One blogger asks whether it’s time to get rid of the paper phone books that seem to show up on our doorsteps whether we want them or not:
When was the last time you looked up something in the phone book? What did you do the last time you got a free phone book dropped off on your doorstep—did you recycle it? If you’re like most people these days, your answers to those questions are probably “I don’t remember” and “No.
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Some states and phone companies already have “opt-out” programs, similar to do-not-call registries for telemarketers, allowing subscribers to indicate that they don’t wish the receive the phone book. Proponents of “opt-in” programs, however, say that they’re easier for consumers and more effective in reducing waste. Cincinnati Bell started an opt-in program earlier this year, bringing their White Pages online and only providing the printed version to customers who ask for it. In Florida, AT&T plans to test out an opt-in program for its White Pages in four cities this fall. The company is considering a similar program in Missouri’s metropolitan areas as well.
Rob Pegoraro also covered this issue in today’s Help File:
QHow can I get the phone company to stop sending me phone books? They go straight to the recycling bin at our house.
AFor a lot of people, the Internet made the yellow and white pages obsolete sometime in the past decade — the last time I flipped through a phone book was six years ago in Italy, where I was delighted to see so many listings with my last name.
But directory publishers can still profit from these products, and so they keep depositing new copies on our doorsteps.
Furthermore, I’ve yet to see a phone book offer clear instructions about how to opt out of distribution. But you can now look that information up online at http://yellowpagesoptout.com, a site launched this month by two trade groups, the Yellow Pages Association and the Association of Directory Publishers.
Plug in your Zip code, and the site will list publishers operating in your area, with phone numbers to call to opt out of distribution. In my case, the site found four companies — Idearc Media, which provides Verizon’s phone books; Yellow Book USA, a competing firm; Chinese Yellow Pages, which has yet to send me a directory; and Your Community PhoneBook, a publisher of smaller, neighborhood-specific directories — and provided numbers for the first two.
The more interesting question is why anyone would want a phone book to begin with. We continue to get them at our home, and they either end up getting put into a closet where they’re never seen again, or they end up getting recycled, and I don’t think I’m alone. Which just leads me to ask the same question Kevin Drum does:
The really mysterious part of all this, though, is that despite the fact that phone books seem like they ought to be a dying breed, there are more of them than ever. I just looked, and we have not one, not two, not three, but four different yellow pages directories. One from Verizon, one from Yellowbook, and two from AT&T (they come in two different sizes for some reason). They’re all crammed with ads, which must mean people are using them, but I do sort of wonder who that is sometimes. I use the web almost exclusively for this kind of thing these days, and I imagine that most people in my upscale neighborhood do too. So why all the phone books?
Especially given the Internet, and the fact that if I need to find a specific number I can use 411 on my cell phone, or the Yellow Pages application on my Blackberry.
I suspect James Joyner may have hit on the answer, though:
Presumably, because there’s money to be made in selling ads in them by convincing businesses that widespread distribution equals widespread use. This is the same strategy that, for example, has the Washington Post frequently offering to give me the other six days free along with my existing Sunday edition if I’ll merely agree to take them. I decline on the grounds that having to go fetch a paper six times merely so I can recycle it is not attractive.
One has to assume that we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of these bulky, inconvenient bricks of paper.
Two reasons I keep mine:
1) When friends come over, we don’t have enough booster seats for the kids. Put a phone book in the seat and you have an extra three inches for the three year old.
2) Every now and then, web searches bomb out or are so overrun with false hits that they aren’t of value. I had this a month ago when I needed to find a locksmith in Falls Church that a) had a store front and b) could reprogram the remote on my car.
As an entreprenewer™, I can point to two not unrelated issues:
1. Not entirely unlike the current health care debate, a big part of the explanation is that the customer is often not the consumer. I, as a franchisee, am contractually obligated to have a yellow pages ad — and the franchisor has no incentive not to require me to continue having one. Alas…
2. Boring old prisoners’ dilemma: If I and all my competitors all agreed not to run ads, we’d all be better off. But the threat of defection steers all of us to opt for ads — to no one’s benefit. Double alas…