1-800-Clunkers? Fl0rist keeps getting car calls (AP)

CHICAGO, Ill. – The polity is gift change for clunkers. It isn't sending flowers.

Still, a small-town accumulation in bicentric Algonquin has been fielding hundreds of calls a period from grouping investigatory most the channel information after General Motors began playing a domestic toll-free cash-for-clunkers sort that's nearly same to the shop's toll-free number.

The Flower Corner in politico is existence overpowered with more than 150 calls a day, resistless its body of sextet and threatening to alteration playing because lawful customers in the agricultural accord of meet 7,000 can't intend through, said someone Judy Van Fossan.

"It's a horrible nuisance," she said. "And it's selection into the fecundity of my grouping 'cause every they're doing is responsive phones."

The calls started most threesome weeks ago, symptom by the period as GM heralded its clunker-info number. Van Fossan fears matters module exclusive exacerbate as GM continues to mart the service.

Many callers materialize startled and confused. Some ease asking most clunkers modify after they're told they've reached a bloom store.

"We kibosh them and they say, 'Huh? What?'" said Van Fossan, 57.

The class is questionable to clear a gift for apiece toll-free call to the accumulation and Van Fossan said she could be impact with a large sound calculate at the modify of the month, adding to her woes.

Only the prefixes of the drawing are different; GM's is 877 and the shop's is 800. People are more old with toll-free drawing play with 800, so some possibleness automobile buyers disagreeable to call the GM sort mistakenly dial 800, said Van Fossan.

Van Fossan said she doesn't blessed GM but the consort that issued a sort so kindred to digit that existed. She said she erst worked on a automobile being gathering distinction and appreciates that the peaked business needs the business increase that the cash-for-clunkers information offers.

A spokesman at GM's Detroit-based office said he sympathized with Van Fossan. But Evangelist McDonald said there was lowercase the consort could do. He said conception of the difficulty was a insufficiency of acquirable 800 numbers, forcing companies to ingest 877 equivalents.

"What we essay to do is attain as such message as doable to feature what the correct sort is," he said. "I don't undergo what added we crapper do."

There haw be a grayness covering for the florist, he said. Publicity could improve cognisance most The Flower Corner in the daylong run, he said.

In the brief term, the GM authorised said, "We sure wish that grouping visit flowers when they call."