Next time you need to get the President of the United States on the line and don’t have the phone number, it might be easier to saddle a horse, ride to Washington, D.C., and knock on his 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue door.
Easier, that is, than to find the right number for the White House through directory assistance.
In 20 requests for the number this week in an utterly unscientific survey, Ameritech’s 411 national directory assistance got it right only 16 times. No matter that four of the numbers issued were either out of service or led to the wrong office, it still cost 95 cents a pop.
If Ameritech’s directory service performed poorly in this unscientific survey of what should be one of the nation’s easiest-to-find phone numbers, AT&T’s “00” assistance was laughable.
For $1.49 plus tax each shot, AT&T got it right only 40 percent of the time. In 20 requests for the White House main switchboard, operators gave listings for the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, the Office of Management and Budget, something called the White House Project, two out-of-service numbers, two numbers that rang into eternity and a clothing store called the White House Black Market.
One operator insisted she had no listing for the White House in Washington, D.C.
In an age of proliferating area codes, phone users increasingly are forced to rely on these services but end up dialing only frustration. Phone books no longer are much of an option for metropolitan areas with four or five area codes, and finding a number in a city like New York from out of town has become far more complicated than knowing just 212.
Among the more insidious wrinkles to the problem is that, even though the $1 to $1.50 charge for the phone company’s mistake starts adding up, who wants to spend $20 of mental aggravation trying to correct it each time?
Members of the Illinois Commerce Commission, which used to regulate the phone industry, have asked their staff to look into the problem. The commission ought to conduct an official investigation.
Deregulation of the telephone industry may help explain some of the directory assistance mess, but it doesn’t justify it.
Phone companies need to be more vigilant about sharing updated listings with competitors, and must better train workers in such basics as spelling (“Is White House one word?”) geography (“Is that in Washington, D.C.?) and plain common sense (“You mean the White House Art Studio?”).
