So, Who is Jennifer and why do people keep calling her on my

[MineralMan]

cell phone?

I've had the same cell phone number for six years now. I use an old flip phone, and use that number only as a number to call out from if it's really necessary. Nobody calls me on it, because I don't give out that number. I'm old-fashioned about phones. I use them to make phone calls.

Still, the phone rings at least four or five times a day. Sometimes there's a text. Sometimes there's voicemail. Those are always for Jennifer. There's a bill collector who keeps calling her. She is apparently also in default on her student loan payments. When she had that number, she also must have had some pretty awful boyfriends, too, because they're not very nice in their voicemails. They call her all sorts of ugly names.

But, it has been six years since that number was hers. You'd think people would give up. I've tried a couple of times and called the originating numbers to let the people know that Jennifer is no longer at that number. They don't care. The people wanting their money just keep calling and threatening to do awful things if she doesn't pay up. I haven't tried calling any of the old boyfriends. They don't sound like nice people at all.

Six years. Sometimes I get photos sent as texts. It's hard to see them clearly, though, on a flip phone's tiny screen. I can't quite make them out. One of her old boyfriends, though, sent a pretty nasty one. I'm not sure if he was trying to remind her of what she's missing or simply illustrating his shortcomings.

What fun! I can't wait to see what comes in next.

[marylandblue]

1. Once you're in the database, you are there forever

I've had my phone number for 16 years and I still get calls for someone else.

[rzemanfl]

4. We have been in this house coming up on 22 years and still have people trying to contact

someone who might have lived here once, although her name is not in the chain of title.

[rzemanfl]

2. Dunno, but odds are she was born in the late '60s. n/t

[skylucy]

3. Is your phone number 867-5309?

[rzemanfl]

5. LOL. n/t

[MineralMan]

8. LOL! Nobody wants that number.

And nobody ever had a good time, I'm sure.

[chia]

12. +100

[BumRushDaShow]

15. Must be 777-9311

[lunasun]

31. Thanks for the memories ..Morris Day and The Time still kickin It after all these years

https://m.

.

[BumRushDaShow]

32. Yup, they are still out there

jammin'!

[Louis1895]

17. Funny!

Didn’t catch the joke and had to google for explanation.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/867-5309-jenny/

[ismnotwasm]

23. Hahahahahaha!

[Egnever]

24. Bazinga!

[frazzled]

25. Or BEECHWOOD 4-5789?

https://m.

[Takket]

6. People give out false numbers to avoid people they dont want to talk to

Happened to me once years ago. Threatening bill collector calls for some stranger. Clearly he gave out my number to avoid the bills. This Jennifer probably gave out your number in the same fashion.

[MineralMan]

10. Nope. I Googled the number, and sure enough,

I found Jennifer in the search results. I even know her last name now. She did have that number at one point. It's interesting what turns up if you Google a phone number.

I suppose she has a different number now. It's not her fault, really, so I don't care.

[MissB]

7. Of course you can have your carrier change the number if its too much to handle.

You seem to have an excellent sense of humor about it. I had to change one of my teen’s numbers when he started getting collection calls on it.

[MineralMan]

13. It's funny. I don't really care.

Actually the phone is off most of the time, so calls go straight to voice mail. Whenever I turn the phone on, there they are, so I listen to them or read the texts that came in. That's how I know who she owes money to.

It's just one of the funny things that make up our lives these days.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. i likewise suspect this "Jennifer" has given out a fake phone

number that happens to be yours. Or do you have good reason to think your number used to be hers? If that's the case, I'd say get the number on that phone changed.

Several years ago I was getting bill collecting calls on my landline, looking for some man, can't recall the name. I patiently explained every time that he wasn't here, never in the years I'd had this number been here, and luckily for me the calls stopped pretty quickly. Reputable bill collectors won't call if they learn the person they want isn't there.

[KitSileya]

11. The nasty exes are quite common.

There's a reason why the most dangerous time in a woman's life (unless she lives in a war zone) is when she breaks up with a boyfriend. Especially if he's been abusive - which these nasties obviously are.

[MineralMan]

16. Sure. That's probably why she dropped the number

in the first place. That or the bill collectors. I'm curious about who Jennifer is, but not very. It's semi-interesting to hear those voice mails and read those texts. I sort of have a story now about the previous owner of the number. I could do without the photos, though. Even so, they're interesting, too, in their own way. And I do have the numbers associated with them, too. That's also interesting.

People are not very smart, I think.

I used to have a dedicated fax number, back in the days when people actually faxed stuff. One day, I came in and found about 50 pages of received fax. It was a complete loan application from someone. Everything was on there, from social security numbers, bank account numbers, and a lot of other stuff.

Someone had switched two digits when they sent the fax. So, I faxed a one-page fax to the originating number and explained, telling them that they should call my voice phone. They did. I explained that they had screwed up the phone number and that I had this loan application on my desk.

