etiquette question, sorta...

[Eden]

regarding the wrong number repetitive holiday calls. I would, and I do, call back letting them know they are leaving the message on a wrong number. People appreciate it - or at least everyone I have ever called back has. You might have an elderly person who can't read or dial a number well, a number written down wrong, or other genuine mistakes.

When I was in college my husband and I rented a place and we must have had a phone number that had a lot of previous owners.... we got tons of wrong numbers on our answering machine (yes this was in the days of tape recorder answering machines and before caller ID was commonplace). Normally we just ignored them (hey, dude aren't you coming to the party.... etc) but one time there was this frantic crying woman asking for the person she was expecting to please call her..... We felt so bad and we tried to reach her, but she was so upset that we could not understand her well enough to figure out the number. I'll probably never forget that and I still feel bad that we couldn't reach her to let her know she'd dialed a wrong number.

Recently someone left a message on my cell phone answering service for someone who was obviously not me about how this person needs to get documentation about their public service or come pay their fine otherwise they are going to have a warrant issued .... I called that one back to let them know that they'd left the message on the wrong phone, but the lady was on vacation so someone only left her a message... who knows if it ever got straightened out... Then again it could have been the dummy who stole my phone (or one of her friends) who was needing to pay the fine, and in that case I hope they got arrested...