Need an operator

January 2, 2011 11:48 AM

I need to call 411 to get someone's home phone number. I live in the US. This person lives in Northern Ireland. How do I do that?

I tried googling. I found a few white pages lookup sites but they couldn't find the person.

Another bunch of sites say to call "11818" but this number in combination with various country and region codes gets me either a busy signal or "This call could not be completed as dialed".

I was wondering if anyone could give me a complete and accurate string.

posted by amethysts to travel & transportation (5 answers total)

Try this.
posted by Dan Brilliant at 11:52 AM on January 2, 2011

I tried this site and several like it. They couldn't find it. It's a pretty common name and they couldn't find any entries for it so I thought that was odd.
posted by amethysts at 11:57 AM on January 2, 2011

If your quarry isn't in the BT phone book then he/she may have chosen to be ex-directory (unlisted) and I'm afraid that calling directory enquiries is not going to help.
posted by Dan Brilliant at 12:01 PM on January 2, 2011

Actually it did work after all, it just took a few tries for some reason.
posted by amethysts at 12:08 PM on January 2, 2011

Looks like you got the answer anyway, but just in case or for anyone else wondering, probably the number you wanted was '118 118' (or 118 247, they work the same), plus the appropriate code to call the UK, although I don't know if it's possible to call that kind of number from outside the UK.
posted by Lebannen at 12:22 PM on January 2, 2011