While it’s a good rule of thumb to hang up the phone on anyone who calls you to tell you that you won a contest, a woman in the UK almost found herself without a $10,000 prize when she didn’t believe it was Apple on the other end of the line.

In recent weeks, Apple announced that it would reward the downloader of the 10 billionth app from its (not-exactly-trademarked) App Store with a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

But the woman whose children had downloaded that 10 billionth app was apparently unaware of the promotion because she reacted with a shrug and a hung-up phone to the call alerting her to the news that she’d won.

“I thought it was a prank call,” she tells Cult Of Mac. “I said, ‘Thank you very much, I’m not interested’ and I hung up.”

After her daughters told her the contest was legitimate, the woman “had a moment of panic” and attempted to call Apple back, but to no avail.

Luckily, the Apple folks were persistent and made a second attempt later in the day. This time, the winner was a little more interested in hearing what the caller had to say.

Still, we’re not going to recommend that you pay any attention to unsolicited phone calls letting you know that you’ve one a big prize of some sort.

$10K iTunes Winner Hung Up On Apple, Thought It Was a Prank [Exclusive] [CultOfMac.com]

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