One more reason to hate Yellowbook.
Dear Yellowbook:
Today you littered my neighborhood. You left yellow bags with your directories in them at each home. They’ll lay there for many days — perhaps weeks.
It’s not so much that I didn’t ask for this delivery, or the colossal waste of paper, that bothers me. It’s that you couldn’t even bother to put in on my doorstep. Instead, you left the Yellowbook at the edge of my driveway. Actually more on the street than the driveway.
That creates some problems. First, the edge of my driveway is much further away from the trashcan than my front porch. And the Yellowbook goes straight into my trash can. Second, the neighborhood dogs like to pee on Yellowbooks. If it’s at the edge of the driveway, it’s an easy target. Much easier than if it’s on my front porch.
That means I have to touch a pee covered book in order to throw it into the trash. Of course, if I found some sort of use out of your directory, I still wouldn’t be able to use it since it is now soaked.
So I beg of you. If you’re going to deliver a heap of trash, please at least make the effort to bring it to my front door.
JS says
If you are concerned about the waste of paper, recycle instead of throwing it in the trash (it is better than nothing).
Andrew Allemann says
@ JS – yeah, unfortunately it’s hard to find a place that recycles them.
Andrew R. says
Phone books used to be useful. (Seriously – they USED to be.) For free what a deal that was for a consumer.
I would guess within a few years dropping unwanted phone books off to everyone will not be allowed. Most people that have Internet access don’t use the outdated phone book that is not searchable anyway.
For some reason my local company seems to give me 4 full phonebooks twice a year and 4 smaller sized phonebooks at the same time as well. Over 5 years that is 40 full sized phonebooks and 40 smaller ones too.
Wow, 5 years = 80 phonebooks delivered for one household. How much paper is that? At least I can recycle them, but still – what a waste.
mrx says
@Andrew R.
Phone books are searchable. First you search the wrong category. Then after you’ve found the right category, you search the pages for the closet place. You can even leave notes on the pages about your favorite shop!.
M. Menius says
I’m laughing. Good post. Your disgust is funny and at the same time something everyone can relate to. Darn phone books. And the wads of junk mail too! Never stops.
Jay says
I was a paperboy 20+ years ago and I always got good tips at Christmas as I rode my bike right up to the door where most of the other delivery people just threw them from their cars to the bottom of the driveway.
What annoys me worse than yellowbook is I signed up for all my bills to be paperless as I just pay online. AT&T sends me junk paper mail every week. Sometimes they even make the junk look like greeting cards etc… I don’t get that they push the save the planet and sign up for paperless billing but then load my mailbox with upgrade garbage weekly. When I need something I buy it as I don’t have patience. Weekly junk mail from them actually makes me not want to upgrade anything and I’m beginning to not like them so much.
bernard says
Ok, ok, this the point of view of a domainer, willing the yellowpages to be replaced by a network of geodomains with $$$ to get listed into. Just LOL, you are so transparent.
I am sure you think: How can these SMB be so idiot to pay to advertise in Yellowpages.
But did you ask yourself: how many geodomainers live in your neighborhood?
Jade says
Recently, there was a grocery cart loaded with local phone books by the front door of my local grocery store.
I simply pushed the cart to my car and loaded almost all of them up (left a few in case somebody really did want one) and then drove to my recycling center and dropped them off. 🙂
bernard says
Good bless you Jade!
SHobbs says
Want fewer books or don’t want any books at all? Go to http://www.yellowpagesoptout.com and customize or eliminate your delivery.
As far as use, 8 out of 10 US consumers use the YP and the ROI for advertisers remains consistently high.
In this economy, many small businesses rely on the YP for new customers, critical to success right now. Full disclosure, I work for the Yellow Pages Association, for more information about our industry go to http://www.ypassociation.org.
Bo says
When I need a local phone number or address I Google it. I have thrown all phonebooks out of my house. They are a waste of space.
John Berryhill says
“As far as use, 8 out of 10 US consumers use the YP”
Does that include the dogs?
Ms Domainer says
*
Yes, it’s definitely MUCH BETTER to be bombarded by a bunch of junky spam MFA sites, when you’re trying to do a serious search.
😉
Seriously, Yellow Book WILL evolve into the cyber world; it will have to or die.
*
don says
Great post…they are pushing their online directories pretty hard as this is an even better roi than the print side of their biz, and lots of these companies are being forced into a pay per call biz model which actually increase their biz value from a marketing perspective.
bernard says
I think a geodomainer should sell his portfolio to another domainer and grab stock from a YP company, it would certainly be a wiser investment. As an example, the french company PagesJaunes is a Huge Cash Cow, with a yearly 10% pay out.
PagesJaunes (second website in France) develop its online website without missing any opportunity for any direction including social web.
I would say it is likely that 8 americans out of 10 use the YPs: with about 50%, US is not an advanced country what concern broadband access (like most asian or european countries). Joe certainly prefers to open the YP book than turn on the computer, the modem, and wait for minutes for the info.