Just polling the community here, do people have the same problem with 800 numbers that I have? I have "rented" one number for over a year and I get 10+ calls a month that navigated through my menu system and still expected to be able to buy a portable storage shed.

Now I actually "own" a new number (haven't published it yet) and I've had 8 calls in less than a month for the US Dept of Agriculture. Apparently our numbers are 1 digit off. At least with the storage sheds I had the possiblity of reselling, but posing as the USDA I'd probably just write checks. ;-)

It is kind of humorous, I was just wondering if everybody deals with this. Plus maybe somebody has better stories. :)

my parents have a place out in hawaii which they rent and an 800-# for people who want info...

a few eyars back some porn company messed up their ad and put out phone number instead of theris (it was like a 1-diggit differance). needless to say we had guys calling all day every dya. some would get pissed, some were obviously embarrsed and most hung up....

Yep, you'll also get this with old recycled numbers... "You mean this isn't bob's dirty porn shack hot-line?"

havent had one =)

This is how the norad-tracks-santa thing got started...

<edit>err, with a wrong number printed in an advert, not with a recycled porn phone number.</edit>

Originally posted by cperciva
This is how the norad-tracks-santa thing got started...

<edit>err, with a wrong number printed in an advert, not with a recycled porn phone number.</edit>

The latter would have been much more interesting though ;)

The phone number for the local Domino's Pizza is 1 number off from my home number, so I get people dialing the wrong number all the time (10+ times a week). Heck, I could start up a pizza business on the side and not have to spend a penny on advertising. :D

I used to work in the hardware department of a large, national (US) department store. Our 1-800 customer support number was also 1 off of a porn site. I used to get one or two calls a week (at the local store) from old ladies complaining that we were giving out the wrong number.

I have an 800# to my house. I had a similar problem. So, AT&T set me up with a 2-digit "pin code" type of thing. When someone calls the line, they are asked for the code. If they don't know it, they don't get through. If this type of thing is available on a business line, it might work for a line that is purely tech support, and not something published in the phone book.

Everybody's favorite Computer Company (Apple, not the other one) has a customer care number.. 1-800-SOS-APPLE...

Lets just say that some customers I used to give the number to (yes, I spent 3 years working retail 'tech support'.. gauh)... used to not 'get' the "SOS as in HELP" part, and would dial S:ZERO:S-Apple...

Although the nice people you get (cough) are more then willing to help 'service any need'.. they are NOT trained to help you diagnose your Macintosh problems. ;)

Haven't checked that # in the years since I left retail hell, but I imagine it's still a valid working number. (Then again, some irate customer who dialed the zero told our manager, and insisted on getting the regional Apple reps business phone #, so maybe Apple sued them out of existance, who knows...)

And you also have 866, 877, 888 toll free numbers and people just automatically diall 800 instead :)

Hmmmm. This brings up good reasons to pay your employees well and monitor how they handle incoming calls.

Rep: "Thank you for calling [company name here], this is [rep name here], what can I help you with today?"

Caller: "Is this Bob's dirty porn shack?"

Rep: (pause) "How much you got?"

... and of course the opposite could happen

Rep: "Yeah, Bob's dirty porn shack"

Caller: "I'm having trouble with Windows 2k"

Rep: "Server or Pro?"

hahhahaahahahah

that was funny

Brian

I worked for a company that published coupon books for fund raisers...

Well I called a company that had coupons in the book, and I dialed the number that was in our books, and I got a porn line.

I had to mail the company to get their new 800 #, in order for the right 800 # to be in the books.


As anyone went to one website, type it slightly off, and went to a place that they shouldn't have gone to??? hehe

I get *ODD* phone calls everyday. The 800# is setup on an answering system, someone left me a message yesterday: " Hello, this NY Oil Company, we have stopped by your house today, but we did not reach you at that time..."

I live in apartment. :D


Or sometimes ATT calls me telling me I have problems with my account, and I never even used their service.. ohh.. well... :)

Originally posted by rockergrrl
As anyone went to one website, type it slightly off, and went to a place that they shouldn't have gone to??? hehe

You mean that the place Bill Clinton used to live *isn't* a porn shop?

Ugh! We had it bad at one point.... so bad we ended up dropping the phone number and letting 'the other company win'.

Our phone number spelled out Quest the other phone number spelled out Qwest everything else was the same.

Ours of course being for our hosting customers and theirs was for the Qwest (& BellSouth) Dial-up customers

Our answering service would answer "Thank you for calling the Quest Line" and the poor dial-up users obviously had no clue that they had called a hosting company rather than their Qwest Dial-Up provider.

We had our number for over 2 years without a problem .. thankfully it wasn't really a publicized number as we used a different toll-free number on the public front. Suddenly the phones started ringing off the hook! Literally 50 or more calls a day all for the dial-up provider and 90% of the users still clueless that they had dialed the wrong number and demanding support from us....

It was a nightmare that lasted all of 30 days before we finally gave up. The phone bill was out of control and Qwest was obviously quite a bit larger than us so they won :)

We thought about trying to "promote our services" to the callers but the majority were first time internet users and just so "new" that it was a hopeless idea, the most we could accomplish was handling Qwest/BellSouth's technical support for them and that was not an option lol

Heh, if you want your phone to ring... grab a toll free number that closely matches one of AOL's and you'll have calls 24/7 ;)

I hope to never go through that again!

