Phone Mayhem Update

My strange phone calls in recent days were driving me to distraction. I hated the thought that someone was deliberately bothering me and that I would eventually have to get a number mobile phone number (with all the consequences that involves!)

Today, I had another call. This time, the person asked for Owen. I told him that I was sorry that his call was wasted but I wasn't Owen. I did, however, ask him to help me resolve this phone issue by telling me what number he had dialled. I asked him who Owen was. And the result?

Owen hails from Dublin and has recently started working for National Australia Group - my former employer.

It would seem that Owen has been assigned my old phone number and that he is putting a redirect on to the phone and the end of each day - probably in the hope that calls will go to voicemail? The long and short of it is that the phone is programmed to redirect to my mobile... something that was setup over 2 years ago!

The good news is that at least this is easily resolved. The phone's redirect can be reprogrammed and I will no longer suffer these terrible phone calls. But, here's the issue with these calls...

1. One of them was abusive and accused "someone" of kicking a dog. Probably our Owen?
2. One of them was from an Estate Agent trying to let a flat in Dublin
3. One of them was from a "colleague" of Owen
4. One of them was from some unknown person who I couldn't make out
5. One of them was from someone from Dublin who I struggled to understand
6. A number of them went to voicemail but failed to leave any messages
   

I did wonder why all these people had southern Irish accents. It seems that they weren't spoofing their CallerID as NAG's exchange was redirecting them to me using their base Caller ID (which isn't a real number!).

So... the chaos has been resolved.

I still can't help thinking that poor Owen will now be left with a trail of chaos to resolve - the dog-kicking accuser was most vocal and really quite threatening; the estate agent may have let the flat to someone else; and who knows what the others were attempting to achieve!