ERRORS EXIST IN LATEST BOOK; PHONE CUSTOMERS FIND WRONG LISTINGS FRUSTRATING

Darby Ulery is frustrated by the calls to her Cape Girardeau home from people who think they've reached Crown Shoes.

The Town Plaza store closed more than a year ago, but the store's number is still listed in the Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages and in the business listings in another regional telephone directory published by McLeod USA. Distribution of the latest directory began Friday.

"People still call looking for moccasins," said Ulery. "We get several calls a day."

She isn't alone. A number of area residents report frustration with the fact that their business, school or home phone numbers were left out of the Bell phone book. People who once looked to the local phone directory for accurate addresses, phone numbers and spellings are increasingly disappointed.

Cape Girardeau School District numbers were left out of the book entirely along with a number of Cape Girardeau County government offices. The wrong number was listed for the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department, prompting some people to call the 911 emergency number just to get through.

Southwestern Bell officials in St. Louis blamed the missing school numbers on a software error and the sheriff's department problem on the county's switch to a new phone system last year.

The phone numbers for Cape Girardeau public schools and county offices are listed in the McLeod directory, but that directory has other inaccuracies.

McLeod, which publishes phone directories in 23 states, gets its area telephone listings from Southwestern Bell. Steve Bell, a local account executive with McLeod, said his firm bought the telephone listings from SWB late last year.

Bell said McLeod employees attempt to contact local businesses to make sure the Yellow Pages entries are correct. But no such effort is made regarding residential numbers.

Laverne Smith, administrative assistant to the superintendent of the Cape Girardeau School District, said no one contacted school officials about the latest directory either.

School numbers wrong

Cape Girardeau's Blanchard Elementary School was left out of the McLeod directory, and telephone numbers were listed for Washington and May Greene schools, which are no longer being used as elementary schools. Southeast Missouri State University owns Washington School and May Greene is used as an alternative school. The alternative school number isn't listed in the McLeod directory.

Bell said the information on the schools was provided by Southwestern Bell.

Since the Southwestern Bell directory came out in December, Smith said the district's board office has been bombarded with calls from people seeking phone numbers for the various schools. Teachers called for numbers to other buildings, prompting the central office to fax a list of phone numbers to its teachers.

The direct phone number for the adult education and literacy program at the Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center isn't listed in the Southwestern Bell book, and only the vo-tech school's main number is listed in the McLeod directory.

That concerns Nancy Branson, who coordinates the adult education program. The program helps people get high-school-equivalent degrees. It's hard enough for people to get an education without having to navigate through the phone book, she said.

Both directories contain two different numbers for CrimeStoppers. The crime prevention program is listed correctly under its own listing, but the program's old phone number is in the white pages listing of Cape Girar-deau Police Department numbers.

Big Brothers Big Sisters, a not-for-profit mentoring organization, has three numbers listed for it in both directories. Only one is a correct number for callers. Another is a fax number, although it isn't listed as such. The third is an Internet connection number. "It doesn't have a phone attached to it," said Alison Staggs, executive director of the Cape Girardeau office.

Neither company plans to reprint its book.