Julia wrote about her phone number change problems, and then Jeroen wrote 
about his, and said:

>Anyone want to top *that*?

My wife and I moved into an apartment when we got married in August of 1999. 
  In October, we received a phone message from a video rental store called 
Hollywood Video saying we had an overdue rental.  We don't even have a 
membership with them, so we called the 800 number (toll free long distance) 
that they provided and explained to them that we don't have an account, they 
must have an incorrect number on file.  They said they would remove our 
number from the file, and we though everything was fixed.  A couple of 
months later, the same thing happened.  When we called the 800 number, the 
apologized for not taking our number out of their system the first time and 
assured us they would this time.

About 4 months later, it happened again, except my wife was at home when 
they called.  They actually *gave us the name* over the phone of the person 
listed for this account.  This violates their privacy policy and probably 
violates the law.  They insisted that they would take care of it this time 
and we shouldn't be getting any more calls from them.  When we received a 
message from them again a couple of months later, we called the police and 
asked their advice.  They had us report the person's name to their fraud 
division, as she was fraudulently using our phone number.

We haven't heard from Hollywood Video since.

However, while all of this was going on, we started to get collection calls 
for a different person.  Everytime it would happen (and it was various 
different collection agencies), we would tell them that the person they 
mentioned didn't live at this phone number.  Apparently this woman had our 
number on her checks, and bounced checks on a regular basis.  She is 
supposed to live in Kansas City, but we can't find her name in the phone 
book or in any online phone directory.  We also tried calling various 
numbers that are close to our number to see if she or her check printing 
company just reversed a couple of numbers, but have been unable to locate 
her.  She also has been reported to the KCPD fraud division.

Reggie


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