Invalid Listings And The Pointless Battle

When I first moved here, I got a phone number from Embarq, which is now owned by Century Telephone. I got the number because the last 4 digits were the month and day of Faye's birthday. Unfortunately, it turned out that the number had once belonged to a business, an automobile junkyard, called Maxon Wholesale Auto Parts. Now, having once worked for Ma Bell, I knew that there were regulations concerning minimum time limits for when a phone number could be re-assigned. I also thought a business number could not be re-assigned to a non-business line. Apparently, I was wrong about that or Embarq simply ignored such regulations.

In any event, soon after my line went live, I began getting calls for that business. Some of the callers thought I was trying to avoid something, accusing me of all sorts of things. Some were just average folks trying to find a part for an older car. Most claimed they either got the number from a local phone book (which would have been impossible unless the phone book was over a year old) or from an online listing or from a CD with "verified" active businesses. At some point, I started getting belligerent with callers who would not accept it when I told them that Maxon Wholesale Auto Parts was no longer in business and had been out of business for quite some time. Why be polite to someone who insisted on  speaking to "Clyde" (Clyde Maxon was the owner) like they talked to him all the time. I would ask, sometimes, when they last spoke to him and they would immediately become evasive.

I argued with people about where they got the listings, very few would acknowledge they bought a CD with business listings and the ones who did refused to tell me who they bought it from. I fought with TV stations who ran web sites that included business listing for the area, I even fought with AT&T to get the listing off anywho.com and they have done so... but only after I subtly threatened legal action.

Eventually, the calls stopped because I changed phone numbers when I switched to Vonage for my land line phone service.

But I am a curious person and just recently Googled Maxon Wholesale Auto Parts just to see what I would get... I got tons of hits and they all had the address and phone number of the past. Since Maxon Wholesale Auto Parts  went out of business sometime in 2005, it seems rather odd that these people have not yet caught on.