Family Gets Calls From Radio Listeners, Dad Promises Them Cars As Prizes After The Radio Station Refuses To Change The Way They Say Their Number

I work as a optometrist and years ago, we had the same number as a brothel in the same city. You can imagine what kind of calls we got every week. Was quite funny..

A local culinary school made a typo on their commercial and posted our home phone number. Not fun.

30 some years ago the local nursing home set up a “Tell Santa what you want for Christmas “ hotline. The nursing home residents would field the calls. However their hotline number was very similar to our number. I started getting calls from children. Luckily I had read about the hotline so I was able to tell the children the correct number.

For several years we kept getting phone calls from people trying to reach the 6th form of a local high school. Our number was not at all like theirs. What had happened was that someone, the secretary I think, had put our phone number on their information leaflets. Again, no idea why as we didn't know this person and had nothing to do with the high school. I complained and the headteacher promised it would stop. But it went on for several years, with the secretary giving the wrong phone number to each new intake. It eventually stopped and to this day, I have no idea why it happened. Oddly, we have almost the same number as the vets, with just one digit difference. And yet we never get calls for them.

A commercial nursery used to have MY work phone number on their website (the website had a typo), and when I started getting calls for them, I sent them an email telling them they needed to fix their website. I kept getting calls for them, and sending them emails about once a week. After a couple of months of wrong number calls, I got tired of it and started taking orders for them, telling the customer their plants would be ready in a few days. The customers were commercial landscapers, and undoubtedly the orders were for thousands of dollars. I only had to take orders for a couple of weeks before the calls stopped.

For.many years, we would get calls from people looking for a certain fancy restaurant here in my city. We had 3822-3297, their number was (probably still is) 3822-3298. Once in high school a rich classmate was asking people if we had the number of this restaurant in our contacts, I just said it from the top of my head and they looked at me "Do you also eat at Thaís?" (Which sounded like "OMG, I hadn't realized you have money!") I quickly explained that, no, I wasn't a client, I just had to pick up lots of mis-dialed calls

When I lived in Luton (UK) my firm's number was almost the same as the main number for the airport just with two of the digits transposed. Since it was an innocent mistake, unlike the main story above, I had the airport's actual number on a post it above my desk so I could tell them no sorry you want [number]. I did used to get frustrated though because I literally answered the phone with the name of the firm - an accountancy firm where the name was the owner's name & co. It sounds nothing like London Luton Airport. People don't listen.

I worked for an orthopedic surgeon's office and the 3 digit area code was the only number difference for the phone number to a local cable company. I can't tell you HOW MANY TIMES people would call, I'd answer with the typical "You have reached (Dr's practice). How can I help you?" and when I finally determined they were trying to reach the cable company, I had to politely ask them to redial the phone number but this time with 1-800 instead of our area code. Amazing how people would argue with me saying "I already did that!" and having to respond with "No, I'm afraid you have reached (Dr's practice) office. Please try and call again using 1-800. Have a nice day!" and hang up.

I once had an easy to remember number. Once or twice a month some random guy would call and ask for "Cindy". Sorry dude no Cindy here. Whoever Cindy was, she was obviously giving my number out to guys she had met in bars.

When I was growing up, our home phone number was one digit different from a local drug store. We got tired of arguing with callers about who we were and what was the right number. 95% of the callers wanted to know when the store would close that evening or open next morning. So we posted the store's hours by our phone and got rid of callers by telling them exactly what they were calling to find out. (For the other 5% we gave them the store's correct number.)

I work at an 'Old School' radio station. We still have DJs spinning live music and also take song requests. People still listen to us on the radio while driving. We are not extinct dinosaurs. 🤣

We had a number that was really close to one held by (judging from the calls) bad auto repair shop. The calls didn't come often, but the customers were sometimes spitting angry and sometimes went on a rant before we could even tell them it was a wrong number. When the place went under was a happy day

When I lived off-campus for one summer semester during college, the phone line we set up for the apartment (this was early 2000s--my parents wouldn't buy me a cell phone), it used to be the number of a towing company. I'd get calls at like 6am and the person wouldn't even say hello, they'd just say an address. I'd be like (groggily) "Hello?" and they'd be like, "1500 main street." And I'd be like, "what?" And they'd go, "isn't this XYZ towing?" And I'd say, "no, this is a private residence." And they wouldn't even apologize, they'd just hang up. Ugh.

I hate the way stories are presented on this website.

When I was first married, our phone number was exactly the same as our local womens shelter. The only difference is, you had to dial the area code first for that number while ours was just the seven digits. (This was in the late 90s) It didn’t take long for us to have to change our phone number because we were getting calls at all hours of the night from women in distress and my husband was usually the one who’d answer the phone. They’re not expecting a male voice, get spooked and hang up. It was much easier for us to change our number in this situation given that we didn’t want the shelter to have to deal with the mess it would have made.

Years ago my mother had a phone number it was just one off! She got these calls in the middle of the night! For a radio station yes but most of the people calling for drunk! That's why they didn't get the number right! It was very Irritating!

Nicely done

I once worked for a company: was in the former building of a Bank. Similar numbers as a pharmacie and a shoe store. The Name was written similar to large furniture store... You can imagine, how many wrong calls we got.

Fake story. Nobody has 555 in their number, that's why Hollywood uses it.

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There are no numbers that start with 555. That's why characters on television shows when giving a phone number always said my number is 555....... that way when idiots actually tried to call the number the call would go nowhere. This story much like many things on the internet is b******t