Here's a story:

A few years ago in a previous company we secured an outstanding
800# for our customer support.

The 800 number was almost too good to be true (tell 'em once and they remember it forever) and we were thrilled.

It turned out that we got the number because the company that
had it before us went out of business without telling anybody.

It also turned out that the now out of business company that had the number before
us provided "technical support" for the credit card terminals in most of the gas stations owned by Exxon, Mobil, Chevron and a few others I've forgotten.

So our number was on a giant sticker saying "For help with this credit card terminal, call 800-Our-Number 24/7...se habla every language..."

Oh, and there were something like a half million of these terminals with our number brightly displayed on them all over North America.

Most of you know the difficulty of supporting the average confused Internet user or web designer; "No, that's tee arrr, as in table row...right, you type that into the computer...right, on the keyboard...no, that's the mouse...no, that's your..."

Now imagine "supporting" the average English-challenged gas
station attendant. About 450 times per day. Carrying on about their pissed-off customers waiting impatiently to drive off with their Lucky Strikes, pork rinds, rolling papers and tanks of unleaded.

One of our support reps quit when she was threatened with
flambé-ing one too many times.

These calls were adding up quite quickly (we started to qualify for ever greater volume discounts from our carrier), so we tried these solutions:

First we contacted the carrier to ask for credit. "Sure" they said, just give us a list of the wrong calls each month and we'll happily credit your account on the next bill. We didn't have enough highlighter pens to mark 10,000+ phone calls and couldn't find anyone in our company willing to do it, so that wasn't a good option.

Then we put a prompt on our auto attendant that said:
"If you are calling for support on a gas station credit card terminal, press one..." As soon as you pressed one, our switch
would immediately hang up on you.

That didn't go over well. It just doubled the calls and the anger.

Next, we had an announcement when you pressed one that said "you need to hang up and dial this number..." and we'd put different 800#'s there (Miss Cleo, Ron Popiel, Golden Oldies collection, etc.) every week or so depending on our mood.

That cut down the calls quite a bit, but we felt guilty after a month or so, so we assigned someone to do some research and find out what the number was that the gas stations SHOULD be calling.

It turns out that the new company responsible for supporting the
gas station terminals was a very famous (and very unlikely) operator of "anchor" stores in shopping malls that guaranteed your satisfaction or your money back.

We had to spend 2 weeks trying to get through to the right person there ("no, I don't want to return a gas station, I want to talk to the person who....").

At first the "director" there didn't believe us. Then she didn't understand what we were talking about.

Then she denied the situation existed at all.

We were not satisfied, and we wanted our money back.

Then we Fed-Ex'ed a copy of our latest phone bill to her (over 200 pages, double-sided, 7 point font) asking her to call us to figure out a way to solve this problem.

After two weeks of silence, we asked our lawyer to contact their general council "suggesting" they reimburse us for the calls, pay us several hundred thousand in damages, and threatening to "alert the media" to their disregard for the sanctity of the motoring public.

This got immediate results. Within two days we had 3 conference calls with their management and worked out a solution.

Our reps would transfer callers to their reps who would tell people the new number and send out new stickers. We would be paid $15.00 per call for our trouble. The calls were "network switched" so we wouldn't pay the toll once we had transferred the calls - incurring about 20 seconds of charges on our end for each call.

It took about six months for the calls to dwindle to about 5 per day. We made enough money to buy a new building and the motoring public was properly served.

One day the psychic line predicted change ahead for me, so I quit and went on
to greener pastures. From what I hear, that company is still
doing well and still getting calls from the gas stations every now and then.

So if you notice a pattern in your mis-directed calls, maybe you can make a few bucks and help the poor souls on the phone caught in the middle.

Nice story.

Kind of funny, but you got a good deal out of it.

Originally posted by sag
Then we put a prompt on our auto attendant that said:
"If you are calling for support on a gas station credit card terminal, press one..." As soon as you pressed one, our switch
would immediately hang up on you.

That didn't go over well. It just doubled the calls and the anger.
I'm surprised that didn't go over so well ;)

hmm, that gives me an idea, maybe we should have our lawyer contact Cingular Wireless :)

our toll-free: 866.2GO.HTTP (866-246-4887)
their toll-free: 866.CINGULAR (866-246-4852)

Funny enough, even though it's 2 numbers off, we still get about 20 calls per month.

i had to cancel one of our old toll free numbers. As it just got out of hand. We got to a point where we got almost 50 calls in one day asking for a bank.

It was a number we never gave out much so it was no biggie.

We contacted the bank and they were just ass's about it. Not worth fighting over.

I dont know if that was a typo the bank sent to some customers or what but I kept getting all these calls asking about their mortage.

Then we lost another toll free number. The one we gave most of our customers. As we moved offices the new number changed but for some reason it has been almost a month now and that company has yet to change to RTN.

A good friend of mine, and Best of the Best reviewer on my directory just got a new cell phone.

His phone number is AreaCode-800-Number.

A lot of people forget to dial 1 when they dial his number locally,
and he gets all these phone calls for this weight loss service. Some
times they come in the middle of the night, etc...

He thinks it's hillarious.