The person on the phone got really angry at me and told me in an angry voice that I couldn't look at it, because it was confidential. I laughed. "Dude! You faxed it to me." He got even angrier. So I hung up on him.

Then, I called the phone number for the person who was applying for the loan and explained what had happened. She got really, really angry, but not at me. She was pissed at the person who had sent the fax. She hung up, and about a minute later I got a call from the other angry person, who was somehow not so angry any longer. He told me, though, to drive to another town and take the paperwork to the place it should have gone. I laughed at him. I explained that I had a business to run and wasn't about to do that. I suggested that perhaps he should come to my office, retrieve his stupid fax and drive it to that other location. As an alternative, I told him he could just fax it to the right phone number and I'd shred what I had.

He drove to my office and picked it up. He was still angry. I laughed again.

[spanone]

14. can't you block them on your phone?

[MineralMan]

18. Too much trouble. I'm really not that bothered.

[Dave Starsky]

19. I inherited a "new" cell number from a deadbeat.

Cellular companies repurpose them, though they're supposed to wait a while.

I still get calls from bill collectors looking for her, though fewer in number. I have blocked a lot of these callers, though, so I really don't know how many I'm really getting. My advice would be to just block them.

[dembotoz]

20. in the phone biz...had a catholic church whose direct line to the priests desk used to be a shady

used car dealer

fun and frivolity for all....
some carriers update records quickly others not so much at all......

not much you can do...suggested the priest use a different did they had extra numbers not in use
....well he had his cards printed with it so that was not gonna happen....

so you get what you get.

[MineralMan]

21. Our home's landline number once belonged to a MiniMart

For quite a while, we got calls for that convenience store, which had closed some time ago. Most of them were like calls the convenience store in "Slackers" probably got. "Are you open?" most of the callers said.

I always said, "Sure, we're always open here."

Eventually, those calls stopped coming in.

[Nay]

22. They never give up. My shady stepson and his shady girlfriend left a string of

bad debts all over the Eastern seaboard. They used our phone for the one week they were visiting and we STILL get calls.

Their visit was 22 years ago.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

26. I get calls for some clinic.

In the past I've had messages:

Do you remove gall stones?

My patient in the nursing home died.

Do you fix hernias?

The only time I ever called back was a woman who said her son was able to fill the ibuprofen prescription but not the amoxicillin and his face was swelling up. I just had a friend almost die from a tooth infection so I told her to run to the ER. I didn't want her waiting for a call back that wasn't coming.

[MineralMan]

27. Thanks for calling that woman back!

Good job!

[avebury]

28. I used to have a phone number that brought

along with it all kinds of phone calls for some guy, including bill collectors and his place of employment. When I got two messages in one day from the HR Dept and someone else at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institute (place of employment) I was concerned enough to call the HR lady back and let her know that the guy couldn't be reached by my phone number. I have no problem blowing off bill collectors but if I get more than one call from an employer or family member I will call one of them back (just in case something has happened to the person).

[jberryhill]

29. Posting that here is unlikely to convince your wife

Just come clean already, tell her about Jennifer, and ask for forgiveness.

In college, I lived at a house where the telephone number was one digit off from a pizza shop. We would take orders, and then call up another pizza shop with that exact same order for delivery.

Never did find out what happened when the people got the pizza they ordered, but from a different shop.

Dumb prank, but I plead youthful exuberance.

[MineralMan]

30. LOL!

My wife knows better.

[SonofDonald]

33. My old phone number belonged to a pair of brothers

Before I had it, 5 years of calls asking for "Brother Jack" or "Brother Peter", I had one caller that kept calling even after I had explained it was now my number.

He asked me where I lived, I explained that that had zero connection to a phone number as should be obvious, they don't permanently attach a phone number to a house.

But he kept calling me anyway.

So after that when I got a call for either of the Brothers who it sounded like were pastors in their church I would say they couldn't come to the phone right now.

As they were handcuffed to the bed......

[MineralMan]

34. That's a good one.

Handcuffed to the bed, indeed...

[Mc Mike]

35. And you know the flip side to this? The telecom companies have a big bunch of unassigned #s

with the same area code and prefix, that they're selling or renting to marketing scams. I've fielded over a dozen of them in the last 3 months.

[MineralMan]

36. Yup. I get tons of robocalls from my zip code and exchange

I thought those were just being spoofed by the telemarketers. But you're saying the phone company is renting them? I'm going to check into that. Scandalous if true.

[Mc Mike]

37. I have no expertise in the business side of this.

Are they 'selling' them, short term, or actually renting them? I don't know.

But these number keep changing, and popping up to call me, the first 6 digits are the same as my neighborhood, so I'll think a neighbor or local family member is calling me, and the same Verizon Bell Atlantic phone company is putting actual local-living humans I actually know into wildly different prefix phone numbers, because 'they're out of local prefix #s'.