Relentless Ringing Not His Calling Bum U S West Hookup Forwards Call After Call

The ringing in Gene Hartley’s ears is only an echo now. But beginning Sunday night, and lasting for more than 12 hours, it was his telephone.

Over and over it rang, incessantly, around the clock.

As the calls accumulated in his voice mail, Hartley, a Microsoft employee, was forced to dump thousands of them. “It only holds 35 calls and I’ve cleared it about 100 times,” he said Monday morning.

Hartley returned to his north Seattle home Sunday from a July 4 holiday in Oregon to find - what else? - the phone ringing. When the ringing continued Monday morning, Hartley used a cellular phone, his only workable link to the outside world, and contacted the phone company. He was not astonished to learn that something had gone badly awry during an overnight upgrade of U S West’s voice messaging system.

“This is a case of basic human error,” U S West spokeswoman Dana Smith explained. Smith said callers whose systems are being upgraded are supposed to be forwarded to a voice message explaining that their service is temporarily unavailable. But instead of hearing that message, callers were forwarded to Hartley’s phone.

As the ringing persisted, Hartley resorted to humor. “If you’d like to check your messages, press ‘1’ now,” he told callers. “If you’d like to buy a llama, press ‘2’ now … ” The llama usually did the trick and callers would hang up.

But when it was clear to Hartley that he and his telephone were in for a long siege, his fiance, Jenny Orr, hit upon the perfect voice mail message for the occasion: “You have reached the world’s most gifted psychic. Since I already know who you are and why you’re calling, please hang up when you hear the beep.”

Smith said phone records indicated the problem probably began at 11 p.m. Sunday, and was cleared up by 1 p.m. Monday. She said about 3,500 customers were involved in the upgrade, and it was their calls Hartley received. She said all the messages were kept on a backup system and no customers lost messages in the mix-up.

Smith also said U S West hopes to “make it right” with Hartley. But the company hasn’t been able to talk to him yet.

“We have tried to call him, but he isn’s answering his phone right now.”