwu.edu> John Higdon <john@zygot.ati.com> writes: >Idiot calls to my 800 number now fall into two categories: >1. Callers wishing to reach a local (SF) ferry and public >transportation service; >2. Callers wishing to reach the Hilton Hotel chain. >After blowing my stack when awakened at 5:45am by a woman who said, >"Isn't this ferries?" (I beg your pardon!!), I developed a new >approach. The moment I realize what the person who is on the line is >after, I take their reservation or give them what (made up) >information they seem to be seeking. Great fun! James Thurber, in one of his short stories, discusses a similar type of wrong-number strategy. His hero deals with a call from a woman who wants to know when the next train leaves for such-and-such a place. (Presumably she was meaning to call the train station.) He tells her that there will be no further train until 2:30 A.M. When she protests that such a departure hour is unreasonable, he says, "That's true, but as a special service to you, madam, we will send a taxi for you at 1:30 A.M. sharp. Please be ready to go when the taxi arrives." Mollified, the woman hangs up. What happened to her after that? Thurber doesn't say. But surely it must have changed her life in more ways than one.
roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) (01/03/90)
In <2534@accuvax.nwu.edu> John Cowan <cowan@marob.masa.com> writes: > I developed a new approach. The moment I realize what the person who is > on the line is after, I take their reservation or give them what (made > up) information they seem to be seeking. Great fun! Shame on you! Put yourself in the place of the person calling. They have made an honest mistake (maybe it wasn't even their mistake; maybe some place listed the wrong number in an ad or whatever) and you take it out on them like they were some evil person calling you on purpose to annoy you? Imagine if you called to make an important train reservation. At the right time and date, you show up at the station, baggage in hand, only to find out that they have no record of your reservation and there isn't space on the train, and there isn't another train until tomorrow, by which time you'll miss your important meeting or whatever. Pretty cruel joke to play on some random unfortunate person. Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy "My karma ran over my dogma" [Moderator's Note: Your point is a very good one. Some readers may recall the columns by {Chicago Tribune} writer Mike Royko on this subject. Royko complained that his centrex extension at the Tribune (312-222-xxxx) was the same as a very heavily used number at AT&T, less the 1-800 on the front of it. He complained that AT&T should change *their* number due to the several people calling locally who failed to prepend the 1-800 to the number and wound up annoying him instead. His way of 'getting even' with evil old AT&T for refusing to cater to him was to pretend to be an AT&T service representative, and make nasty, ignorant and crude comments to the callers. AT&T put him on notice, telling him he was free to say whatever he wanted to people who reached him via a wrong number, except that he was not free to purport to be an employee, representative or agent of AT&T, either by direct statement or insinuation. He was told if he was caught making such a misrepresentation of himself or AT&T while discussing the service of present, past, or potential subscribers of AT&T he would get sued. That simple. The eventual outcome was the Tribune changed his extension number, and sent the other one to an intercept on their switch. PT]
jeh@simpact.com (01/04/90)
In article <2534@accuvax.nwu.edu>, cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan) writes: > James Thurber, in one of his short stories, discusses a similar type > of wrong-number strategy... Here's another tale in a somewhat similar vein. (On second thought, it's not similar at all. But John's story reminded me of this one!) Opening night of a particularly dreadful play -- intended to be a comedy -- in NYC was attended by, among others, the well-known humorist Robert Benchley. Benchley was sitting near the front row and was fast asleep by the end of the first act. The second act opened on a set devoid of actors; the sole "performer" visible was a ringing telephone. Benchley stirred and said, loud enough for much of the audience to hear, "Will somebody please get that? I think it's for me." A review the next morning commented that "The funniest line of the evening was spoken by Robert Benchley, who unfortunately was not in the cast." (I'm not sure, but I think I got this from a little book called "The What To Do While You're Holding The Phone Book", by Gary Owens -- yes, the LA-area DJ and tv personality. Those old enough to remember 60s-era tv, and those fond of watching Nik at Nite reruns, will remember him as the hand-on-the-ear announcer on Laugh-In.) --- Jamie Hanrahan, Simpact Associates, San Diego CA Internet: jeh@simpact.com, | Future shock: A sense of bewilderment or if that fails, jeh@crash.cts.com | felt by those who were not paying Uucp: ...{crash,decwrl}!simpact!jeh | attention. -- Analog (Jan 90)
Bob Sutterfield <bob@morningstar.com> (01/04/90)
When my dorm room phone was one digit off that of the Better Cab
Company (serving Chicago's near north suburbs), I often received calls
at bar closing time. I would mumble something like "we'll be right
there" and hang up. When I finally got too fed up with the game
(probably during finals week), I stormed the local IllBell office.
