It’s amazing to me how many calls I get that are wrong numbers; for having my cell phone number for 7 years and my home number for 2, you’d expect people to be able to give out the right number. I don’t think the calls are misdials as I get a number of different callers calling. One particularly interesting wrong number are calls I get from Children’s Hospital to both my cell phone and to my landline (different area codes). I happen to recognize the caller ID for it as my dad did some work for Children’s for awhile and called me all the time. I’d hope people in healthcare to have current phone numbers of people they’re trying to contact. OK, maybe someone had a wrong emergency contact number.
The other day I got a call twice from someone I knew had a wrong number because the caller ID said payphone and I don’t know anyone that has used a payphone in years. The second time the person called, she argued with me that she had the right number. OK, if you say so.
To top off wrong numbers, I got a voicemail on my cell phone from a teacher saying that Johnny’s (I can’t remember the kid’s name) behavior has gotten out of control. Hello, parents, you might want to put correct contact info in you kid’s file. And teacher, you might want to listen to the name of the person whose voicemail you’re calling to see if it matches a contact name for the kid.
One of the coolest features I had on my phone line when I lived in Portland was the ability to block up to 10 numbers; I had a few people keep calling me with the wrong number, so I entered their numbers and never heard from them again.
On the flip side, I made a call to the right number the other day, but the number had already been recycled. One of my friends dropped his home phone a few years back and I was a bit slow on the uptake (I guess I always called his cell phone). I knew I dialed the right number, apologized for getting the wrong person and then hung up. I checked the number I dialed and it was definitely what I intended to dial. Next step was removing the number from both my cell phone and my desktop address book.