It’s bad enough when robots call you ad nauseum to pitch you their products and political causes and track down unpaid bills, but it’s even worse when the uncouth androids mistake you for another person.

Such is the plight of David, who is being hassled by cyborg creditors of his phone number’s previous owner. He writes:

For the past couple of years we have been receiving calls from a half dozen assorted credit collection (or similar) agencies asking to speak to Mr. Donald (redacted). Generally we ignore the calls b/c if we don’t know the caller Id we don’t pick up, and they just leave a message. Occasionally I’ll recognize one of the #’s, b/c they call so much, so I’ll answer and tell them that Donald Orlando doesn’t live here, never has lived here (at least in the 6 years I’ve lived here), and to please remove us from any and all lists.

But I’m guessing that his collection then gets sold to someone else who starts calling over and over, etc… Is there any way to permanently make these calls stop? Is there some way to convince ‘someone’ that they have the wrong phone # for this person? So that even if the collection gets sold, or someone new takes up the case, that they’ll know they have a bad phone #?

The you can opt out of the calls, although that’s only if the caller is playing by the rules and you manage to suffer through the entire message in order to hear the proper escape instructions. Otherwise I’d say a steady diet of call screening and possibly changing your number may be in order. If all else fails, you can always jack into the Matrix, learn kung fu, enlist the help of blade runners and bring the fight to Skynet.

Have any of you been in David’s situation and managed to find your way out?

(Photo: bjornmeansbar)

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