With cell phones, this is becoming less common. Although, we've all done it at some point in our lives, called the wrong number. Almost all of the time people are understanding and we apologize and go on with our day. However, some people are unlucky and have a number one digit off from a number which is frequently called, such as a Pizza restaurant with delivery.
Here is a story about how one family caused a lot of problems for a pizza joint because they got tired of all the wrong numbers.
"Strap in boys/girls this ones a doozy: We don't sell pizza, because you have the wrong number.
The end result of this story, which I will tell you upfront, is that we lost the ability to order from several local Pizza-Huts ...for lyfe...
Used to we had a phone number that was very similar to a Pizza-Hut, their number was (555)455-5575 and ours was (555)455-5515. Now these two numbers are commonly mixed up for obvious reasons. This was back before the days of cellphones and everyone having their own personal number, and we actually had to get a caller ID because of this.
For years we had this Pizza-Huts client base call our house (about 50/50 split sober/drunk) and order pizzas. The thing is people WILL NOT LISTEN when you tell them "Sorry wrong number" we would have drunk people call back 4-5 times and then begin screaming into the phone "I KNOW THIS IS A FUCKING PIZZAHUT YOU ASSHOLE!" or "GIVE ME THE NUMBER OR I'LL KICK YOUR ASS."
This was pretty normal and the pizza hut was even aware of this and profusely apologized when we would call them. (Never giving us anything for free though, despite the massive inconvenience of the phone ringing off the hook.)
Well Pizza Hut Corporate then pays for an advertisement on paper, bill-board, and phone book. And guess what? They botched the number they put OUR number on the things for the phone number as one of the locations in our town for Pizza Huts pizza. Why? Because 1's and 7's are the same number apparently.
The phone calls we get FUCKING EXPLODES. It goes from like 3-5 phone calls a day to like 100-200. Initially we were directing people with a message that simply said "THIS IS NOT PIZZA HUT! THEIR NUMBER IS XXXXXXXX" It didn't end. We would get calls with people screaming into the voice recording "I WANT A FUCKING PIZZA THIS IS BULLSHIT I'M GOING TO KILL WHOEVER DOESN'T ANSWER THIS FUCKING PHONE!" (Aren't boomers great? We got that shit all the time from older people.) I cannot tell you how many times I've been told to kill myself for trying to direct someone to the correct place, and for some FUCKING reason no one EVER listens.
Well upon this happening my Dad calls into the pizza hut and says "look, all we want is to not have to change our number. If you guys will PLEASE change yours, or pay for ours to be changed (it was like a 10 dollar convince fee or some shit.) we will stop getting your damned phone calls." The manager cussed my Dad, who had him on speaker phone, calling him shit load of names and for "getting him bad reviews" as well as losing customers to his branch, which is locally owned. What a fucking joke. Its costing their business a solid 10 grand EASY over a phone number why not JUST CHANGE IT? IDK.
My Dad looks at the phone, hangs up and says "Ok asshole, you want to be like that about it?"
My dad then instructs My 17 year old self (and my sister) to take all calls from now on. If it rings pick it up, take the order, and say "Ok your pizza should be there in (1.5 hours)" Then when they call back to tell them "Sorry the driver just left." and if they call back a third time say "Well I can get you on the phone with my manager but hes probably going to kick your ass if you keep complaining." And then switch the phone with someone else and have them say "Listen here bitch, you aren't getting your pizza and we are keeping your money, fucking get over it."
Or something along those lines anyway.
Two weeks pass and my Dad tries to get said Pizza Hut to change our number for free. Never pointing out that they fucked up their ad, as apparently they were completely oblivious to this fact. Again the manager screams at my Dad saying "I don't have the money to change your fucking number!" We even tried calling OTHER pizza huts to get the issue resolved, and their corporate with no real luck. Fair enough, its game on time now bitch why? For two reasons 1. My dad got a phone with a transfer button and 2. Because summer was rolling around, and me and my sister loved fucking with people over this. It was a really bad influence on us tbh.
We fielded phone calls every day all day long, we had friends come over and they loved partaking in the same thing. We had a general plan:
- Every other call would get a pizza "delivery"
- On the other calls we would get them really pissed off talking shit to them and saying "Ok do you want to speak with my manager?" And just cold transfer them to the pizza hut.
It took 6 more weeks of us doing this, and the pizza hut closed. A few weeks before they closed we got a phone call from pizza hut corporate who more or less threatened us with a cease and desist sounded like they didn't really understand what was actually happening as it accused us of "stealing their phone calls." LMFAO. We called their corporate and explained what was going on, and even played our recordings of talking with them before about the issue and ignoring us. All they said is "You had better stop! This is ILLEGAL!" over and over. We didn't stop. They were aware of what was going on and didn't want to do anything about it because to fix their FUBAR.
A few weeks after the owner lost his job he called our house and was trying to argue with my Dad about how "bad of a person he was because I lost money, and got my ass beat several times." ...apparently we had pissed a few people off so bad they actually went in and attacked him and other staff... To this day it cracks me up that a company can be so oblivious, and is the single reason I don't believe we live in anything close to a "Meritocracy" anyone in this position who has any merit would instantly change the number, but not a corporation who has money to sue, and not a middle manager who has an ego problem."
posted by u/MundaneSeesaw
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