[Electronics-Talk] free 411

[Gerald Levy]

As a follow-up to my previous message, when was the last time you 
received copies of your local  White Pages and Yellow Pages, which would 
be dropped in front of your door like clockwork once a year?  Verizon 
stopped publishing them more than five years ago because they were 
shrinking in size to the point that they had become worse than useless.  
But even when you look up a phone number online using Yelp or other 
similar web site, the information may not be accurate.  Recently, for 
instance, I needed to find the phone number for a primary care doctor in 
my neighborhood.  I found the number for one on Yelp.  Great, I 
thought.  But when I dialed the number, I discovered that it was not in 
service. Upon further research, I learned that this doctor had passed 
away five years earlier, but nobody had bothered to delete his phone 
number from the Yelp database.  So unfortunately, there is no longer any 
reliable way to find phone numbers for businesses and individuals either 
online or by dialing 411. It has become a real crapshoot.


Gerald



On 1/9/2021 7:10 AM, Gerald Levy via Electronics-Talk wrote:
>
> Here's the problem with directory assistance services, whether it's 
> 800-FREE-411 or the traditional 411.   In the good old days, when big 
> bad Ma Bell, aaka the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 
> actually a collection of separate wholly-owned regional operating 
> companies under the so-called Bell unbrella, was the only provider of 
> phone service,all companies and individuals were listed in their 
> database, so when you dialed 411, an operator could look up the number 
> for you, and there was a better than 90% chance that she could find 
> it.  For instance, before 1982, when Ma Bell was broken up into 7 
> separate, independent regional Bell operating companies, New York 
> Telephone was a wholly owned subsidaiary of AT&T, so if you dialed 411 
> in New York City, you could get the phone number for a company located 
> in Los Angeles, because the phone company there, Pacific Bell, was 
> also a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T.  But today, thanks to 
> deregulation, there is no single phone company or service provider 
> that maintains a centralized list of all phone numbers for every 
> company and individual in the US, so 411 and free 411 services have 
> become essentially useless.  So if your land-line or cell phone 
> carrier is Verizon, which became the successor to New York Telephone 
> through a series of mergers and consolidations since 1982, , for 
> instance, and you dial 411 you will only have access to phone numbers 
> for companies and individuals who are registered with Verizon.  If 
> their primary carrier is another phone company such as AT&T or 
> T-Mobile or Consumer Cellular, then you will be out of luck.  Welcome 
> to the new and chaotic wild, wild west of totally unregulated and 
> fragmented telephone service. What a mess!!!  When you dial 411 on 
> your Consumer Cellular cell phone, they will probably only have access 
> to phone numbers for companies and individuals registered with 
> Consumer Cellular, which is a relatively small number, because most 
> listings are still registered with Verizon, which is the largest phone 
> service provider and the only one which still has a historical 
> connection to the old Ma Bell/American Telephone & Telegraph company. 
> Don't confuse Verizon with today's AT&T, which has no connection to 
> the original company of the same name and is actually the successor to 
> MCI, which was one of the 7 original RBOC's created in 1982. If all 
> this sounds confusing, you're right.  You need a Philadelphia lawyer 
> to figure all this out.
>
>
> Gerald
>
>
>
> On 1/8/2021 11:50 PM, Rob Kaiser via Electronics-Talk wrote:
>> I don't know what list to send this to, so, I'll try this 1. I'm with
>> consumer Cellular. My internet was down a few days agao & I needed to 
>> look
>> up a phone number. The only way I could get free directory assistance 
>> was to
>> use free 411. This is what consumer cellular told me. If I used their 
>> 411
>> there was going to be a fee. When I called free 411, I wasn't even 
>> able to
>> give them a name of the business I wanted to look up. Now, I've had 
>> problems
>> with free 411 before, but this was the worst. Is free 411 not working 
>> any
>> more? If this is so, do we have any platforms where we can get free
>> directory assistance if our internet is down? Or, are we doomed to 
>> having to
>> either wait until our internet comes up or pay a fee to call Directory
>> Assistance?
>>
>>
>>
>> Rob Kaiser Email;
>>
>> rcubfank at sbcglobal.net
>>
>>
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