Auntie Charo's Soapbox

Dear Auntie-

I'm all for private enterprise and making a little coin here
and there but had such a rude awakening today and I'm so
disturbed and even more P.O.'d at this GTA!

Since 1998 or so, the GTA phonebook was on-line. Was hosted for
a long time with Kuentos back then, had all the phone numbers,
reverse search, all that good stuff. Was more reliable than the
phone book in 95% of the time. Never had a problem finding
numbers, never had a problem with spelling, they even had this
great prefix set up! Imagine putting 'Cruz' then including 646
and getting all the Cruz' listings with 646 prefix! Hooray!
Of course, it was faster using the on-line phone book than the
411 operator because at the time there were man-power issues.
So, I was a fan and frequent user.

Imagine my surprise and huge disappointment and even more - my
shock! www.411.guam.net is gone, so is gta.guam.net. Now, I
don't know when exactly they took the sites down or when they
might go up, but do you possibly think oh, wise Auntie this is
a ploy to get us to use the 411 and pay the fee for each phone
number? AND! Auntie, I want to know just how long I'm going to
have to deal with someone in the states who doesn't know how to
say the last names, locations and in fact, today said 'GOO-AM?'

I did some research on the white pages for various locations
and yellow pages for other locations and discovered that the
phone book is on-line throughout the U.S. and if I go on-line I
don't have to pay to get the number. I also found out that if
you put a Guam zip code, they do not have any listings. So what
about that new GTA service?

Oh! if you call 411 the operator does charge you for a phone
listing and will also charge you if you ask what time it is in
such-and-such location in the states.

This sucks! I say GTA's new owners got a cherry deal and I wish
the ladies and the guys from the old operators 411 crew were in
the place of the ones we have now who wouldn't know
what 'Papaniyok' store is at the bottom of the hill going up to
Inarajan Middle School is.

You better fix it GTA. It wasn't broken, make it go back to the
way it was.

Thanks for the rant Auntie.