By Troy Brynelson / The Columbian
Your dinner was interrupted by a telemarketer? The Park family sympathizes, but they shouldn’t.
For the better part of a year, Carol and Jim Park, who live near the Vancouver-Camas border, have fielded irate phone calls from people who mistakenly think they’re redialing a telemarketer to give them a piece of their mind.
Often, callers are less than polite.
“Sometimes they cuss me out and say ‘Quit calling me,’ ” Carol Park, 68, said. “I try to explain to them that it’s not me, it’s this other number, but they don’t believe me.”
Everything behind the miscommunications seems like a tangled hose that the Park family has been caught holding when it unkinks. But the calls should come to an end July 29 when the state of Washington mandates 10-digit dialing in the 360 area code.
You see, without dialing the area code, the Park family’s landline phone number is identical to the first seven digits of the United Breast Cancer Foundation’s offices in Seattle. The New York-based nonprofit makes calls all over the country to help raise funds and awareness, the Park family said.
If a ticked Clark County resident hits the redial button, sometimes they are sent to the Park family. The redial button sometimes doesn’t register the 1 digit required to call long distance. The phone programmatically dials the first seven digits to keep the call local.
“They just call and ask to be taken off the call list,” Carol Park said. “They get really mad at me and think I’m lying to them.”
Carol Park said she doesn’t answer the phone anymore if she doesn’t recognize the number. If she does, she tries to explain they need to hit 1 and call the full New York phone number. Then she hands the phone to Jim.
“I try to explain that it’s not us that called them. A lot of them ignore it, chew you out and hang up,” Jim Park said.
Carol Park said not all of the interactions are bad.
“Some people just hang up in my ear. Some are nice and say ‘I hope you can get it fixed; have a nice day,’ ” she said, laughing.
The Parks said in a phone interview that they realized they could change their phone number, but they don’t want to. To do so would be even more of an inconvenience.
New dialing rules
Representatives with the Utilities and Transportation Commission said they hadn’t heard of anything like what’s happening to the Park family before. It’s an issue that may fall under the purview of telecom providers and telephone manufacturers.
However, new rules coming online this month should quell their problem.
Starting July 29, Southwest Washington residents will be required to dial 10 digits for any call they make. Then, on Aug. 28, new 564 area codes will become available for phone customers.
The new area codes will solve the problem of the depleting of 360 phone numbers. According to the commission, numbers in the 360 area code, which covers Vancouver to Port Angeles and Bellingham but not the Puget Sound area, will be exhausted by 2018.
With more area codes clustering into the same areas, 10-digit dialing begins to make more sense, said spokeswoman Anna Gill.
“It’s essential really when you have two area codes that are active in the same area. If you think about it, you could have a 360 number and your neighbor could have a 564 number. Without having that area code, your call couldn’t be completed because it didn’t know which line to go to,” she said.
The mechanics of issuing the new area code to new customers also saves current customers from having to change their phone numbers.
“We figured this would be the least disruptive. They don’t have to change business stationery. It’s quite cumbersome if you have to change your business number,” Gill said.
The 564 area code will be seen more and more around Western Washington in the coming decades. The North American Numbering Plan administrator projects the 206 area code to exhaust in 2024, 425 to exhaust in 2046 and 253 to exhaust in 2040.
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