Dingtember is upon us, as it is every year from September 1st until September 30th. That means it’s that time of the year where you put notes on cars in public that read “Sorry I dinged your car. Please call me at ….. -Roy.” With a phone number, of course. The idea is that you don’t damage the person’s car, the car owner calls to find out what happened, and a silly prank caller tells them the most insane story ever.
This year several prank call hosts are joining the fun, including Dwight from the Mop Riding With Dwight show, Dragonmere from Famous Pranks, Wasted Memory from The Wasted Memory Show, Daisy from The Daisy Show, Devon from the Take Off Your Pants Show, King Richard from Another Prank Call Show, Wolfiten and Panti from the Folkin’ Live show, St. Pepe, and SagaciousZu. Below are the notes you should leave for each individual show. You can leave a note just for your favorite show, or be a really nice person and leave multiple notes for all the hosts.
Dragonmere and Wasted say you can sign the note Ted, or Ted Regis, or don’t even sign it at all. Be sure to make the phone number more legible than you see above. In that picture it’s purposely bad to thwart Google. Listen to The Wasted Memory Show and Famous Pranks to hear them call car owners.
You can sign these notes with Daisy, Rachel (for Devon), or Winston for King Richard. Be sure to make the phone number more legible than you see above. In that picture it’s purposely bad to thwart Google. Listen to Daisy’s show and Devon’s show and King Richard’s show to hear them call car owners.
You should sign Wolfiten and Panti’s notes as Ray because that’s totally a gender neutral name. Be sure to make the phone number more legible than you see above. In that picture it’s purposely bad to thwart Google. Listen to them both on the Folkin’ Live show to hear them call car owners.
You should sign SagaciousZu’s notes with the name Rusty. Be sure to make the phone number more legible than you see above. In that picture it’s purposely bad to thwart Google. Listen to SagaciousZu’s show wherever he does his show.
You should sign St. Pepe’s note with the name Terry. Be sure to make the phone number more legible than you see above. In that picture it’s purposely bad to thwart Google. Listen to St. Pepe on his Mixlr to hear him call car owners.
TIPS ON LEAVING NOTES
- If someone sees you leaving a note on their car, they probably won’t appreciate it and you might find yourself getting punched in the face or shot. So be a ninja about it. And if getting punched in the face or shot is something that you don’t want to happen to you, maybe you shouldn’t be leaving silly notes on cars.
- Only leave notes on cars in public places. A person’s driveway is not a public place. A car parked in the street is fine. A car parked in a public parking lot is fine. A car inside someone’s garage is not okay.
- Cameras are everywhere. If you pull your car into a parking lot and then put notes on cars, chances are your license plate was recorded. Not that leaving notes is illegal. But store owners have been known to hand that kind of information over to customers who get notes on their cars.
- Don’t actually ding a car. That would make what you’re doing a crime. Don’t do anything to their car other than leave a note on it.
- Don’t leave notes on every single car on your street. The neighbors will talk and they will decide that it’s some kind of massive scam orchestrated by the Chinese government and designed to steal their bank accounts. So don’t leave a bunch of notes in the same area. Don’t put them on every single window in a parking lot. Space them out so that the person receiving the note doesn’t look around and see notes on every other car around him.
- Don’t leave notes on cop cars or other emergency vehicles. Yes, this has been done multiple times before. You got us good. Please don’t do it again.
- Don’t go too far off-script with the note. Some people like to add things like “I dinged your car because it was parked so stupidly” or whatever. And that’s funny, but it usually alerts the car owner that it’s a joke, or they think that the note leaver is irrational and they go straight to the police instead of calling the number. Leave it to us professionals to tell the car owners that they parked stupidly.
TIPS FOR PRANK CALL HOSTS
- Don’t use a phone number that you’ve used for pranks for a long time, because the car owner often Googles the number to see if it comes up as a scam. Then they find your prank call page. Change your number at least once a year.
- Don’t put your car ding phone number anywhere on the internet in plain text. For the same reason as above, Google will quickly list your phone number in the search results and car owners will see you telling people to leave notes. Always post your phone number as an image or spell part of it out. Don’t post it on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else. If someone posts the number as plain text in a comment, delete that comment or ask the commenter to.
- If the police call you on a car owner’s behalf, be nice. Don’t prank them and don’t be a jerk. Calmly explain that you’re a prank caller in another state and that this is something a lot of prank callers do each year. You didn’t leave the note, one of your listeners did. Explain that when a car owner finds a note on their car, they sometimes find damage that they didn’t know about. And others know the damage was already there, but will lie to get free insurance money. Don’t give out any information that you don’t want to. You’ve done nothing wrong.
- The rules of prank calling apply to all prank calls, even car ding pranks. So don’t prank locally. If a listener of yours happens to leave a note in a town near you, give it to another host to call.
- Listeners will pretend to be car ding note roycipients and leave you voicemails claiming they got a note. Luckily, most listeners suck at this and make it very obvious that they’re lying.
- Promote dings on your show! Don’t count on this page and the other hosts to promote Dingtember for you.