Editorial: Omissions must be explained

Our story yesterday on the number of customers left out of the latest 2012 white pages resulted in many more people phoning to tell us that their details had not been included.

We had scores of people who contacted us yesterday morning to voice their frustration. Some had been in the phonebook for 40 years or more and were quite irritated that they were no longer there.

It is not clear yet how the problem occurred, but it could be Yellow - the company responsible for printing the phonebook - or the Telecom service providers.

Either way it seems to be much bigger than first thought.

Many people rely on having their names in the phonebook for personal and business reasons.

What seems to be frustrating many people is that Yellow is not offering any clear answer to explain all the omissions.

A spokeswoman apologised for the errors, but said it was difficult to know why people were not listed because "the causes can be varied".

Judging by the volume of calls we have received, I am sure that many more people are in the same boat.

Anyone who is should call Yellow on 0800 803 803 as they are ultimately responsible for the mistake.

These days many of us use the white pages online to search for numbers, but the feedback this newspaper has received would indicate that many people still use the hard-copy phonebook.

There are some errors so small that one has to move on from them, but this is not just one or two omissions. This has become a big problem.

Yellow needs to front up on what happened and tell us how they are going to rectify the situation.

Maybe it is time Yellow starts thinking seriously about reprinting the directory.