Mum given young nympho's phone number A 34-year-old mum who swapped lines from BT to Virgin Media was somewhat shocked to find her new phone number besieged by chaps demanding to speak to "the young nympho", the Sun reports. Youth worker Rachel Collick made the switch on 2 July at her Plymouth home, and is now enjoying around six calls a day from horny punters. She …
A few years ago i kept getting wrong numbers to the same person on my landline. Then this guy phoned up and demanded to know who the hell i was and what was i doing answering his wife's mobile, he was convinced something was going on between me and his wife. It ended up with this person ringing my phone all evening when i couldn't convince him (And was forced to put the phone down on him to escape his yelling at me) there was obviously a fault on the line. I did get a final phone call from him (A few days later) saying that he had now proved there was a fault and we had a good chuckle about it.
All premium rate numbers are generally forwarded to other, normal numbers (hence "Say no to 0870")
Perhaps a mixup means that a premium rate number has been forwarded to her number. If, instead of talking dirty, she asked what number they had dialled, she would probably find it was not hers.
...to my sister. BT gave her a number that previously belonged to an 'escort' who advertised in the back of the Daily Sport, and for a while received 10-20 calls a day from horny punters. When I pointed out she had inherited a ready made business, she just shouted & threw things.
When I changed phone numbers a few years back someone kept leaving answer phone messages requesting I come and pick up a delivery of babies foreskins as they where running out of space!
Not wanting to cause any problems I spent ages trying to figure out what they could be use for, in the end pickling them or making a curry seemed like the best idea. Unfortunately they never phoned when I was at home so I was unable to offer my helpful solution to their foreskin storage problems.
"to 'tweak her settings'."
Nice work if you are good at it, Mike. I am reliably informed that it is a badly needed/much sought after Discrete Networking Service, given the distinct lack of suitably qualified/XXXXPerienced personnel......... just ask any Woman.:-)
We once got mixed up with the line to Veritas technical support so we spent all day answering the phone from customers trying to get support on their backup software.
Ironically enough, I had also opened a call with Veritas that same morning and was requiring support.
But, the positive outcome was that for the first time Veritas customers got to talk to someone who knew the product inside out and spoke good English!
:-)
@Anonymous coward - If you are still wondering what babies foreskins are used for, they can be stretched out and used to culture some vaccines. I seem to remember that I heard this on the news quiz, as a "funny story" because there is a shortage - so not exactly a medical textbook...
I have land line service with Verizon and for over a year I got calls from creditors, annoying salesmen (are there any other kind?) and school administrators looking for someone (or their kid) who must have had the number earlier. Early on I called Verizon support and was assured that my name would be put in their directory in place of "Robert's". The calls continued unabated but I just got used to erasing them.
Eighteen months later I come to find out that Robert is still on the directory (big surprise). I'm moving again and wonder whose calls I'll be getting next year.
Cheers
Mike
A few years back, I made a businness call and didn't get the person I expected. Checked the number, and dialled again. and got the same wrong number. As happened on the third attempt.
So I phoned BT, who suggested that a call divert coulf have been set up with the wrong number, but could do nothing about it. Which turned out to be the case. Luckily, the person I was trying to call had a fax machine.
IIRC, when a phone number was ceased, it used to be left unallocated for a few months to avoid exactly this kind of thing.
I don't know if this was the case in this instance, of if the premium rate redirect which seem to be happening is just badly maintained with nobody noticing the few months of "failed to connect" in the logs.
...When she gets "business" calls, she should get their credit card info, then hang up immediately.
Then, she can decide whether to:
A - Do absolutely nothing with it and let the holder wait for the shoe to drop (preferred), or;
B - Bill the credit card with a memo "You have just been *SCREWED* by 'Big Susie'."
This post has been deleted by its author
I agree with Gaz's observation. It would be nice to know how old this story is. I remember something similar from a while ago. Another news International exclusive. Have they been trawling for anti-Virgin propaganda ?? I could go further regarding the takeover attempts...
James murdock
Yankee nets
Provident equity etc...
An old guy once told me that he was given a land line number that was so close to the telephone company's own service number that he kept gettng their calls.
He asked the phone company to change it, but they wanted to charge him a fee. He said, "forget it!"
Then he started taking the service calls and baiting each caller with some kind of response based on their name or accent, like "Sorry Sir, we don't do business with the Irish!"
The phone company decided to give him a new number for free after all.
Well not so long ago. I still have the same number.
So I had this new phone# and after about 6 months I started getting calls for a produce distributor. My number and their's were off by one digit. Most people were calling to get eggs delivered.
I talked to the phone company and there was nothing they could do. So I called the company and asked if, perhaps, they had published the wrong number on some letterhead or business cards. I had, after all, had the number for 6 months before getting any of their calls. A receptionist assured me, in an awestruck voice, that this was a very big company and she was sure they couldn't have done anything like that.
Well that was so clearly ludicrous I gave up on trying to negotiate anything with the company right then and there. If the receptionist was any indication they were clearly all a bunch of fools.
