So US West ("now known as QWest") did everything right with setting up my new phone service, with one eeensy leeetle exception. They told me the wrong phone number. Ha ha ha. They did send me a piece of mail (to my new address) confirming my new service with the correct phone number printed on it, so that once Willard told me (via my cell number) that the number I'd given out was wrong, I was able to figure out what my number ought to be and hastily distribute a correction.
Which still left open the issue of apologizing to whatever poor soul was getting all the welcome-to-your-new-apartment calls meant for me. The number was only different in the last digit; back at school, that would have meant I could have called it, listened for the ring, and gone down the hall to find the owner. As things were, I settled for calling it up and going through the old crank-call routine. It's not every day you get to live out the punch line to a joke.
This morning, I called Kwest up and complained a bit. They were pretty nice about it and quite apologetic, and agreed to my one demand: that they also call the-number-that-wasn't-actually-mine and tender their apologies there as well.