to expect people to apologise for wrong numbers?

[Bogeyface]

Our number is almost the same as the number for a large health centre in town, the same numbers but the last 2 are transposed. So we get a fair amount of wrong numbers, usually from the elderly, I remember one of whom insisted that I was wrong and I must be the doctors as she had dialled correctly :o

Some apologise and thats fine, it happens. But alot dont, they just hang up! I know they are wrong numbers as we have caller display and they are local numbers.

Surely it is only polite to apologise for inconveniencing someone by your mistake? I had one that did it three times in a row before demanding to know my number, without saying hello etc. I said that if they wanted to doctors they should have called 123456, and he went right and shouted the number out to whoever was next to him. I got a bit snotty and said in my best sarcastic voice "Oh sorry, for ringing the wrong number....thank you for helping me!" I got told to fuck off!

We had a number in London that had loads of wrong action.
1- it was the same as the eurostar info number but with a London code instead of 0845. So used to get people ringing up at 4am wanting to know if the train was running on time. I was usually quite nice (if a little dopey) unless they rang back several times in succession at which point I got somewhat grumpy!

1. It was very similar to the dollar desk at a city bank as we used to get people ringing up for quotes or wanting prices. Always very tempting to shout 'sell sell' or give a random price but never did.

3- was the freakiest. We kept getting calls for mr zap that seemed to expect dh to know what it was all about and to call mr xxx but leaving no number. Sometimes calls were quite frantic, we were beginning to get quite worried especially as lawyers were beginning to be involved (expensive QCs not little local ones). Finally solved when I was off sick one day and actually managed to speak to them. Turned out they were not ringing my mr zap but a completely different mr zap who was a big big bigwig at at national bank who was in the middle of merger talks with another bank and he was in charge of the talks and negotiations. They had managed to print his number wrong in the internal phone directory - we were only a digit different from his office number - it was just a complete coincidence that he and dh shared the same surname :o

They were really shocked when they found out as they'd left stuff that - had we known what they were talking about - could have been quite damaging. They then tried to turn it on me and say why hadn't I let them know sooner when I pointed out that in leaving messages for mr zap they were leaving messages for my dh and that maybe they should be a bit more careful!

We get calls for the local Chinese take-away from time to time ( I don't know their number but guess it must be fairly similar). I don't recall anyone apologising for ringing the wrong number :(

When I was much younger and living with my parents, the taxi rank around the corner from us printed out flyers which they put through every door in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately there was an error in the printing - it had our phone number. After a few late night and early morning calls from people wanting cabs my Dad went round to their office to complain - and suggest they reprinted their leaflets, but they were totally unhelpful about it. In the end he just used to say 'Yes, the cab will be with you in 10 minutes'. It wasn't that long before people stopped calling.