Much to my surprise, the site is not only unrecognizable (read: fugly); it also does not seem to do what one of its primary functions - the reverse lookup - used to be.
And, believe me, I tried, and tried, and then tried some more. And even checked out the absolutely useless "Help" section. No dice.
I should also mention that, the moment I clicked on my fave link to 411.ca, and before I even ran any searches, the IE's security function asked me if I want to allow / disallow the site to track my location. Seeing that tracking should not be required for a reverse lookup I want to run, I disallowed. But, despite me expressly disallowing it, 411.ca still tracks...
my location - the fruitless searches were eager to notify me that there were no matches to my search within 5 km of my very correctly pinpointed geolocation.
So, very frustrated, I wrote them an email, as follows:
Dear Canadian 411,
I loved your uncluttered, easy to navigate AND functional old website.
Today, I got the first taste of the new, cluttered with useless to me junk information (top restaurants, top real estate agents and, most useless of all, most active users near me), impossible to navigate new one...
Maybe it is just me, although I have spent many active years in IT business, but I cannot help but wonder why is it that there is always someone who takes a good, clean website and "improves" it to the point of hardly being usable? And ugly looking, to boot.
Today, I was trying to reverse-lookup a fairly local (in my area code but different city) number.
The result said it did not find any matches within 5 km of my city.
Curiously enough, as I have not allowed the site to track my location; how is it then the site knew which city I am in? And why, in the first place, is this even switched on?
A lookup is a lookup; I don't need the site to tell me that the caller and I live in same / different location. Blatant violation of user privacy, which I intend to follow up on.
As for the failed search because of the different location, I presumed that's what the right hand side map was for, to select another city, but was unable to; the map zoomed in and out, but the cities were not selectable. What's the use for a gadget that does not work?!?
I even checked the Help section, in hopes of finding some shred of useful information as to why a simple reverse lookup (yes, I have used it before, many times) does not work.
Sadly, no useful information there, either.
How do I, in clear, understandable steps, please, simply just locate a number on your site these days? And when will the site stop tracking users' location, despite of being disallowed to do so?
Regards,
<yours truly>
Nobody bothered to reply to me. But, then again, I was not holding my breath.
