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284 points nomilk | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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waltbosz ◴[] No.45766658[source]
In the early days of the Internet, there was this website with a list of payphone numbers from all over the United States. In my state, there were only three entries, and my home phone number was one of them. It was listed as being outside a publicly traded chain restaurant.

On occasion, radio stations would do bits where they would call a random payphone from the website. My house was called 3 times for the same bit by different radio stations. Within a month apart, I spoke to two different stations from New Zealand. MoreFM was one of them, but I don't remember the other. I do remember that that were very disappointed when I told them I had just spoken to MoreFM a month prior. Also MoreFM was the only station that didn't end the bit when I explained it was not a pay phone

replies(3): >>45766833 #>>45766876 #>>45776256 #
1. jimmydddd ◴[] No.45776256[source]
In the 1980's IBM had some marketing promotion in the US and distributed brochures and posters at different computer seller chains. The prominently displayed phone number had a typo and it was instead my parents' land line.

Surprisingly, they didn't get that many calls, and IBM corrected the number in the next round of marketing. So they never had to change their number.