Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: "Robert P. Warnock" Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Thurbing (was: 800 Wrong Numbers) Message-ID: <2742@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 9 Jan 90 12:22:10 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: "Robert P. Warnock" Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 33 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 16, message 8 of 11 In article <2614@accuvax.nwu.edu> tad@ssc.UUCP (Tad Cook) writes: +--------------- | I spoke with a woman in Chicago recently that was constantly getting | calls for the bus station on her cellular phone... +--------------- I also get lots of wrong numbers on my cellular phone, and suspect that that in the Bay Area lots of PacTel Mobile customers do, too. You see, here in (415), PacTel Mobile numbers run "999-abcd", and for many "a"s (including mine), there *are* non-cellular "99a-" local exchanges. So if somebody's finger stutters (or they have a really cheap phone), instead of dialing 99a-bcde", they dial "999-abcd". Their local CO cheerily ignores the superfluous "e", and rings my phone (or one of the other few thousand cellular phones). In my case, one of the ten potentially confused numbers (e = 0-9, remember) happens to be a popular Mexican restaurant! And yes, I do get calls from people calling in sick or whatever, usually much earlier than my normal waking time. ("No, I *can't* get the manager for you. No, I *can't* take a message.") And worse, often in Spanish, which I don't speak. By now, I have just accepted several wrong numbers a week as part of the cost of using PacTel Mobile... Rob Warnock, MS-9U/510 rpw3@sgi.com rpw3@pei.com Silicon Graphics, Inc. (415)335-1673 Protocol Engines, Inc. 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94039-7311