The phone rang this morning and I hear the now familiar recorded call for Milehannah Perry.
"This is an important call for Milehannah Perry. If you are not Milehanna, please hang up now. If this is Milehanna, please press "1" now..."
This is the third one of these calls this week. Simply hanging up doesn't end the calls so this time I press '1' and immediately a woman answers:
Debt collector: "Milehannah?"
Me: "No it's not and I want....."
I didn't get to finish because she hung up on me. What I wanted to inform this debt collection outfit was: that I wanted no further calls as I have no association with the dead beat they are after. She doesn't live here and never has!!
These calls started about five years ago with a bad check cashed at one of those "payday check cashing" places. Milehannah, apparently, crossed out her address and phone number and substituted mine from the phone book.
Five years ago, Milehannah was such an unusual name that it didn't generate any hits in Yahoo or Google's search engines.
It does now and will continue to be until she makes good on her debt and they quit calling me for payment.
3 comments:
A former coworker of mine used to get calls like that on her office phone. We'd never heard of the guy they were calling for, and they'd leave some very angry messages on her voicemail, despite that fact that it clearly states her name and they obviously had a wrong number. And when she spoke to them in person they treated her like she was trying to hide him from them or something. I'd hate to have their job and end up being so suspicious of everybody like that.
Mine is named Valerie. I find that making my very first sentence "There is no Valerie at this address nor do I know anyone by that name" is occasionally effective. What I have been unable to get rid of is people who think I am a business that sells skating equipment, but that's not very related to your post.
More fun is when they have the wrong Commonfirstname Commonlastname. My dad is one of at least 11 people in his city with his combination of first and last name, and he's had trouble with debt collectors looking for other Michaels his entire life. At least he has an unusual middle name.
"...wrong Commonfirstname Commonlastname."
In addition to Milehannaa, I also have the common first/last name problem too.
Evidentially there is an insurance broker with my name that's in trouble with the law. They call here often looking for him.
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