Same old thing. I had one number that was two swapped digits different from the local weather office. SO told one early morning caller that we were sorry but everything at the weather station was all screwed up and we couldn't tell what the weather was, so would the caller mind sticking his head out the window and let us know what it was doing?

Someone named Rene got a lot of callers at our next (unlisted) phone number. They'd argue with us when we said she wasn't here and this wasn't her number. Got that one changed, and got caller ID and a programmable phone that would just hang up on anyone calling from any of Rene's argumentative friends.

A couple numbers later, on a brand new prefix in a brand new area code, we started getting calls from a high school letting us know that "our son" was absent again, or had been sent to the principal's office, or had a detention. Some kid gave the school a fake phone number I guess. I called and told them the kid had lied to them, and they were shocked, I say SHOCKED!! that a teenager would do such a thing (sigh)

Same number also didn't belong to someone who owed a local dentist a bunch of money. It also doesn't belong to someone with a drunk friend who liked to call collect from Florida in the middle of the night and leave messages in very drunken and garbled Spanish.

Tip: You can tell the phone company you're getting harrassing calls from someone you don't want to talk to. They'll change your number without charge in that case.

Another tip: Begin your answering machine message with that "doot doot deet" tone you hear when you call a number that's been disconnected. A lot of automated phone equipment (telemarketers etc.) will hear that and disconnect automatically because they think it means the call failed. Better telemarketing equipment will remove the "disconnected" number from its programs. Humans will still get through because we are still smarter than dumb computers (I worked for awhile at a company that made high end telephone hardware, which is why I just happen to know this).

The programmable phone I got was well worth the cost, as you can route calls based on caller ID to different mailboxes and different "answering machine" behavior. For example, for someone who persistently dials the wrong number, you can program it to say "I'm sorry, you've dialed the wrong number" and hang up without taking a message. The phone is the Nortel Meridian 9516. There are versions of the same phone made more recently by other companies, and it's worth hunting down if you really want to minimize the stupid calls.