I've never had an experience anything like that with the post-Google search engines. Give me an example of a searchterm that you used, please.

I almost always find what I'm looking for on the first page, and usually in the top few results.

Anyway, we've strayed off-topic here, and to get back...

It's utterly unscrupulous for an editor of a free directory to write to a submitter and say, thank you for submitting your site - the speed it will take to list it depends on how much you are willing to pay. For that category, DMOZ became a paid listing service for a while. Utterly unscrupulous.