Numbering the Frustrations of 411
How about we stop calling this the Information Age?
How about calling it the “How Do You Spell That Again?” Age. Or, the “There’s No Such Listing but This Call Will Cost You 46 Cents Anyway” Age.
I needed to call someone in Ojai, and I didn’t have the number.
Obedient product of advertising that I am, I called 1 (805) 555-1212.
City and listing? chirps Ms. Information.
Ojai, I say.
Ohio? she says.
Ojai, that’s the city.
The city of Ohio--what state is that in?
It’s Ojai, in California, which is why I dialed 805, an area code in California.
Oh, California. How do you spell that?
What, California? Or Ojai?
And so on. I could have driven to Ojai in the time it took to get the phone number.
But I did worm it out of Ms. Information that the company charging me 95 cents or $1.40 for that phone number had connected me to an operator in Maryland.
Directory assistance, once as infallible as the phone lady who recites the correct time, has evidently been dumbed down. If it were enrolled in the L.A. Unified School District, it wouldn’t even be eligible for social promotion.
Following the newsroom truth that one incident is a tip, two is a paragraph and three is a trend, I solicited frequent phoners I know for their experiences:
* “I called once and they said there was no listing for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.”
* “Two weeks ago, I had an operator insist to me that there was no Empire State Building in Manhattan.”
* “While I was on vacation in Wyoming, I called back here to try to make an appointment with my hair stylist. (I didn’t have her number.) Twice I was told there was no such listing and the third time they gave me the wrong number.”
* “I have been told that there was no state Capitol in Sacramento, and no State University of New York in New York. One imagines large buildings being sucked silently into the earth.”
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When a conspiracy-minded friend surmised that phone companies were multiplying area codes to double-whammy us for toll calls and 411 charges, I asked whether he thought UFOs were in on it, too. I owe him an apology.
Here is how a Pacific Bell guy explained it to me:
If you dial 411 now, you can get any number anywhere in the country--usually from an operator in California who knows how to spell Ojai and Tuolumne--for 46 cents. If you call an area code and 555-1212--even the area code right next door to you--you get an operator who may be anywhere, who will charge you between 85 cents and $1.40. Whatever you call, you must specify city, state and probably solar system.
That’s probably what flummoxed the operator my colleague got: She was probably looking for that Empire State Building they have in Manhattan, Kansas.
Pacific Bell customers get three free 411 calls a month. Three. I spent all of my free calls in one morning trying to get a number for the UCLA sociology department.
The first operator gives me a number that turns out to be West Los Angeles College. Second call, I get UCLA’s philosophy department. Third call, I get what sounds like the physiology department, but by now steam is coming out of my ears and I’m not hearing too well. Fourth call, I get the sociology department. Four 411 calls, three wrong numbers--each with a price. I would have called for phone-bill credits but I probably would have been given the wrong number for that, too.
This has got to be the mother lode of the telecommunications revolution. A problem of the phone companies’ own creating--area code chaos--is now a problem they’re profiting by.
The state Public Utilities Commission, the PUC, which regulates fees and services, doesn’t need to hold hearings to assess what consumers think. It can stop at the first two letters of its own acronym.
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A friend dialed 411 not long ago and the voice at the other end said, “This is Destiny, can I help you?” Destiny!
It turns out that the operators are allowed to make up their own noms de phone, not unlike phone-sex providers. I know that when I hear “Gypsy” or “Tiffanique” answer, I don’t know whether I’m expected to ask for a number or ask what she’s wearing. I do know that, by the time I get what I want, it will have cost me almost as much as a 900 call, and still have left me frustrated.
Columnist Patt Morrison writes today for the vacationing Al Martinez. Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.