They changed my number while I waited, and posted an operator to
answer my old number and discern who was the caller's intended
recipient.
Our company's WATS number is one digit off that of Texaco's customer
service hotline. We keep wanting to say "don't worry, ignore that
bill and we'll take care of everything" but nobody's gotten up the
nerve just yet. Somehow corporate life is different from a dorm room
at 2:00am.
============================================
[Moderator's Note: I admit it sounds funny....but it is not funny! As
Mr. Smith pointed out, it is a dreadful joke to play on an
unsuspecting person. Even a drunken patron of a public house deserves
the courtesy of being told 'wrong number', even if you say it angrily
and slam the receiver in the process.
Yes, I've done it too, years ago when I was a Young Man with an
attitude problem. In 1972, my business number was 312 - WEbster
9-4600. Sears, Roebuck Chicago Region Credit Services was WAbash
2-4600. I had two lines; they had a five position cordboard which
rocked around the clock with 65 incoming trunks in rotary hunt. One
day IBT/Chicago-Pullman cut over to ESS, and some fool of a CO
maintainence employee didn't know his 922's from his 939's. For six
hours one day, I was *saturated* with calls from people wanting to
gripe about their Sears credit card and I had a little fun with
them....considering the volume of calls, Sears didn't even notice they
were losing any. (How could you when you ordinarily get 350 calls per
hour...or like Amoco Oil's sales authorization reps, closer to 1000
calls per hour?) PT] tad@ssc.UUCP (Tad Cook) (01/04/90)
I spoke with a woman in Chicago recently that was constantly getting calls for the bus station on her cellular phone. She claims that one time she took a reservation from a woman, and told her that there was a special "buffet service" available, and that the bus would pick her up at her house! Tad Cook tad@ssc.UUCP [Moderator's Note: That is weird. The Chicago Greyhound-Trailways Terminal gave schedule information on 312-FInancial 6-5000 for about forty years. Only recently they installed a centrex system, in the 312-781-29xx series, and give schedule/fare information on 781-2900. Does her cell phone number come anywhere close to that? PT]
John Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com> (01/04/90)
roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes: > Shame on you! Put yourself in the place of the person > calling. No! You put yourself in my place. Just this morning I have received five calls for Hilton. Each of these calls costs ME money, disturbs my peace, interupts my tranquility. Is it my fault that idiots out there can't dial their damn phone? > [Description of consequences to unsuspecting person being duped by my > dark humor.] > Pretty cruel joke to play on some random unfortunate person. The only thing cruel about it is that I would not have the satisfaction of seeing it happen. > [Moderator's Note: I admit it sounds funny....but it is not funny! As > Mr. Smith pointed out, it is a dreadful joke to play on an > unsuspecting person. Even a drunken patron of a public house deserves > the courtesy of being told 'wrong number', even if you say it angrily > and slam the receiver in the process. It is ceasing to become funny. It's now damned annoying and I even called Hilton and told them what was happening and what I was doing about it. They said they were sorry, but they weren't responsible (they aren't) and whatever I did with the callers was up to me. Pac*Bell informs me that it will cost $30 to have my number changed. That's really wonderful. And after I have had my number changed (and suffered all the screwups that will go with it), will I then get Sheraton's calls? No, there's no point in having it changed. It would probably be trading a headache for an upset stomach. Late word: One of the last callers, after questioning, has informed me that *my* number is listed as Hilton reservations in their local phonebook. I'm going to get a copy of that book. If this is true, I am really going to be unhappy paying $30 because of a Pac*Bell mistake. And who do we refer *my* old number to, Hilton or me? John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
Ken Levitt <levitt@zorro9.fidonet.org> (01/05/90)
In Telecom V10 #4 Roy Smith writes:
"Shame on you" {for misleading people who dialed a wrong number}
I think it depends on the situation and the type of business involved.
We all must take responsibility for our actions and live with the
consequences. Anyone who dials a number at 3am better make sure they
are dialing the correct number. If I wake up in the middle of the
night it may take me an hour or two to get back to sleep. In this
case no punishment is too severe for the the offending caller.
(wouldn't Caller*ID be great?).
Many years back there were only two exchanges in my town (653 and
655). One day we started getting a very large amount of wrong numbers
on one of our two lines. It turned out that a catalog store had just
opened that week and they had the 653 number that corresponded to out
655. I called the phone company and they said that we could pay to
change our number which we had been using for 9 years. I then called
the store manager who was very arrogant and told me I should change my
phone number. I pointed out to him that we had this number for 9
years and he had his for one week. It would be a lot easier for him
to change his number than for us to change ours. I also suggested
that it would not be good for his business if callers ended up talking
to an irate person on the phone. He seemed not to care.
