867-5309 in All US and Canadian Area Codes | Hacker News Reader

867-5309 in All US and Canadian Area Codes

telephoneworld.org

60 pointsjbledsoe211248 comments

LTP: if you're at a grocery store and don't have membership account, use the local area code and this number. It hasn't failed me in the 14 states I've tried it.

I do that at my stupid hair place: the clerk won't enqueue you without some random phone and a name to call when it's your turn. Then they wonder why there's a dozen people on that same number!

You want my ZIP code to market to me? 90210

If all they ask for is a zip code, I usually give an accurate one. If it's a store I visit often, I'd appreciate a closer location.

LTP = LPT = Life Pro Tip

Back when you had to actually give the number to the cashier and they would read back the first name to confirm (or maybe it was if multiple accounts were tied to the same number, I'm not sure) I would always use this number with the local area code. Older cashiers would just put the number in and move on, below a certain age threshold they would say "Jenny?" and I would nod.

I use the address "123 Fake Street" for things like this. Always funny to hear the cashier say "The Fake Street address still good?"

would that work for free gas too for kroger?

Probably not.

I used it at the local Walgreens to get some kind of discount and there was $5 on the account but I needed to know the zip code used by the first person to claim it.

Or gas loyalty discounts, or really anywhere you need a throw away phone number. It just works. And if you have to deal with a human, especially one over 40 years old, you might get a wry smile, a wink, or even a chuckle.

HN may be hugging the site. Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20220514183125/https://telephone...

Thanks. HN puts a strain on it. :)

Fun fact: you can sign up for or just use “rewards” at various stores with this number without a problem. I put it in at Walgreens one time because I was tired and didn’t want to answer questions. Then I tried it a few other places, and celebrated my new “relationship” with Jenny on FB.

My next girlfriend wasn’t pleased to find this after we started getting serious, but that just gave me bonus cackles. She wasn’t too young to remember the song, but definitely didn’t make the connection.

Fun but unrelated fact: 8,675,309 is a prime number.

It's a twin prime (8675311).

Reminds me of war dialing as a kid and forgetting to exclude the 911 prefix. Cops showed up at my house around 2am, banging on the front door. They weren't happy, to say the least. Good times. Actually, it was maybe a year or two after this song was released. Jenny, Jenny, you're the girl for me.

In 1999, Brown University which had only used 863- added the 867- exchange. A suite of students got 5309 and kept getting calls asking for “Jenny” at all hours. They stopped assigning that number.

Ultimately a Rhode Island plumbing co, Gem Plumbing, bought it from Brown and used it in their ads.

I came here to post this and should have known someone would beat me to it---I'll just add for others' reference that the suite already had 5309, under the 863 prefix, and when they split the campus all the dorms got switched to 867 en masse, so nobody making decisions ever had to look at the number "867-5309" and think about what would happen. Oops...

(PS hi dlg! dpb here)

Campus phones at the Evergreen State College (Olympia, Washington) started with 867. I think there was a lucky dorm with this land line number!

thanks you jerk now I have this song stuck in my head for the next 20 hours

Years ago I bought a cell phone number which ended 69696969. I thought it was hilarious. For about a day. Then I realized the number was written on every toilet cubical in the country with "for a good time call: " and the phone never stopped ringing, especially during the night.

The article is wrong for Area Code 757: Danny's Glass (https://www.dannysglass.com/) has had 867-5309 for years. Since the 757 area has not had to dial the Area Code for local calls until the last few weeks, their radio commercials have "sung"the number. I don't know what they'll do now.

In the late nineties, if you dialed this in my zip code, you would have gotten a hold of my friend's grandmother.

No, her name was not jenny.

This just triggered a crazy possibility in my mind. What if Stacy's Mom's name is Jenny? She's had guys longing for her for ~40 years.

Having not even heard of them before seeing this page, I think it's interesting that "Totally 80s Pizza" both has a phone number supporting their marketing, while simultaneously using an 867-5309 number for a purpose that has something to do with the song.

A plumbing company, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, used to have this in one of the toll-free area codes. (They May still.) Never made sense to me, what did Franklin know about plumbing? Benjamin Franklin Electricians would make more sense.

Related: By the B-52s song, 6060842

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hik5y1lNGbY

This is fun. Also makes me think about all the calls I get where no one is on the other side.

How many other bots are collecting this type of information about a wider set of numbers?

For area codes where the number is not assigned, is there some way to find out who to contact to purchase it?

Good question. I'd like to know myself.

Guessing somebody beat you to it, because you can find the number on "vanity DID" sites selling for ~$10k+/USD:

https://www.numberbarn.com/search?search=867-5309&saleOnly=t...

Ok but what about 867-530-9000? (this would be in the Canadian territories)

I like that they mentioned that they did this for cheap, but did not seem to care that they were calling ~1000 random people. And they plan to do this regularly.

Sorry bro, I'm all outa outrage today.

Naw, like every 6 months or so. Chill, dude.

I would still find one prank phone call every six months annoying. I get that it's probably a small drop in what the poor people that unintentionally have that number deal with, but it's silly to think the readers would worry about the cost to the caller not the stranger called.

My number is unremarkable and I still get a half dozen spam/scam calls a day. An extra one in six months would go unnoticed. If you're not in my contact list, you go straight to voicemail.

We get that half dozen as what we call 'ghost calls' -- the caller has hung up by the time the outgoing message ends. It might have something to do with my putting SIT tones at the beginning of that outgoing message. If their autodialer doesn't drop the call entirely, it triggers their message, so we hear it start partway through; either way, we know not to pick up.

I think the article gives pretty understandable reasoning of why the owners these <400 numbers, of which <100 were actually in service and accepting calls, are ones that are expecting to get called just to see what's on the number. As it explains these numbers are not something given to a random grandma who is going to be bothered by the wasted minute on their phone plan.

If you want to get mad about people spamming this phone number with fake calls, you're about 40 years too late. The numbers are already spammed to hell; there's hardly any harm in one more call every 6 months to document the phenomenon.

I guess a significant number of the callers must just be curious.

If this site were to somehow become very popular, hypothetically it might even cut call volume a bit.

I was never mad. I read the article as basically "I called a thousand random people. Don't worry, it didn't inconvenience me to do so." A statement I find silly.

From the perspective of those people, it’s one call every ~x months. The main problem is how many people might be doing that.

I wonder if they would get in trouble for making hundreds of random VoIP calls, especially if they intend to do this on a regular basis.

But I suppose we wouldn't be getting so many spam calls if people actually got in trouble often, maybe that's what emboldened this person to try.

Jenny!

What happens when you call 867-5309 in all the US and Canadian area codes? Do you reach Jenny or something else? Check this list out!

Slide 1 of 46 [Start >]

I can smell the spamvertisement revenue!

Sadly some of those numbers are just that now.

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