Phone Number Mix-Up

I just got a call from a person unknown to me who has a phone number very close to mine. He sounded like an older gentleman and was having a problem with people calling him on his cell phone when they were trying to reach me. He was hoping that I could help him do something about this.

I was a bit perplexed. I know my phone number pretty well and may occasionally give out an incorrect variation of it but I assume I get it write most of the time. Clearly, I don't give out the wrong number with the intent of preventing communication between them and me. Similarly, I have not been not instigating some kind of prank on him by passing around a bogus phone number. From what he said, there have been quite a number of people calling him instead of me, ranging from the unemployment office to the insurance company to my friends.

I told him I didn't see what I could really do to help the situation; if I've handed out a bad phone number there's not much I can do at this point to keep people from using it. It seems more likely to me that people were mis-dialing my number than have it written down incorrectly but he didn't seem convinced of this; hence his call. He suggested that whenever I meet up with my friends or go to a place of business that has my number I double-check and make sure that their records are correct. This seemed like a reasonable suggestion but unless I make a campaign out of it and call all the appropriate people myself, it will probably take a while. The hardest part will be remembering to make a point of asking.

Oddly, there is another older couple in my life that has endured a similar mix-up. The couple the lives two doors down from us has a similar looking house (shape, color, yard) and when we first moved in, they got a lot of people knocking on their door looking for us. They seemed more amused by it than anything; we still have a good, neighborly relationship with them