118118 is one of the many (supposedly 200+) companies offering Directory Enquiries in the UK and is one of the top three 118 companies which together control 90% of the industry. More recently, 118118 has launched a services allowing you to text the company a question and receive a reply from a real person.

For the last few days I have been playing with the service and using the 10 free requests 118118 offers from their website. Some of the results are spot on while others are not to great. Let us now take a look at the last 10 requests I made.

To begin some statistics, 40% of my results were deemed ‘unanswerable’ by the service, two were of ‘questionable accuracy’ and at the time of writing one question still has not been answered some 12 hours later. The average response time was 4.4 minutes.

Question 1

Q: What is Tom Merritt’s phone number at CNET.com and how do I dial this from the UK
A: Try Cnet Networks UK at the Europoint House, Lavington St, London. Tel: 02070211000. Nothing found for Tom Merritt’s Number.

I guess this is a good attempt. Idealy the 415-344-2000 telephone number from which the company address book is accessible from would have been a better reply. The 118118 operator could have even called the number and pretexted a direct dial number for me!

Question 2*

Q: My chinese friend’s name is Chui Ying. Does this mean anything in Cantonese/Mandarin
A: No charge, the 118118 Team is really sorry but we’re unable to answer your question

The claim, ‘Ask us anything’ is not the same as ‘We know everything, test us!’.

Question 3

Q: Who owns the website ‘flatmatesrequired.com’
A: No charge, the 118118 Team is really sorry but we’re unable to answer your question.

Firstly to answer the question, I do! Secondly, website domain names have WHOIS entries. If you were to look at that you would have been able to say Ross C Brown / Kismet Networks owns the domain and probably the website too.

Question 4

Q: How long does it take to transfer between Glasgow Queen Street rail station and Glasgow Central Station
A: For the next train, 30 minutes.

Well done. National rail publish a 30 minute transfer time between the two stations (by foot as their is no connecting train service). Realistically it can be made by an able body person in 15 minutes and if you run it can be made in a little over five minutes.

Question5

Q: What is £15 GBP in Hong Kong Dollars
A: £15GBP is approximately $231 HKD as on May 29th 2008.

Spot on, the actual response gave five figures right of the decimal point so it was hardly ‘approximate’.

Question 6

Q: 2+2=5. Can this be true?
A: No charge, the 118118 Team is really sorry but we’re unable to answer your question.

From Wikipedia: “In measurement in physics, the number of significant digits is usually encoded in the way a number is written. That is, unless otherwise specified, “2″ has only one significant digit, which means it represents a measurement with a margin of error of 0.5, which means the actual value may lie between 1.5 and 2.5. When adding such measurements together, the margins of error are also added, so 2 ± 0.5 + 2 ± 0.5 = 4 ± 1.0 . And since “5″ actually means 5 ± 0.5, these margins clearly overlap and one could jokingly argue that the numbers are the same.”

Question 7

Q: When can I watch ‘How I met your Mother’ on the TV in the UK
A: On the television channels ‘Trouble’, ‘Living TV’ and ‘BBC 2′.

Spot on, the reply also included a telephone number for the BBC so I could phone them up and quiz them on their schdualing.

Question 8

Q: What is the age of consent in Scotland?
A: The age of consent is 16 regardless of sexual orientation or gender.

Okay, Google seems to agree here but I was of the understanding that the age of consent is 16, or 18 if they are in a position of trust in relation to that individual, for example a teacher or care giver. Looks like I might be wrong…

Question 9*

Q: Why are the images sent back from Mars in black and white, not colour?
A: There are [sic] colour images sent from he [sic] panoramic camera in 2004.

Didn’t answer my question. The operators done seem to be knowledgeable of current events either.

Question 10

Q: Who is Ross C Brown
A: No Reply (as of May 30th, 14:30h)

Um, okay I know I’m not that famous but c’mon! Google me!

The two questions marked with an Asterisk (*) indicate questions I accidentally asked twice. The second replies are different to the first replies. In the second reply to my friends name the answer ‘Chui means ‘beat with the fist’ and Ying means ‘to oppose or attack” was given and in response to my question regarding black and white images the response, ‘Scientists often prefer black and white images are they are better for scientific study and can be altered with a number of lens filters’.

All things considered, this service looks good if you are asking basic questions like ‘If it is 5PM in the UK what time is it in New York’ or ‘When is the last train from Edinburgh to London’ but if you try anything too complex or not accessible on the first page of Google your results will be a little hit and miss.

Considering more and more mobile phone makers are better integrating the Internet into handsets, it this service particularly useful? Have you used this or similar services? Comments blow in the big box at the bottem, please!

Update: I’ve just published my follow post here, please check it out and leave your comments.

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