Vox:
Each year, you probably get a fat new yellow pages phone book delivered to your doorstep. It’s possible you also get the white pages either as a separate volume or combined as one book.
And if you’re like 70 percent of Americans, you probably don’t even open the phone book before the next year’s batch arrives.
For many of us, these are a giant PITA and just one more unwanted thing we need to deal with. Mine go straight into the recycling bin.
For Canada:
http://optout.ypg.com
I’ve opted out 10 times, still get this crap every year.
It’s alllllllll about the advertising.
I still use the blue pages once in awhile, but I’m old that way.
I figure the phone book is like Nielsen. Organizations that somehow still make money by telling clients what they want to hear.
I’m clearly an idiot, because when I read ‘phonebook’ I for some reason through you were talking about a phablet (I hate that word), like a cross between a phone and a notebook. I came here expecting an article about idiotic screen sizes (like the ones the iPhone 6 is apparently going to use).
Here in Sweden they stopped producing them a couple of years back.
Save ’em. Otherwise you’ll be in trouble when the Global Toilet Paper Crisis hits in 2016
Have opted out.
No longer get any white or yellow.
I had to laugh when I got our last Yellow Pages because there were literally two restaurants advertising in it: one pizza place, and one Chinese place – and we’re not living in the boonies or anything.
I haven’t received an official phone book in many years.
We get various and sundry yellow pages because they are ostensibly advertising packages.
yet, in this era, I wish there were more phone books, not less.
I think of it as a last-resort backup of local contacts for when our power goes out for over a week, like it did after Sandy.
The yellow pages isn’t about giving you information, its about selling advertising. With a huge “circulation”, its easy to sell ads to gullible local vendors. I make it a point of explaining it to new vendors that I use, like plumbers, that I got their info on the internet and explicitly told them that I haven’t used a yellow pages in over half a decade. That’ll hopefully dry up the supply of cash going into those ads. However, the last plumber that I used basically said that it was easier to say “yes” to the yellow pages salesman and send the checks, than to create his internet presence. To many small businesses doing biz on the internet is as opaque as quantum physics is to the rest of us. In a world where email is baffling magic, putting up a decent website is problematic.
I just opted out a few days ago. Hopefully I won’t keep getting them every year like “imthedude” is.
Last year, during the week that we usually get the new phone books, I left a big note on my front door that said “PLEASE SAVE ME A TRIP AND LEAVE PHONE BOOKS IN RECYCLE BIN IN BACK YARD”. It didn’t work, but hopefully this opt out option will.
You asked your letter carrier to take your trash out for you.
My response might have been “Please save me a trip and come pick up your mail at the post office.” 😉