EDMONTON – An Edmonton grandmother can now sleep easy, after Bing fixed a typo on its website, which had her phone number listed as the line to Yellow Cab.
“I checked straight away and it’s gone,” said Leona Krohne on Friday. “Now I can enjoy my deep sleep. I’m really very, very relieved.”
“It’s so annoying and frightening to get phone calls in the middle of the night because you don’t know what it is.”
Krohne was tired of getting woken up at night by people calling for a cab.
“Especially during the holiday season, it’s chronic. I get about five, six calls a day for Yellow Cab. And at night it’s the worst. We are woken up at 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock, 2:30, 2,” the 71-year-old says.
“I get such a fright. I got two children..I’ve got grandchildren, always think something terrible’s happened. And now my daughter’s expecting any day – the moment I hear it ring I just fly up.”
The reason for all the calls? The senior’s number was listed as the line to Yellow Cab on Bing.
Krohne says she’d never even heard of the search engine until discovering this problem. All she wanted was for the company for fix the mistake; but that hadn’t been so easy.
“I’m not computer savvy,” she admits. “I tried to go on Bing and clicked on ‘Help line’…and then I went through it and then there was a phone number, and I called that number and I was on there for ages.”
She eventually gave up, and turned to Global Edmonton’s Trouble Shooter for help. When contacted by Global News, Bing’s advice was to reach out to Yellow Cab,” as Yellow Cab can request these third party phone number directories to update their information.
“Bing doesn’t create or manage content from third parties, but pulls the information from their websites to our search results,” Kimberly Lamberton wrote from Waggener Edstrom Communications wrote in an emailed response on behalf of Bing.
When Krohne called Yellow Cab in the past, though, she was told the company can’t help her. Yellow Cab did not return Global News‘ calls on Wednesday.
Krohne didn’t want to have to change her number, or turn her ringer off at night, in case her children need her.
“I would like to see the number taken off Bing. That’s all I’m asking, is just Bing to go into their website and take my number off, that’s all I’m asking.”
On Thursday evening, Bing contacted Global News to say the typo had been fixed.
With files from Julie Matthews, Global News
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