This morning I deleted 30 phone messages – an average of 4 calls a day – from our home voicemail.
Gosh, you might think, the Hayleys are popular! Hardly.
Every single message was from a debt collector. And not a one of them was trying to reach a Hayley. We had messages for
- Kay Haden
- Candy, and
- Patricia
We’ve had this phone number since late 2005. Over 3.5 years of telling debt collectors that no one named Kay, Candy or Patricia has this number, lives at this number or even exists, as far as we know. One of two, maybe four, things is at play here. Either:
- Kay, Candy or Patricia used to have our number, or
- Kay, Candy or Patricia falsely wrote down our number as a contact, or
- Kay, Candy or Patricia gave a “reference” that used to have our number, or
- Debt collectors are randomly calling any number with any name that is sounds like a variation of the name they’re looking for.
Either way, we’re sick of it. The most frustrating part of this is that there’s not a single thing we can do about this situation other than changing our phone number. Which is why if you want to reach one of the Hayleys, you call their cell phones.
I got one the other day that was a computer generated voice. It left a number to call back, so I did.
I told the young lady who answered that they had a wrong number, and that I'd like them to remove my number from their records.
She informed me that she needed my name to verify who she was speaking to. I let her know in no uncertain terms that she most certainly did NOT need to know my name, and that if she couldn't help me, she needed to connect me with a supervisor who could. I was on hold for about 30 seconds. When she came back on the line, she told me that her supervisor had authorized her to remove my number.
I haven't heard from them since. I would have been much nicer to her if this hadn't been the 2nd time I'd had to call them to inform them that they had a wrong number, and that the person the were looking for didn't live at my residence, and to ask them pretty please remove my number from their database.
For about a year and a half when cell phones were just becoming more commonplace, we would occasionally get calls from the police, public service agencies, public defenders office, etc. asking for a particular woman. One day I somehow figured out that her cell phone number was the same as our home phone number except that her number started 339 and ours started 338. She apparently gave her correct number to these places, but the "hearer" wrote down 338 (since that was a very common prefix in our area) or when the "telephoner" read the number they dialed 338. I suggested that to the people who called and they never called back. Perhaps something similar is happening with you.
It could be a finger error, but I'm somewhat suspicioius when I have multiple companies calling.
I've done some Googling and discovered that many people suffer from these incorrect phone calls.
I call this legal harrassment.