Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: Bob Sutterfield Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Thurbing (was: 800 Wrong Numbers) Message-ID: <2557@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 3 Jan 90 19:28:19 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: Bob Sutterfield Organization: Morning Star Technologies Lines: 35 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 4, message 2 of 8 When my dorm room phone was one digit off that of the Better Cab Company (serving Chicago's near north suburbs), I often received calls at bar closing time. I would mumble something like "we'll be right there" and hang up. When I finally got too fed up with the game (probably during finals week), I stormed the local IllBell office. They changed my number while I waited, and posted an operator to answer my old number and discern who was the caller's intended recipient. Our company's WATS number is one digit off that of Texaco's customer service hotline. We keep wanting to say "don't worry, ignore that bill and we'll take care of everything" but nobody's gotten up the nerve just yet. Somehow corporate life is different from a dorm room at 2:00am. ============================================ [Moderator's Note: I admit it sounds funny....but it is not funny! As Mr. Smith pointed out, it is a dreadful joke to play on an unsuspecting person. Even a drunken patron of a public house deserves the courtesy of being told 'wrong number', even if you say it angrily and slam the receiver in the process. Yes, I've done it too, years ago when I was a Young Man with an attitude problem. In 1972, my business number was 312 - WEbster 9-4600. Sears, Roebuck Chicago Region Credit Services was WAbash 2-4600. I had two lines; they had a five position cordboard which rocked around the clock with 65 incoming trunks in rotary hunt. One day IBT/Chicago-Pullman cut over to ESS, and some fool of a CO maintainence employee didn't know his 922's from his 939's. For six hours one day, I was *saturated* with calls from people wanting to gripe about their Sears credit card and I had a little fun with them....considering the volume of calls, Sears didn't even notice they were losing any. (How could you when you ordinarily get 350 calls per hour...or like Amoco Oil's sales authorization reps, closer to 1000 calls per hour?) PT]