About 3 years ago I fitted an auto dialler and alarm to a garage (ie a
working garage not somewhere to park cars). I got a phonecall today saying
the auto dialler was not working. The customer does not test the dialer on a
regular basis but today his mate set the alarm off and his phone did not
ring.

The first thing I noticed when I got up there (it's a ladder job) was a 9
inserted before the phone number the dialler was supposed to call. That's
not uncommon, and I programmed the dialler and it used to work. Anyway, we
had a dial tone at the master socket next to the auto dialler (I put the
master socket the-)) and all the voltages in the auto dialer were
correct. The bloody thing would still not make a call.

So out of curiousity I asked - do you need to dial a 9 when you make a phone
call. The reply was "no - not since I changed telephone companys a couple of
months ago".

I removed the 9 from the phone number and I tried again. Still nothing.

Then came the funniest thing I have heard for ages. The customer said "I've
just remembered something. When I swapped telephone companys I had the phone
line made into incoming only calls. You might as well "call me ******"[1]
and get down from the ladders".

[1] It's a saying that both I and the customer use and taken frrom here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYEMNab00bw

--
Adam