Lawyer Had The Wrong Phone Number On His Biz Cards, And They Kept Getting Wrong Number Calls. So They Decided To Hatch A Plan To Make Sure He’d Fix It Quickly.
by Matthew Gilligan
If someone asks you nicely to correct a mistake that is causing them heartburn, you should probably go ahead and help them out, right?
Well, you’d think so…but you know how people can be…
Take a look at this story from Reddit and see how this person dealt with a problem that was driving them wild.
Lawyer refused to correct his business cards.
“This was quite a few years ago, early 2000s.
At this point, I had my cell number for about 4 years. Then, one night, I got multiple call from someone who only spoke Chinese, I kept telling them they had a wrong number, which I’m pretty sure they didn’t understand.
How annoying!
These calls persisted every few weeks at all times of day and night, but most frequently between midnight and 3am. Eventually, after about 6 months, I received a call from a legal assistant to a lawyer named Colin W.
She explained to me that there was a typo on his business cards. Instead of a 3 in his phone number, it has a 2, which was my number. She asked if I received calls just to give the person the correct number.
As a matter of fact…
I responded that one 99% off the calls I receive are from people that only speak Chinese, and two can they just get new cards or write the proper number on it.
She responded that they ordered a lot of cards and didn’t want to order new ones. But they’ll make an effort to put the correction on the card.
Here we go again…
About 4-5 months went by with no late night calls, so I figured the problem was solved. But I was wrong because they stared up again, this time more frequent, like every two to three days, multiple calls a day at all hours.
So I called Collin W.
He apologize and said that he ran a very small immigration law firm and that his legal assistant had quit and it was her that made the phone number correction on the card and he was far too busy to remember to make the correction everytime he handed out his cards.
He asked if I could just give the person calling the correct number.
I told him that was almost impossible because 99% of his clients didn’t speak English, which he replied with try your best and hung up.
This really frustrated me, but what could I do.
For the next few months, I tried my best to correct people.
But very few understood me and would repeatedly call me after I hung up on them.
Then, one day, I was at the mall with friends.
A lady at one of those kiosks asked if I’d like to enter a contest to win a trip to Florida or Mexico.
My friend was like, “Don’t it’s a timeshare scam and as soon as they get your number they constantly call you with “you won a free trip, that you have to pay fees for”.
This was gonna be fun!
That’s when I had a great thought of how to get my petty revenge.
I entered Colin W. into the contest.
In fact, there were multiple contests at the mall I entered him into, from trips to free gym memberships, too gift cards!
Side note, i’ve been receiving calls for this guy for almost a year. Besides his name and number, I looked up his law firm address and email online. Because he wouldn’t take my call of me complaining, I had emailed him to get new cards and even wrote a snail mail letter to get him to fix his cards.
I had a lot of downtime at work, so I started to enter him into contests online, usually 5 to 15 in a day.
I did this 5 days a week when I was at work, and anytime I was out shopping, for about 8 months.
I would have continued longer, but at about the 8 months mark, I stopped getting calls for Colin W.
Around a week after that, I looked him up online, and he had changed his cell phone number!”
Check out what Reddit users had to say.
This reader shared a story.
Another individual chimed in.
This person shared their thoughts.
Another Reddit user spoke up.
And this person shared what they would’ve done.
That’ll teach ’em!
If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.
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