DON'T ASK US, WE JUST LIVE HERE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 16, 1993                   TAG: 9303160143
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
DON'T ASK US, WE JUST LIVE HERE
WANT TO KNOW about road conditions in Virginia? 1-800-367-ROAD. But if you're one digit off, you'll wind up talking to a St. Louis couple who have been snowedunder by wrong numbers.
When it rains in Virginia, it rings in Missouri.
And when it snowed this past weekend, there also was a blizzard of phone calls to Richard and Patti Dean, a St. Louis couple whose phone number is one digit off from the Virginia Department of Transportation's toll-free line about road conditions.
"My husband says we've had hundreds of calls," Patti Dean said. "I don't know if `hundreds' is right."
But it's certainly been an avalanche.
"It's been kind of fun," she said. Except for the calls at 2 a.m., of course.
The confusion started three months ago, when Richard Dean signed up for an 800 number. He's a car buff and video producer who's marketing his own cable television series on vintage cars called "The Weekend Driver."
One proposed feature on the show - which has been filmed but hasn't aired yet - is to invite viewers to call the 800 number if they want to know where to buy the cars being shown.
Until some cable networks buy the show, Dean has no need for the 800 line, but he was eager to lock up a number whose last four digits spell "Road." So for now, the 800 calls ring to his home phone.
Almost as soon as he signed up, though, the Deans started getting calls from Virginians asking about road conditions. "We always know when the weather starts getting bad there," he said, "because we start getting more calls."
Most of the time, Patti Dean said, "it's not that big a deal. It's the calls in the middle of the night that drive us crazy."
But this past weekend, when "the storm of the century" hit the East Coast, the Deans got so many calls they gave up answering the phone - and finally called the Virginia Department of Transportation for help.
Transportation officials responded by asking media outlets to remind folks to please dial correctly.
The wrong numbers could have put the Deans' car show into the ditch financially before it even gets on the air; their phone company contract requires them to pay a fee for each call they receive on the 800 line. But the phone company told them they wouldn't have to pay for the wrong numbers, Patti Dean said.
If Virginians persist in dialing wrong numbers, though, Richard Dean said, he may be forced to change his.
In the meantime, he's thinking about giving out his version of road conditions in Missouri. "The roads are fine," he said. "Come on out to St. Louis."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB