Callers Face a New Hang-Up With Directory Assistance
Have some of your recent calls to directory assistance gotten downright weird?
Credit the change to last year’s Telecommunications Reform Act, which is supposed to encourage competition between long-distance carriers and local phone companies. There have been a few unforeseen side effects.
Mostly, the side effects have resulted from major long-distance carriers, such as AT&T;, moving into the local market and no longer wanting to pay rival local carriers, such as GTE and Pacific Bell, to provide directory assistance.
The result: the long-distance carriers are providing directory assistance not just for their traditional customers, but increasingly, for local users as well. Dial 1 and any area code then 555-1212, and they’ve got you hooked. But then again, they don’t tell you it’s not your traditional local operator; that’s for you to find out--often the hard way.
Typical was a recent Sunday phone call from my 310 area code to the 213 area directory assistance.
JH: I’d like the number of Jackie Goldberg in Silver Lake.
Directory assistance operator: There is no Jackie Goldberg in Silver Lake.
JH: She’s a government official. There has to be.
O: There’s a J. Goldberg in San Diego. And one in Palm Springs.
JH: Jackie Goldberg is a member of the City Council, and she has an office in Silver Lake. It’s like the White House. There has to be a number listed.
O: The Silver Lake City Council?
JH: No. The Los Angeles City Council. She’s the member from Silver Lake.
O: Is Silver Lake in California?
JH: Where are you?
O: We provide directory assistance for five states. And I have no listing under Jackie Goldberg in Silver Lake.
JH: Silver Lake is part of Los Angeles.
O: Oh . . . I have nothing under Jackie Goldberg.
JH: Do you have the number for the Los Angeles City Council?
O: Yes.
JH: But no Jackie Goldberg?
O: No.
JH: May I have your supervisor?
O: Sure. Do you still want the number of the Los Angeles City Council?
JH: No. City Council is closed on Sunday. I want the number for Jackie Goldberg.
O: I have no Jackie Goldberg listed.
Supervisor: Supervisor.
JH: I want the number of Jackie Goldberg. She’s in Silver Lake, in Los Angeles.
S: We don’t have a listing for Jackie Goldberg in Silver Lake.
JH: Can you try the Los Angeles City Council? Do you have Jackie Goldberg listed there? She’s a member.
S: Do you want the number of the Los Angeles City Council?
JH: No. I want the number for Jackie Goldberg. Is her number listed under the City Council?
(Supervisor reads off a list of half a dozen City Council members).
JH: Keep going.
S: Jackie Goldberg.
JH: That’s who I want. What’s her number?
GTE spokesman Larry Cox says that his company is being falsely blamed and maligned for this type of glitch.
‘We’ve received a number of complaints from customers who assume they’re getting a GTE operator. But they’re not,” he said.
Instead, Cox lays the blame on AT&T.;
Not that AT&T; is about to take on GTE’s fumble. Thus, insists spokeswoman Diane Schwilling, in AT&T;’s efforts to improve service for the benefit of us--its humble customers--the company farms out many of its calls to directory assistance subcontractors.
And just where are these subcontractors located?
Schwilling wouldn’t specify.
And what do these subcontractors know about L.A.
Again, Schwilling wouldn’t say.
Pacific Bell spokeswoman Linda Bonniksen, however, was more than willing to help out.
It seems that a principal AT&T; subcontractor is Excell Agent Services in Phoenix, Ariz. And Excell operators are responsible for servicing several states--not cities, states--with five or more states being “typical,” she said.
If the meaning of this hasn’t yet registered, imagine, if you will, how much effort it would take you to learn the ins and outs of each suburb, each city, each of half a dozen states? And how long would you keep the job paying Excell’s prevalent wage of $8 an hour.
Now imagine that Excell expects to double its call volume by the end of the year to an astounding 2 million calls a day, said Excell Chairman Dan Evanoff.
So where the local operator may often know the city like the back of her hand, the increasingly likely out-of-state operator now often barely knows whether it’s Marina del Rey or Palm Springs that’s on the coast.
What’s worse, the baby bells, miffed at being undercut by the long-distance giants, often no longer share their databases with them. Thus, says Evanoff, Excell has been forced to seek alternative sources for information that GTE should be providing. These sources include court records, drivers licenses, and--believe it or not--welcome wagon kits.
That’s why those calls have been getting increasingly weird.
And with more pay phone companies subscribing to a proliferation of long-distance carriers, the pay phone user is inadvertently connected to whichever carrier serves the particular pay phone. Increasingly, Los Angeles home users are tapping into their long-distance carrier’s directory database.
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Thus, chortled Schwilling after doing some sleuthing, my phone is served by MCI. The problem, she said, was therefore with MCI, not with AT&T;’s superior service.
MCI vice president Steve Johnson, however, insists that, unlike AT&T;, MCI relays its directory assistance calls to the local phone company. So how did my call end up at a five-state bureau? Perhaps, suggested Johnson, I switched carriers lately (I have), and my call somehow went to AT&T; directory assistance.
For the hapless caller trying to avoid the rapidly expanding directory assistance limbo, however, Bonniksen has a simple piece of advice: never dial an area code for local directory assistance.
Even if the number you want is in an adjacent area code, dial 411 and tell the robotic voice you want a Los Angeles number. Once you’ve got the local operator, ask for the number you really want.
And, if you’re lucky, the information operator might even know who Jackie Goldberg is, that Silver Lake is still part of California, and that City Hall really is closed on Sundays.
