well, that explains things

[davemerrill]

We get a lot of wrong numbers and not-leaving-messages calls, enough so that we occasionally just turn the ringer off. Found out why today when I took a call from a guy from Pitney Bowes looking to talk to Allied Community Care in North York. Which we are definitely not, we're not Allied, we're not Community Care, and we're not in North York. And no, he wasn't dialing our number, he was calling a completely different number that was actually in reality connecting him to our number. I called it myself - and called myself. FREAKY MAN. So I talked to the phone company service department and they're gonna fix it.

Hopefully this will cut down on a lot of the annoying 9am phone calls. We work late and simply aren't going to answer the phone at that hour, but the ringing is annoying.

I wonder if Allied Community Care is still in business. If so, they must be really puzzled as to why they aren't getting any phone calls. "Gee, North York must be in great shape, nobody's callling for community care! Pack up, Mabel, our work here is done!"

Comments

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

So apparently the deal with the phone calls is: when we upgraded our Bell service they gave us two more phone numbers, both of which ring our line (with different sequence rings, like a party line), just in case we had a fax machine or a teenager who needed his or her own phone. One of our extra numbers had previously been used for Allied Community Whatever. And this convenient new service, nobody actually TOLD us about it.

Since we have neither a fax machine nor a teenager, I asked to have these two numbers removed from our account. So far the phone hasn't rung yet. No news is good news I guess.

[efathefinger.livejournal.com]

I was a lot more interested when it sounded more like a glitch in the matrix. I mean, I've had a fight with the guy programming the telco switch where it was pretty obvious that it was a big powerful machine completely lacking the control of its one time masters. Although the concept that the sales comp upgraded your line, generated two new numbers for your service, and programmed the switch to send them your way without a human being involved is amusing too when I think about it.