The people calling were interested in knowing about products for sale
or orders that they had placed. These were not urgent items. For a
while I did take some orders and told people that other orders had
come in. The theory was that one of two things would happen. Either
the store would get a lot of flack about this or people would stop
doing business with them.
After a while I got tired of this game and just left an answering
machine on the line. I changed the message to something very generic
so that it did not identify who had been reached. Some callers did
seem irate that they has called sever times and had not been called
back.
The funniest message that was ever left was from an employee of the
store who said that he would not be in that day. You would think that
an employee would know that the store did not have an answering
machine.
The store finally went out of business after about two years and
things have been mostly quiet since then.
Ken Levitt - On FidoNet gateway node 1:16/390
UUCP: zorro9!levitt
INTERNET: levitt%zorro9.uucp@talcott.harvard.eduJohn Cowan <cowan@marob.masa.com> (01/05/90)
In article <2556@accuvax.nwu.edu> roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes: >In <2534@accuvax.nwu.edu> John Cowan <cowan@marob.masa.com> writes: >[quoted nastiness deleted] [flame in response deleted] [comment by Digest Moderater deleted] Please be more careful when editing messages! The [quoted nastiness] was >not< by me, but by John Higdon <john@zygot.ati.com>. Furthermore, the flame actually responded to a stretch of material written by me but paraphrasing a >fictional< story by the well-known author James Thurber, as indicated in the text itself. I have >not< told a wrong-number caller I was a railway station. John Higdon has apparently misled some wrong-number callers. A fictional character in Thurber's short story has done the same.
David Tamkin <dattier@chinet.chi.il.us> (01/06/90)
Amid all the tales of pretending to be the business whose phone number was misprinted and making promises to callers that the called party isn't going to keep, are there any tales of the callee's simply saying, "Sorry, they've gone out of business"? It seems that would stop the caller from dialing but would cause a lot less damage. David Tamkin PO Box 813 Rosemont IL 60018-0813 708-518-6769 312-693-0591 dattier@chinet.chi.il.us BIX: dattier GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN CIS: 73720,1570
tad@ssc.UUCP (Tad Cook) (01/08/90)
The moderator asked if my aquaintance with the cell phone who was getting bus station calls had a cell phone number anything like 781-2900. I don't know. But it sure was an entertaining story, at least the way she told it. Remember that this person was in SALES, were they like to tell funny stories, so she may have made it up. :) Tad Cook tad@ssc.UUCP [Moderator's Note: I don't believe that sales people in the telecom industry make up stories. Do they? They do? :) PT]
"Robert P. Warnock" <rpw3%rigden.wpd@sgi.com> (01/09/90)
In article <2614@accuvax.nwu.edu> tad@ssc.UUCP (Tad Cook) writes: +--------------- | I spoke with a woman in Chicago recently that was constantly getting | calls for the bus station on her cellular phone... +--------------- I also get lots of wrong numbers on my cellular phone, and suspect that that in the Bay Area lots of PacTel Mobile customers do, too. You see, here in (415), PacTel Mobile numbers run "999-abcd", and for many "a"s (including mine), there *are* non-cellular "99a-" local exchanges. So if somebody's finger stutters (or they have a really cheap phone), instead of dialing 99a-bcde", they dial "999-abcd". Their local CO cheerily ignores the superfluous "e", and rings my phone (or one of the other few thousand cellular phones). In my case, one of the ten potentially confused numbers (e = 0-9, remember) happens to be a popular Mexican restaurant! And yes, I do get calls from people calling in sick or whatever, usually much earlier than my normal waking time. ("No, I *can't* get the manager for you. No, I *can't* take a message.") And worse, often in Spanish, which I don't speak. By now, I have just accepted several wrong numbers a week as part of the cost of using PacTel Mobile... Rob Warnock, MS-9U/510 rpw3@sgi.com rpw3@pei.com Silicon Graphics, Inc. (415)335-1673 Protocol Engines, Inc. 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94039-7311
tad@ssc.UUCP (Tad Cook) (01/10/90)
The moderator, in connection with the story about the saleslady getting bus station calls on her cellular phone said that he didn't think telecom sales people make up stories :> This lady was a FAX salesperson! ;=) tad@ssc.UUCP [Moderator's Note: A FAX salescreature? Oh dear! I'm sure she wouldn't lie about anything. I chased one out of our office just last week. PT]