4 ms·

A couple of years ago, I needed to find a limo service for an old family friend, for a memorial service. It'd been some years, but I knew of and used to use on

A couple of years ago, I needed to find a limo service for an old family friend, for a memorial service. It'd been some years, but I knew of and used to use one of the top two limo services in my metropolitan area. (In my area, in a perverse historical twist, a shared limo ride to the airport was substantially cheaper than a cab ride, as well as pretty much guaranteed timely as well as more comfortable.) I'd heard that this was one business area where fly by night companies, and outright scammers, had been stuffing and, where possible, gaming search engine results -- meaning, given their market dominance, Google results. I searched for the company -- mind you, a relatively large livery service with a diverse and well-heeled customer base, sure to still be in existence -- and sure enough, the search results were full of hits purporting to be them or part of them, or just playing on minor variations of their name. If nothing else, the phone numbers didn't look right to me as compared to my vague memory, formed back when people still dialed numbers. Anyway, eventually I pulled out an old, physical yellow pages I'd been hoarding, looked them up in that, and called. They had changed that particular number, although not to something looking like one of the scam results. They had numbers from back when people faced in-state toll charges on phone calls, and since they covered an entire large metropolitan area, they had at that time registered numbers in several local exchanges, to make customer calls to them a local call (just pick the number having a local or non-toll exchange). They still had the number from the yellow pages, though, assigned to an internal extension, and the person who answered took time out of their day to provide first rate customer service for the family friend. The first rate service was still there. However, finding it through a Google search was a risky venture. I'm not at all surprised that Maps contents is being exploited and gamed. I guess I'll hold on to that old yellow pages book a bit longer.

erikpukinskis 8y ago
Did you check if the number listed on Google reached them too?
techsupporter 8y ago
> They had numbers from back when people faced in-state toll charges on phone calls, and since they covered an entire large metropolitan area, they had at that time registered numbers in several local exchanges, to make customer calls to them a local call (just pick the number having a local or non-toll exchange). Totally unrelated to people scamming others on Google, but I love little bits of telephone trivia like this. A large plumber and an unrelated large handyman company in my hometown metro both have the same style of phone number: "just dial your area code then [seven digits]." One other thing we had growing up in that area were the concept of "metro numbers." Back in the day, the area was divided up into three different incumbents and it wasn't always the case that a person physically near you would have a number you could call for free. So metro numbers were ones in specific exchanges that anyone in the six-county area could call with no toll charges. Since all metro numbers were in a handful of exchanges and, because the three old incumbents crossed area codes as well, didn't always follow area code rules (e.g. you could be physically in area code 123 but get a metro number in area code 198), you'll see old businesses with old numbers in area codes where they "shouldn't be." My mobile number is like this. It is a metro number and has an area code and prefix of one side of the metro area but if you look it up in any of the telco databases, those listings say it is "homed" to two counties away in a different area code.
- mikeash 8y ago
  You might enjoy this. I was growing up in the countryside in the late 80s when BBSs and services like AOL started to take off. We were too far away from anything like a city for them to be a local call, so my use of them was extremely limited. I had a friend who lived a few miles closer to the nearest city and they were a local call for him, so we’d always spend a lot of time on the BBSs at his place. Eventually we came up with a brilliant scheme. My friend’s father had a home office with a dedicated phone line. He had signed up for call forwarding so he could be reached when he was away. But outside of business hours, the line sat idle. The process of changing the forwarding number was totally automated and free. Calling his number was a local call for me, and calling the interesting services was a local call for him, so I could bounce through his line (with his permission, of course) to call these things for free.
  - techsupporter 8y ago
    I do enjoy this, thanks. It reminded me of another memory: Growing up, my house sat on the border between two of the incumbents. It was odd enough that dialing the Operator got the pre-connection announcement for the incumbent that mailed us the phone bill but calling Information (411) got the pre-connection announcement for the adjacent city's incumbent. This also happened to make my hometown one of a handful that could call local numbers served by either incumbent in the same area code. I was doing work for a tiny ISP and my boss asked my parents if he could put a Livingston PortMaster 16 in our house and hook up 16 phone lines in exchange for paying my parents a small sum and giving us free Internet access by sharing the connection with the PortMaster. We agreed and, thus, I became one of the few teenagers at the time to have high-speed wired Internet at my house. (None of my peers gave a crap but I loved it.) The phone company was less overjoyed because we consumed every available pair in the cross-connect box at the end of the street and nobody on our block or the next one over could get an additional phone line for months until a new box was added. (As a capper to the story: A second cross-connect was added...but the tiny ISP went bankrupt a month later and all 16 of those lines were disconnected, rendering the shiny new cross-connect pointless.)
- mnw21cam 8y ago
  Why would you need to dial your own area code? (Unless you're using a mobile, I guess.)

