Imagine getting a new phone number that used to be a phone number that belonged to a local business, and you know this because you keep getting phone calls from customers looking for the business. How would you deal with this situation? Would you correct the customers, contact the business to tell them to correct the customers, or get revenge?

In this story, one family is in this situation. They keep getting phone calls from customers looking for an auto repair shop. The family tries to talk to the business owner about the issue, but when the business owner fails to see the problem as a problem, the homeowner decides to make it a bigger problem.

The revenge is simple, effective, and easy to repeat if anyone reading this finds themselves in a similar situation someday. I know I’m taking notes just in case I ever get a new phone number.

Let’s read all about it.

If you make ME solve the problem, it’ll cost you money.

This happened a while back, actually before Reddit was even thought of and no one had their own portable phone.

A local business (auto repair shop) changed their phone number for some reason, and a few months later when my family added a second phone line to the house, guess which number we were given?.

It wasn’t that much of a pain since most of the customer base had the new number but about 6 months later we start getting calls for this business several times a day so I finally ask one of the callers where he got the number from.

This is crazy!

He tells me it’s on top of the business’s building in 3 foot high letters.

Really?. So I drive by that way the next day and sure enough, there it is in big blue letters.

I look up the current number when I get home and give them a call. “Hey…I’ve noticed that you still have your old number on top of your building and we’ve been getting a lot of your calls, would it be possible for someone to correct the sign or just paint over it?”

This is where I get told that’s it’s MY problem, and they don’t have the time to deal with it” Click.

Time to make it the auto repair shop’s problem.

Oh, Ok..now I see…. So I figure it won’t take long to sort this out.

I start taking appointments. I

tell a lady we’re having a special on tires, I can get her a complete set for $75 ($200 was average).

I get a guy that needs a complete rebuild on his transmission, and how soon can we do it. I tell him that since we aren’t very busy right now if he can get it in the shop by noon, I have a guy that can have it done by 6p the same day, and It’ll only cost him $750 (super cheap by the way).

They got the hint.

I do this maybe 20-30 times over the course of a week or so.

The calls become less frequent and as I drive by the following week, I noticed that the sign is now just plain white.

I’m pretty sure that all in all I probably cost this guy about $10,000 or so in ticked off customers who showed up thinking they had an appointment and a great deal.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman at a ceramics study who is mistaken for an employee and asked about party bookings.

That worked out well! Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Here’s a similar story but with email.

Another person told a different lie.

This person loved the details.

The hold button can be effective.

There’s almost nothing more annoying than a wrong number. That’s why I almost never answer the phone unless I recognize the number, have the number saved in my phone so I know who is calling, or I’m expecting an important phone call. Otherwise, let it go to voicemail, and I’ll call back if it’s important. Or, send me a text! 

But this story didn’t take place when there were modern day phones where you could save your entire contact list. In fact, maybe they didn’t even have voicemail. If they did, a message with the actual number for the auto repair shop may have been effective, but this revenge was certainly more fun!

It’s pretty crazy to think that the business owner wouldn’t see the problem with having the wrong phone number displayed on his actual business. Clearly he eventually got the hint, but it took long enough! I bet he had a lot of upset customers.