310 Area Code Debuts Amid Glitches, Anger

The Los Angeles area’s new 310 area code got off to a shaky start Saturday, with some callers reporting no glitches and others finding themselves trapped in tape-recorded limbo.

Pacific Bell officials said the 2 a.m. area code conversion, which affected 2.4 million customers in western sections of the Los Angeles area from Malibu to Long Beach, was accomplished in a smooth process of computerized reprogramming.

But as telephone use within the 310 area picked up Saturday morning, Pacific Bell operators reported a wave of complaints from callers who said they had been given conflicting advice from pre-taped telephone company messages.

“It’s been like this all morning,” sighed a harried Pacific Bell operator--a live one--who preferred not to give her name. “There’s some kind of problem with the system. All we know is that they’re working on it.”

Pacific Bell spokeswoman Kathleen Flynn said that the first callers caught in Saturday’s snafu were General Telephone customers. “Apparently some GTE customers calling into the 310 area code are being told to make their calls one way and when they do that, they get a second message telling them they should make their call another way,” Flynn said.

Then, as angry callers flooded Pacific Bell switchboards, it became difficult at times to contact that company’s operators, Flynn said.

A GTE spokeswoman, Jaya Koilpillai, said the foul-up was caused by differing conversion systems used by her company and Pacific Bell that were not compatible, a condition that was expected to be corrected by today.

Koilpillai said she was uncertain how many of GTE’s 1.1 million customers within the 310 area code were affected. Most live in Long Beach and Santa Monica, she said.

Pacific Bell had planned to convert to the 310 area code on May 2, but delayed the move when sections of Los Angeles were hit by riots. Preparations had required reprogramming in Pacific Bell’s South Los Angeles office, but that was postponed when the office was shut down for almost two days during the height of the unrest.

The city’s extensive arson fires damaged 30,000 telephone lines, said Flynn of Pac Bell. Several workers who ventured out to survey the damage were attacked. One was beaten, Flynn said, suffering a broken nose and facial cuts. In another incident, a brick was thrown at a service truck. In some cases, workers did their repairs accompanied by police.

The 310 reprogramming resumed once “our repairmen were certain they could go out safely again,” Flynn said.

The conversion was put off for another week because it was Mother’s Day last Sunday, traditionally the year’s busiest day for phone use.

Flynn said callers within the new area code who are not GTE customers have experienced few problems. That was seconded by Art Massaro, a West Hollywood voice mail clerk whose customers had been calling in all morning Saturday without difficulty.

Massaro said the new 310 area code has been greeted with the kind of confusion that typically strikes whenever consumers are forced to change their habits. In recent days, some customers have mistaken his private firm for Pacific Bell and singled him out for complaints.

“Two women came in here the day before yesterday to bitch about it,” Massaro said. “You know, the usual starlet types. They lived just north of Sunset and they couldn’t understand why their area code changed. I said, ‘Look, ladies. I’m not the phone company. Tell them .’ ”

Massaro said he tried to be sympathetic Saturday morning to a car detailer who showed up to complain that he had to throw out 3,200 newly printed business cards after learning that his 213 area code had been changed to 310.

“It’s hard to feel sorry for some of these people,” he said. “It’s not as if they didn’t get a lot of warning.”

Pacific Bell officials had conducted a public awareness campaign over the past year, sending out warnings in telephone bills, separate letters and in notices printed in Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Russian.