erikpukinskis 8y ago

Did you check if the number listed on Google reached them too?

techsupporter 8y ago

> They had numbers from back when people faced in-state toll charges on phone calls, and since they covered an entire large metropolitan area, they had at that time registered numbers in several local exchanges, to make customer calls to them a local call (just pick the number having a local or non-toll exchange). Totally unrelated to people scamming others on Google, but I love little bits of telephone trivia like this. A large plumber and an unrelated large handyman company in my hometown metro both have the same style of phone number: "just dial your area code then [seven digits]." One other thing we had growing up in that area were the concept of "metro numbers." Back in the day, the area was divided up into three different incumbents and it wasn't always the case that a person physically near you would have a number you could call for free. So metro numbers were ones in specific exchanges that anyone in the six-county area could call with no toll charges. Since all metro numbers were in a handful of exchanges and, because the three old incumbents crossed area codes as well, didn't always follow area code rules (e.g. you could be physically in area code 123 but get a metro number in area code 198), you'll see old businesses with old numbers in area codes where they "shouldn't be." My mobile number is like this. It is a metro number and has an area code and prefix of one side of the metro area but if you look it up in any of the telco databases, those listings say it is "homed" to two counties away in a different area code.

mikeash 8y ago
You might enjoy this. I was growing up in the countryside in the late 80s when BBSs and services like AOL started to take off. We were too far away from anything like a city for them to be a local call, so my use of them was extremely limited. I had a friend who lived a few miles closer to the nearest city and they were a local call for him, so we’d always spend a lot of time on the BBSs at his place. Eventually we came up with a brilliant scheme. My friend’s father had a home office with a dedicated phone line. He had signed up for call forwarding so he could be reached when he was away. But outside of business hours, the line sat idle. The process of changing the forwarding number was totally automated and free. Calling his number was a local call for me, and calling the interesting services was a local call for him, so I could bounce through his line (with his permission, of course) to call these things for free.
- techsupporter 8y ago
  I do enjoy this, thanks. It reminded me of another memory: Growing up, my house sat on the border between two of the incumbents. It was odd enough that dialing the Operator got the pre-connection announcement for the incumbent that mailed us the phone bill but calling Information (411) got the pre-connection announcement for the adjacent city's incumbent. This also happened to make my hometown one of a handful that could call local numbers served by either incumbent in the same area code. I was doing work for a tiny ISP and my boss asked my parents if he could put a Livingston PortMaster 16 in our house and hook up 16 phone lines in exchange for paying my parents a small sum and giving us free Internet access by sharing the connection with the PortMaster. We agreed and, thus, I became one of the few teenagers at the time to have high-speed wired Internet at my house. (None of my peers gave a crap but I loved it.) The phone company was less overjoyed because we consumed every available pair in the cross-connect box at the end of the street and nobody on our block or the next one over could get an additional phone line for months until a new box was added. (As a capper to the story: A second cross-connect was added...but the tiny ISP went bankrupt a month later and all 16 of those lines were disconnected, rendering the shiny new cross-connect pointless.)
mnw21cam 8y ago
Why would you need to dial your own area code? (Unless you're using a mobile, I guess.)