To this day I enjoy the odd call from one of their customers and I take great pleasure in being spontaneous and letting my feelings out. Sometimes I'm just plain rude, others I just hang up the phone with no response, sometimes the company has gone out of business or I can't understand their accent. One fellow phoned one time with a long and involved story about a delivery of eggs that came with some broken eggs. After listening to this heartrending story and the guy almost pleading to have some eggs replaced I told him he obviously thought he was talking to someone who gives a shit.
That was particularly cruel and heartless and I don't think I've ever topped that one. It was during a particularly bad period when a 5:00 or 5:30 AM call could be counted on 2 or 3 times a week.
Somewhere along the line the calls started to drop off dramatically. I'm not sure what caused it. It couldn't have been the company. They're so big that God is a client and he makes sure everything they do is as immaculate as the virgin birth. Regardless, the calls dropped off and I only get about 10 or 20 a year now.
Few years ago I used to work for a major (now gone) computer manufacturer. My phone number was a digit off the French embassy.
As this was just after the Rainbow Warrier (sic) incident you can be sure I advised people ringing with Visa enquiries the appropriate information.....
Stan
I've had my mobile number for 12 years (the cell companies here are all just as bad)!
One Friday evening I started getting calls asking, "Have I won the house?" - Some radio station was having a competition, and 1st prize was a brand new house! The competition line was just one digit off my number!
After telling the first 15 that they had dialled the wrong number, I got tired of repeating my self, and decided to have some fun!
The next punter phoned and asked if she had won the house?
I said 'YES - CONGRATULATIONS!!! Come to our offices on Monday morning and collect your prize!"
And I told the same thing to the next 10 callers!
The Radio Station changed the competition number the next weekend ...
My number is one digit off from the fax number of a local credit union, so once every few weeks someone tries to fax me.
I got curious once and hooked up a fax machine and got someone's credit card application. It seems like it'd be so simple to change a few details and forward it on to the right number ...
It is a bit of a pain, since fax machines generally redial a few times before giving up and don't understand when you tell them to piss off.
Years ago I managed an IT help desk. The number of the main line was nearly identical to that of a bank in the same area save for two transposed numbers. I don't know if people were dyslexic or hamfisted. It took us forever to figure out initially that there was a bank with a like number.
The scary part was that, four or five times a week an older woman or man would ring up and immediately (although we clearly answered the line with the name of the tech support group) begin to tell us their bank account number, social security number, birthdate, and mothers maiden name!!!! You often had to shout a little bit to get the person to stop spouting their extremely private information and listen..
The best were the people that we would give the correct number, explain that they should be careful about who they tell their info to, and ring off.. only have them hang up, ring the wrong number again and start right in spouting their information.
No.. none of us got rich....
people are idiotic all the time.. my surname is the name of a town, and is also (.co.uk) my domain and email address. I get all manner of misaddressed email to the .gov.uk which I presume to be the district or parish council for that town.. quite often people working at the .gov.uk send email to colleagues but mis-write the email as .co.uk! I'm stunned these people are clearly not using an address book as it happens all the time even after I correct them! Sometimes people even CC themselves and get it wrong.
I presume the same class of people are fully capable of misquoting their own phone numbers and leaving the error uncorrected indefinitely.
Occasionally some indonesian will call my cell asking for some wierd name. Of course the answer is "Sorry, wrong number".
Of course, over here, prepaid lines like the one I use are common. And well, people here used to use prepaid lines as a godsent dirt-cheap prank device. And after they're done, they throw the card away. After a while the number will be recycled. Hence registration of prepaid lines are now mandatory.
i worked for a tech support company a while back, and a local medical advice line printed the wrong number (only off by one digit) on the top of their newsletters. You wouldn't believe the laughs we had putting the speakerphone on listening to people spout on about where they had fungus growing from etc before you've barely had a chance to say hello how can i help you.
Not so great while you are still eating your bacon butty, mind.
In the late 80's a TV show based teen magazine had a comp running for some free sh*t and transposed two of the digits in the exchange number. Call end up in one of BT's restrooms via our PABX which serviced 500 extensions/numbers routed via that exchange code. How did we fix it ? unplug the phone and leave a note on the side of it. How did BT fix it ? over a month later, by which time the next issue is out with correction, the whole divison gets a memo and they also sent someone out to program the PABX system to reject 'outside' calls on some numbers/extensions
"A few years ago I was given skin grafts and the skin was cultured. I was told that the cells from a baby's foreskin were used to grow the sheets of skin which could then be used to help heal the wound."
************************************
You didn't need grafts on your head by any chance ?
At least she gets an engineer, local scroats have ripped the green box open for the 3rd time this year and pulled the phone lines out, I had to go through a 'testing' procedure with the idiot on support in timbukstan who made me plug in a 2nd phone in case my first phone had developed a fault, and I have to wait a week for an engineer to come to my house and check my master socket for a fault....
I have just canceled with virgin.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
