Our neighbor started receiving calls from this number last week. 3-5 calls per day. All between 8am and 5pm.
After reading the entries on this site, I verified that she did not have Home Depot or Citibank cards. Then I called the number on her behalf (she speaks only broken English). It was answered by the Home Depot collections team at Citibank. I gave them the number and told them she didn't have Home Depot or Citibank accounts.
The operator said she couldn't find the number, didn't believe they were calling it, and, therefore, couldn't stop the calls. I said I would gladly fax them the inbound call log for that number to prove that they were calling it. Further, that I was looking at this site and it appeared this problem was affecting a considerable number of people. Finally, I told her she needed to find a way to fix the problem as there was no doubt the inbound calls were coming from them, frequently. She passed me to her supervisor.
Her supervisor did about 3 minutes of research. The supervisor found that a Home Depot cardholder had changed his/her contact number to this number in September of last year. That account subsequently went into collections. She promised to remove this number from that account and that the calls would cease at midnight.
While I don't want to read too much into my one experience, one could conclude that in an effort to avoid collections calls cardholders are purposefully changing their contact information. When the account goes into collection, the debt collector starts to track down the cardholder using the information that is immediately available. Hence the calls.
Long story short, if you don't owe Home Depot / Citibank money, call the number back between 8am and 5pm and ask them to remove your number. If they can't find your number, offer to provide them proof and compel them to take corrective action.
I got a call from them, answered it, heard some recording telling me to hold, and hung up. I was at work and didn't have time for what seemed like a telemarketer call. And they proceeded to call 2 or 3 more times in the next 24 hours. So that policy you speak of doesn't seem to apply any more.
I then set the ringer for that number to "No Ringtone", so now I don't even know they are calling until I hear the "missed call" sound. They have called me at least 9 times now in the past 5 days (9 in my log... I think it's more like 12 times now)
They would have a much easier time getting a hold of me if they would just call once and leave a message. In fact an email would have been more effective since I will be at my computer when I receive it, so I can jump onto my bank website and make the payment rather than trying to remember to do it later.
Anyway I initiated a payment the other day before I figured out that it was related to HD Credit (just now). So apparently even my super-ADD brain is better at reminding me than this collection agency.