[WizKid]

I worked at a company that sold video games and hardware online. Our phone number ended with a 001. So we thought that maybe we should get the same number but ending with 000 instead. Unfortunately it was taken so we called it to see if we can buy it.

They told us people keep calling them all the time hoping that 000 would take them to our switchboard so they were happy if we would take the phone number. I think we paid them a little for it too and promised that if someone called us and asked for them we would give them their new phone number.

[slyall]

I used to work for an ISP. Originally we had about a dozen phones numbers in one city because the phone company couldn't attach more than a limited number of lines (30 or 60 I think) to each number. We distributed login scripts that called the numbers one after the other until a customer got though.

Eventually the phone company let us put all our lines on the single number and we got rid of the others.

3-odd years later some guy called us up. He had just got one of the original numbers and was getting modems calling him all day and night. We told him we could do nothing and to get a new number and to tell the phone company not to give that number to other people.

The weird thing was that we realized that people were still using the old script and taking an extra couple of minutes to connect every time while they cycled though the non-existent numbers.