Reverse Phone Lookup Gets Phone Bill Paid

Those of you who keep your home land line connected 'just in case' and use your cell phones for most of your calls will be able to relate to my predicament. Imagine your long distance home phone bill is always a small flat fee. Now imagine opening your monthly phone bill and almost fainting when you see it's $480.

I called the phone company, of course, explaining that I couldn't have made all those two-hour-long daytime calls to the same number in Hawaii, because that is when I am usually at my office on New York's upper West side, and that's all the way across town from home. The phone company offered to cut the bill in half, but that just wasn't good enough. I was on the warpath now.

I decided to take the matters into my own hands. First, I ran the number on my bill through a reverse phone lookup, to find out the name and address of the person on the other end. Took a second or two and cost me nothing. Then, I dialed his number. The guy turned out to be pretty nice and admitted his teenage daughter living in New York has been calling him a lot lately during the day.

The rest was easy. The poor kid living directly upstairs was so scared and ashamed, she immediately admitted to hacking into my phone line in the basement, and even showed us how she'd done it. She cried and promised to never do that again. It was just that she had been really homesick and broke. I agreed not to press charges and her dad agreed to pay my phone bill. All is well that ends well. But how about that reverse phone lookup! Couldn't have done it without its help.