Posted On: Thursday - March 28th 2024 1:22PM MST
In Topics: Internets Websites Big-Biz Stupidity Scams Customer Care
See, this is what happens often at Peak Stupidity. We write posts to give background for a point, interesting or not, and may never get to the point itself. I did remember this time. Those background posts are on the old ways of looking up people and businesses: Let your fingers do the walking - - The days of the HuWhite pages, and The Yellow Pages - Factoids and Fun.
Though I've been using and switching out various search "engines" - see our post Peak Search Results - I have found bing the best for one particular thing. That thing is the looking up of business phone numbers, most particularly local ones.
As the discussion under those background post covered, particularly that by commenter E.H. Hail, the whole way of doing many things is less orthodox and structured now, the time of ubiquitous internet. For this task, here's no more "Well, duh, look in the Yellow Pages, of course!"* On the internet, you try this, and you try that. Maybe you find a site that's good for your needs for a while. Later that site goes to shit, which is, from my experience, ALMOST ALWAYS the case.
So, yeah, for some years now, bing.com has been great for me when it comes to getting those phone numbers and addresses. (Sometimes the maps even help, as I can see which location of a chain of businesses is closest.) Luckily for me, as opposed to the case with weather sites**, for example, I have not had to scramble and find a working replacement for this important function yet.
Bing has phone/address info for all over the country. When doing some family traveling, I've tried to get numbers to call hotel desk people to get what I can't learn on-line. I don't know if this could be called an actual SCAM, per se, but one has to be really careful to get the search result, on bing, this is, that has the map along side it in order to get the real honest-to-God hotel phone number for, like, the actual freaking hotel! If you readers are still interested here, see first the "Hampton Inn Kingman AZ"*** search results for bing, and then, seeing as how I'll try them sometimes, those for duckduckgo.
Note that on either site's search results page, the first blurbs are NOT for the hotel itself, but from "Guest Reservations.com "Reservations.com", Reservations DESK.com", along with your usual "Trip Advisors" and "PriceLines", "Bookings.com" etc, and the big overall hotel chain itself (as opposed to the brand). My laziness has me reading off phone numbers from the results blurbs, if they are there. DuckDuckGo is the bad one about this, for me anyway. They'll have the numbers, and, without having searched for the area code for the city, I may figure 855 is one, not a toll-free number. (See PS's discussion in that 3rd background post on those "800" numbers and proliferation of actual area codes.) Even the result with the map on DDG has the misleading info.
I end up mashing (virtual) buttons to get to the front desk, and I end up on the phone with India. I don't even KNOW THAT for a little while because it might be the •Indian owners of this Patel Motel at the actual desk in America. The
You just have to watch it. I think bing is best. Look for the local map and what you are sure is the area code for the city before calling. The big booking sites want you to get to their reservations lines, outsourced to wherever. This is not a rip-off scam, but it's one that wastes time. Time is money too, after all, and calls to India are stressful. Stress can turn into money too, so there ya' go. I hope bing will keep one of their best features, their improved replacement for the Yellow Pages.
PS: In doing due diligence here, I did call the (928) number. The phone rang easily 20 times, making me wonder if this was the correct number after all. It was - it was just that the poor clerk (a White lady) must have been doing other work. I felt bad saying "sorry, wrong number" after she must have run over there finally. That's better than, "sorry, Ma'am, just some Peak Stupidity due diligence work." "What?" "You mean you've never heard of us?! Here's the url, got a
* Even when there were competing Yellow Pages, back near the end of that era, there had to have been lots of overlap, and one would just keep the books together there near the phone... those that hadn't been already used up at the shooting range ...
** That post was not about the weather forecasts on phones. It was titled Darksky goes Dark.
*** I give this example semi-randomly. Hmmm, maybe,per this TakiMag column about Steve Sailer's new book, this will be the secret meeting place for one of his events in or yeah, kinda near, Los Angeles yeah, that's the ticket....
... No, it's not, but for those hostiles who can't read more than a couple hundred characters at a time, well, we'll see you in Kingman! Here's the phone number for the Hampton Inn - (855) 605-0317 - I'll be at the swimming pool laughing my ass off.
Comments:
Moderator
Thursday - March 28th 2024 4:58PM MST
PS: Getting a human is hard work, Alarmist. I must be immortal, because I do get them sometimes. My ancient Chinese secr ... my technique is to mash "0" over and over. The software gives up after a while.
The Alarmist
Thursday - March 28th 2024 3:57PM MST
PS
Foolish mortal, thinking you can get a human actually in the Western hemisphere.
Foolish mortal, thinking you can get a human actually in the Western hemisphere.