Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 06/02) - Florie Mariano was a little surprised when she suddenly could no longer contact the Bell Acti-Media representative in town.

Mariano had communicated with the rep to change the name of the dental clinic she works at, Great Slave Dental, from its old name: Yellowknife Mackenzie Dental. She also wanted to update the white and yellow pages listings to reflect the name of the new dentist, Dr. Roger Armstrong.

"She just disappeared out of the blue," said Mariano. "She stopped calling me. I told her specifically (that) I had to show (the yellow pages ad) to my boss for final approval."

That never happened, and now the Great Slave listing incorrectly identifies the dentist who works there.

They aren't the only ones.

Bell Acti-Media takes care of updating the database which NorthwesTel uses for its phone book. The representative that went missing had been in charge of updating business listings for the entire Northwest Territories.

"The main crux of the problem is we don't seem to have received the complete information on some customers from Bell Acti-Media," said NorthwesTel spokeswoman Anne Grainger.

"There were some problems with the rep that was in town here," said Karen Poitras, NorthwesTel product manager for directory and payphones."

Asked if there could be wider problems with the phone book, Poitras said, "Potentially, yes. We're not exactly sure what they could be. But we'll find out more, I guess, once people get the new directories out there and look and see what potentially could be the problem."

"I don't care whose mistake it was. It's shoddy," said Debbie Maracle, office manager for the Yellowknife Catholic school board.

The listings for the Catholic school board and Yellowknife public school district No. 1 have incorrect numbers in them. For example, for the Catholic board the number listed for the superintendent is actually the number for finance.

In years past, NorthwesTel has occasionally issued stickers to correct erroneous listings. But according to Grainger, that only happens when an emergency number is incorrectly listed. For example, last year the white pages listing for city hall was actually the city emergency number, so NorthwesTel released stickers to correct the mistake.

Grainger said in this case NorthwesTel was not advised by Bell Acti-Media of any potential problems with the business listing database. The phone company started hearing about the problems when customers called in.

Grainger said NorthwesTel has not yet received many calls. Copies of the phone book are being distributed this week.

Special features on business listings -- such as bolding -- are billed by Bell Acti-Media. NorthwesTel says it is not liable for errors in the directory -- there is a disclaimer at the front of the book -- and is directing customers with erroneous listings to talk to Bell Acti-Media, which calculates billing information.

"Bell Acti-Media would be the ones who would ... hopefully make an adjustment to what they're charging their customer," Grainger said. "If they ordered super-bold and they're not getting super-bold, then they shouldn't be paying for it."

Representatives from Bell Acti-Media were not available for comment.