Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 17, 1995                   TAG: 9503170032
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ALTERNATIVE PHONE BOOK HAS A FEW GLITCHES

An alternative phone book that began landing on doorsteps in the Roanoke Valley this week is creating some confusion among phone customers who aren't used to seeing a book other than one with their local phone company's name on the cover.

Community Directory Co. of Virginia began work last summer on a Roanoke Valley phone book, seeking to compete with Bell Atlantic Corp. and others for lucrative Yellow Pages advertising.

The company began distributing 183,000 books to valley residents this week. About 100,000 are being delivered by Pinpoint Target Marketing, a delivery service of the Roanoke Times & World-News.

The book contains some erroneous listings for customers of the Roanoke & Botetourt Telephone Co. of Daleville. The listings carry the wrong three-number prefix.

Because of confusion about the source of the book, however, phone customers have been mistakenly contacting Roanoke & Botetourt Telephone to complain about the errors.

That company's president, J. Allen Layman, estimated that about half of the 5,500 numbers in the 992 exchange were printed incorrectly as having a 922 prefix.

``It is important for our customers to know that we are not the publishers of this directory,'' Layman said. His company did not supply its numbers to Community Directory Co. and is not connected to the new directory in any way, Layman said.

Roanoke & Botetourt Telephone's new phone book should be mailed to customers this week and will have a photograph of Botetourt County farm products on its cover, Layman said.

The Community Directory book has a nighttime photograph of Roanoke taken from Mill Mountain on its cover.

The new directory, which is distributed free, has a number of features that have not been common in phone-company Roanoke directories in the past such as larger print, an 800 number directory, city street maps, and a dining and entertainment guide.

Community Directory's production supervisor was in Wilmington, N.C., and was unavailable to talk about the errors.

Lou Maraschiello, Community Directory's chief financial officer, who is in Lynchburg preparing the company's second directory there, said he has received complaints about the erroneous numbers, but he referred questions to the production supervisor.

Maraschiello said if advertising customers find any problems with their Yellow Page advertisements the company ``will make it right.'' But he said there's nothing it can do about errors in the white pages.

Bell Atlantic also gets complaints meant for Community, said Mike Rieley, a Bell Atlantic employee. That company wants to be sure that people understand the new directory is not Bell Atlantic's, added spokesman Paul Miller.

Bell Atlantic will begin distributing its own new directory for the Roanoke Valley on March 27, Miller said.