I am interested in knowing if other Fodorites encounter this problem. I am researching an upcoming trip to Washington D.C. in my Fodor's guide and have come up with some interesting wrong 1-800 numbers and web addresses. One 1-800 number was a telephone sex line and one web address which was supposed to be for a boat cruise line in D.C. seemed to be for a different sort of cruising with personal ads. Any comments?
P.S. No, I will not give out the numbers.

Type the phone numbers in Google and you'll see who they belong to.

Wow, a 1-800 sex line? I thought those things were always 1-900 or other numbers that you had to pay for, now someone's offering free phone sex? What next?

Yes - a lot of that type of business have faux addreses/phone numbers disguised to lure people in - hoping they will stay and spend money.

I was once looking for a budget hotel site in Paris - and ended up at a site with the most disgusting photos you can imagine that would not stop popping up - faster than I could shut then down. I had to reboot to get rid of them.

Patrick,

I had to call the company's flex spend account people with a question. Transposed numbers and ended up with a sex line.


ITA,
contact the Fodor's editors ([email protected]) and let them know about the errors. No need to repeating mistakes.

Sometimes those naughty companiespick up phone numbers and web domains that have previously had legitimate uses but expired.

I had an experience like nytravelers, with popups etc, using a bookmarked link that I KNOW was OK when I saved it. The company that I wanted had a new domain name, and the porn site had picked up the old one.

Ita, can I please have the sex phone number (see, Kal, I'm putting myself under attack for you )

Seriously, sometimes I get "the number is no longer in service" but not often as I prefer e-mail and fax to have something in writing. Sex number? I am not that lucky

I would contact somebody - Fodor's or other - and in the meantime try to find the phone number through the city's white phone pages

This kind of thing happened to me. Here is the trick being played. I once called Delta at their 800-323-2323 number. A sex line knows that some people will invert the numbers. I must have dialed something like 800-323-3232 and got a recording of a woman asking me to stay on the line and asking me if I wanted to "fly me". I thought Delta was getting a bit sexed up or something. It turned out to be a sex line. I re-dialed the number correctly and told the Delta agent about the sex number and he said it happens a lot to people calling their 800 number.

I agree that often it's a case of inverting the numbers, and that these other companies take advantage of that. I used to have toll free number I used for my banking info, and also got one of these "hot sex" numbers one time. Turned out my bank's toll-free area code was 877, but I had misdialed using 800 (since that's the more commonly used toll free exchange).

Please do email us about the problematic numbers. This sort of thing does happen from time to time because sex lines and web sites pick up old and discarded toll-free numbers and web addresses. We can't fix it if we don't know the specifics.