W.Va. Phone Book Riddled With Errors

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – When you call the number listed in the new Verizon phone book for The Charleston Ballet, you get an elevator company.

The white pages listing for the ballet’s American Academy of Dance and its free yellow pages listing under dance schools are missing altogether.

The errors are three of many in the new Charleston and Huntington phone books.

The government listings feature the towns of Cedar Grove and Milton in the federal government section and Barboursville Elementary in the state government section. The index at the bottom of the pages also spell Putnam as “Putman.” The schools section doesn’t list Riverside High School at all.

In Huntington, the Cabell County Board of Education is listed under schools, United States government, county government and state government. All the listings have the same number – for the Milton school bus garage.

“We are aware of it, and we apologize for the inconvenience for those omissions or errors,” said Karen Testa, a spokeswoman for Verizon SuperPages, which publishes the phone book.

“It’s always in our best interest to provide the most accurate directories possible. There are literally hundreds of thousands of listings in those phone books. That said, errors do occur.”

Not many people have complained to Verizon, but Testa said the company will publish a supplement to correct the government listings. “We will continue to work to resolve these problems,” Testa said.

Putnam County Commissioner Jim Caruthers said he was not offended by his county’s misspelling. He acknowledged that residents often pronounce it as “Putman” anyway, so maybe Verizon took a cue.

“It’s just one of those little quirks. Of course, I did just switch to AT&T about a month ago.”

Kim Pauley, the ballet’s artistic director, said she recently switched to Fibernet. Fibernet and Verizon each blamed the other for the phone book problem, so she called the Public Service Commission. Verizon then looked into it.

“They said if I was a customer they could have offered something. Since I was no longer a customer they were not going to do anything,” Pauley said.

Pauley says she plans to call Schindler Elevator Corp.

“I was going to call and offer some apologies in advance for Nutcracker calls that will be coming to them in December.”

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Information from: Charleston Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.com