Strange Phone Call!

Maybe the caller did not have a record of the number they called or maybe they did not know how to retrieve the record.

When I lived in a flat years ago, I received at least one phone call a day wanting to speak to someone at the nearby Post Office.
I often had similar conversations to that, with several callers insisting that I was the post office.
After a couple of weeks of this, I looked in the Yellow Pages under Post Offices, and lo and behold, there was my number.
My current phone number is one digit off a nearby hairdressers, so I still get similar calls now

Some years ago I had a call from a woman who said 'Hi Jill'. I said 'Sorry you have the wrong number.' She said 'I don't think so. This is my daughter's number'. It took me a while to convince her that she had mis dialled.

If I ever get a ‘wrong’ call, I find myself apologising that I am not who they want to speak to!

Why? Not my fault that they have mis-dialled.

British response Calendergirl

Our landline is one digit different to the local hospital, a food supplier and a nursing home. We get frequent misdials from people wanting(eg) Ward X or to order 10Kg oven chips or to speak to matron! If he doesn't recognise the caller number DH answers in his best plummy accent " X Towers, butler speaking". This usually helps the penny drop!

Yes, we were once one digit out from both the main hospital down the road and a mains dealership.

We used to get people arguing with us that we must be the garage or hospital because they had dialled the right number. To which our response was the one used by Morecambe and Wise, yes, they had dialled (played) all the right numbers (notes), but not in the right order.

On our business we constantly got phone calls meant for the nearby off license. My DH was so fed up being interrupted while trying to work. He would give callers the phone number for Alcoholics Anonymous.

Many years ago my aunt used to get calls for the Bishop of Guildford...

Septimia

Many years ago my aunt used to get calls for the Bishop of Guildford...

you did well.
but i think it's easier to let unknown callers go to voicemail, then you can decide whether you want to engage, or not.
i use call guardian phones.
never have unwanted calls now.

Years ago our phone number was almost the same as a pub and regularly had calls for them.
One night I answered the phone to hear,
"Hello is that the Red Lion? It's the Green Dragon here."

Although they had got me out of bed it did make me laugh.

Well, this is getting weird! Just had another call from the same number, the same woman, this time asking for Pat - I just said wrong number and hung up!

At a previous house we used to receive calls from the local aircraft/pilot training school, trying to order a Chinese takeaway.

One of those people who will not accept that they dialled incorrectly or have been given the wrong number.

Oldwoman70

Well, this is getting weird! Just had another call from the same number, the same woman, this time asking for Pat - I just said wrong number and hung up!

Sounds like a scam to me! If it's a mobile no ringing your mobile just block it.

Many years ago we had the same number but a different area code as a nearby prison. What an interesting lot of conversations we had for a while 😱

When I was a child our phone number was very similar to the local Maternity Home and we often used to receive misdialled calls from nervous fathers to be!

My phone number used to be very close to that of a local restaurant, just before Valentine’s Day one year I had a call from a lovely lady wanting to book a table for 2 for her son and girlfriend. I did explain that I didn’t normally do catering but I could manage beans on toast in the conservatory. Luckily she had a sense of humour too and I gave her the number she should have called.

(Q - why is his Mum doing this and not him?)

We had recently moved and a man phoned asking for Pat, the previous owner. I told him she had moved. He asked who had moved. There was a rather confused conversation as he had been calling me Pet. He then enquired about the colour of my knickers and whether I was wearing sexy leather thigh high boots .

It actually made me laugh at the time! 40+ years ago now!

At our previous house, we used to be one digit different from a local garage. I often had people ringing me up to book their car in for service.

My mum got quite a few calls from a wrong number, always the same one. It was a man with a strong accent - Chinese, she thought - who was trying to get in touch with his dad. She said that she felt sorry when she had to keep telling him that this was not his dad's number. She wondered whether he ever managed to get the right one or just gave up!

This sounds very like a call I had last week. The caller saw my number and thought it might be a friend with a London landline number so called it. She seemed very clued up on scams though and said she'd had one of those bank fraud calls (I get a lot of those) and figured that they were now using random real numbers that people might see pop up on their phones and think the call was legitimate. She didn't question me as she accepted I hadn't called her and wasn't scamming her.

This a scam call. The information they wanted could be sold on. Never ever give personal information to a cold caller.

At our old house we would get regular calls for ‘Carol’ (seeing your post reminded me). The calls were from someone I suspect was living with dementia. I think our number must have been re-issued. It happened with such frequency (several times a week) that we eventually got rid of the landline