We have a VOIP service and have had for 2-3 years. Some of you will say what? VOIP is an internet phone where all of your calls to and from your phone go accross the internet and back. It is cheap (16$ a month for unlimited US calls and 500 free mins to Switzerland and 3 cents a min thereafter) and fairly decent quality. Yes we use real phones and yes it works pretty well (most of the time). So this brings us to our feature story.

As I mentioned our phone works pretty well most of the time. We have had occasional problems like when the internet goes down we reach for the cell phones but otherwise no big deal. We have noticed the last few days it seems like we have had a few extra wrong numbers but you can blame that on a full moon or low tide or something. So this morning at 6AM we get a call. As I said we had gotten a couple other early AM late PM wrong numbers. My wife and I are awakened after a restless night (wife sick with cold/flu/west nile virus? coughing and keeping both of us up) by a ring. Short on sleep and not without some frustration regarding these unsolicited wakeup calls, my wife answers the phone:


Wife "Hello"

Nice Indian gentleman "Hello, my name is Sridhar"

Testy Wife "Yes"

Sridhar "Do you have an internet phone?"

Defensive Wife "What does it matter to you?"

Apologetic Sridhar "Oh yes sorry. I too have internet phone and have problems with my calls going to your number. I fact I have called you by dialing my own number."

More forgiving wife "Oh. Yes we do have SunRocket VOIP."

Sridhar "Ok. Are you here in St. Louis I think our numbers got crossed somehow."

Wife now ticked at SR "No we are actually 1636 miles away in Idaho."

Confused Sridhar "Hmmmm. I will call today again to see if I can fix phone. Thank you."


So now we start to understand why we have been getting so many confused people calling us all hours with Indian accents. At first I thought it might be people too shy to ask for my Tandoori chicken recipe but no it seems to be a major messup for our VOIP provider. To be honest I think it has been much worse for Sridhar but it is still annoying. So later in the day I call Sridhars wife and had the reverse conversation. I did my good Samaritan duty by passing along a few phone messages from those that had called her that morning. Later I was able to talk to Sridhar and give him all of the information needed to hopefully correct the problem with SunRocket. He has not asked for my Tandoori chicken recipe yet but I think he is warming up to me and might in our next email correspondence. So if you try to call on the phone don't be surprised to find Sridhar or his wife on the other end of the line.