0800 BUGGER OFF

The business has had an 0800 no. since it's inception. Before we started trading, we made a list of a whole series of numbers which we thought would roll off the tongue and be memorable (important as were advertising on the radio) but when it came to it, only one of the fifty or so we came up with was actually available. It was a good one: it had repetition and identical paired digits, so we bagged it.

However, these past four months we have taken more wrong numbers than business calls (as well as crank calls, but that's another story). Firstly, we found that a power company had wrongly listed our no. as an emergency no. for power outages on their recorded voice service. This happened during the "weatherbomb" storms a little while back. Thanks for that.

We've had all sorts: a man asking me to explain how to use sunblock, a woman in Greymouth who had lost her cash in a vending machine. Hold on...Ha! I've just taken another call while writing this - an Austrian woman trying to her european TELEKOM calling card - for fucks sake.

I answered one call in the wee hours of the morning - we have relatives overseas, it could have been an emergency, and I assumed it was - only to get a recorded message.
What's going on?

We have one persistent junk faxer but the no.of wrong numbers is off the charts.

So, please dial carefully. When the person you think you are calling answers, stop and listen to what they say. If it's 'Good morning, brighter design" then don't launch in to your grand speech about how you want your money back, where you live, how old you are or any other nonsense. We've got a business to run.