More Phone Capers

I got a phone call yesterday from MBNA America, which was recorded in a rather garbled form on my answerphone. So I called back (wondering, do I actually have any business with MBNA America, and also, does that mean that the full name is "Maryland Bank of North America America"?), and spoke to someone who asked me if I was Olivia A***** [no, her surname is not rude; I'm just supressing it for obvious privacy reasons].

No, he must have a wrong number. But then I realized -- that's the name of one of the people who live in the flat above mine. I know this fact because my fat lazy idle postman often delivers their mail into my mailbox. As far as I can work out, his method for sorting the mail to the two flats that have letterboxes next to each other is to take it in one hand and then stuff it all in whichever box seems closest. Occasionally, I also get letters for the next house along or, if I'm really lucky, a house with the same number but on a completely different street. I often wonder what life would be like if I had a competent postman.

So, going back to the phone, this to me is a remarkably odd situation. I've received a phone call for someone who lives close to me. I ask if the person phoning has the address, and he does indeed have the address of this building, but the upstairs flat. I can only guess that somehow he's got the phone number by searching a database but putting in the wrong flat number. Still, for someone who is very used to the distinction between logical and physical mappings into address space, I found it more confusing than most people would.

Which reminds me of a problem I had for a while with telephone number reuse. It's the following situation: you move into a new place, get a phone line installed, and start receiving phone calls for the people that used to have the same phone number. How do you concisely explain this to the people who have called? Because they've not dialled the number incorrectly, it's just that the people who used to have that number don't have it any more. Probably they moved. But I think many people believe that if you move house, then the same phone number goes to the same house, so I must have moved in to their old house -- and so maybe I know their new number. Not so; I have no clue what their new number is. They'll just have to find some other way of getting in touch with their friends who they haven't called for six months.

Now, how do you communicate all that in as succinct a way as the well known "Sorry, wrong number" or "Please add my number to your do-not-call list" [used to US telemarketers, although this has become more or less obsolete since the creation of the FCC Do Not Call registry] ?

Then, when you've solved that, a possibly easier problem: my telephone number has the last four digits abcc [no, you idiot, it isn't actually letters; again, I am using masking for my privacy you dunderhead]. And for a while I got frequent calls from people asking me when school was opening that day, or to tell me that little Johnny was sick that day, or whatever. Eventually I figured out that there was a local school near by whose number was identical to mine except that the last four digits were abbc. Now, is there a concise way to deal with idiots who are unable to dial correctly? Is "Wrong number" sufficient for this? Maybe they wrote it down wrong. Perhaps I should tell them to dial the correct number (now that I know what it is). More relevantly, what action should I take when people leave messages on my answering machine intended for the school? At the moment, I just cackle evilly and delete them. On one occasion, someone rang up to enquire about nursery places. I rang back and left a message on her machine to say that I wasn't currently accepting children.

Finally, what should I do about my mystery electronic caller? About once every couple of weeks or so, I get a call from a machine. It beeps at me balefully for about a minute or two, and then hangs up, and tries again a bit later. Clearly, someone has my number in their machine and hasn't noticed that it never gets through. And nothing shows up on the caller ID. Thankfully, these calls are fairly rare now, and usually come during the middle of the day, when I'm not trying to sleep and am often out. But still, it is mildly annoying -- about as annoying as a fly buzzing around you. Can't really be bothered to swat it.

That is all.