It's The Law: AT&T Has To Give You A Phonebook
from the thanks,-government dept
AT&T has been testing a plan to distribute residential phone books on CD, rather than on paper. That sounds like a great idea that marries environmental benefits with cost savings, and could probably be taken a step further by only distributing the white pages in any format on request. Yellow-pages publishers are struggling as the web steals away their audience, and it's hard to imagine the white pages gets much use any more, either. But there's at least one obstacle standing in the way of the elimination of the white pages: laws in some states that require the company to publish and deliver a residential directory to every one of its customers. I'm hard pressed to remember the last time I used the white pages, and given that they don't list cell phone numbers, they're growing more and more irrelevant to many people. Burdening the phone companies with their production and distribution seems pretty pointless these days, not to mention the environmental impact of millions of the books, the vast majority of which are never used, and only a small portion of which are recycled.
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Challenge the law.
Of course, if people really cared, all they need to do is contact the phone company and simply request an omission on delivery.
From that, the phone company can then challenge the law with customer (you know, The People) support.
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Re: Challenge the law.
I also don't care enough to spend 30 minutes on the phone explaining to the company why I don't want their awesome product.
The only thing I hate more is when newspapers try to litter my yard with their trash/product. Probably twice a week I get something thrown in my yard.
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Re: Re: Challenge the law.
Silly! Don't call the sales number! Call the business number.
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Re: Re: Challenge the law.
And I get over 5 different varieties of phone books from the The Real Yellow pages and white pages plus The Yellow Book, and other imitators.
I do recycle them but I get over 50 pounds of phones about every 6-12 months.
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Re: Re: Challenge the law.
"Whenever I walk, people try to hand me out fliers, and when someone tries to hand me out a flier, it's kinda like they're saying, 'Here, you throw this away.'"
-or-
"I had a paper route when I was a kid, I was a paper boy. I was supposed to go to 2,000 houses... or 2 dumpsters!"
But seriously its kinda funny this was just mentioned. I was just talking to AT&T yesterday cause I am moving to a different house & they were telling me when I should receive my phonebooks I told them just to keep them I don't want them or use them anymore & they said I have to have them.
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Re: Re: Challenge the law.
Forget the phonebooks, that's a once a year deal. It's also nice to have a paper copy, just to be on the safe side. It's the freakin free newspapers that tick me off.
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Then call them to stop delivery and cancel the subscription. If they give you a hard time tell them you can't read and seeing the paper every day is a reminder of that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Challenge the law.
I was outside one day and the lady yelled, "Compliments of the News and Observer" and threw it in my yard. I ran over and handed it back to her, and explained I didn't want it. She was genuinely puzzled (no sir, it's free) until I explained that I never read the paper and this is just trash for me to clean up.
Why can't they just put it in the mailbox?
BTW, the Mitch Hedberg jokes fit perfectly. Funny stuff.
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Re: Re: Challenge the law.
I use the books from time to time, but I would prefer a single dry one delivered to the door or a card telling me to pick it up at a central location.
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Re: Challenge the law.
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Re: Challenge the law.
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Same here...
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Right into the recycling bin
But keep in mind that there is a different imperative for yellow books. Because they are advertiser supported, the yellow book companies must demonstrate wide distribution.
They are both useless to most people.
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Some
Sure the white pages have a few more numbers and seem slightly more up to date, but no more than I use them I can pick up a phone book and thumb to the correct page as quickly as I can open a browser window, type the url, select my area, type the name, and hit enter. That's especially true, like an order of magnitude or more's difference, if my computer isn't already on.
The online yellow pages are far, far, worse than the carrier's paper version. They're full of advertising, cover way too broad an area, and so on. Hell, they're on par with being as bad as all the third party area directories we get that don't include half the local businesses but seem to include others from every surrounding county for 50 miles.
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Re: Some
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Re: Some
That said, I find paper phone books, especially yellow pages, far more effective than their online counterparts, especially if you are just browsing.
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Re: Some
Now they want to give us CDs? I'm just going out on a limb here, but my guess is this 'CD' is just an opportunity to install some type of spyware software on our PCs.
Ditch the CD idea. Duplicate the book as a browsable online application that runs in a browser without registration and allow us to easily opt-out of the paper version ONLINE. That's the solution.
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Re: Some
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Urg
Phone books need to go, if you still need one then you should be able to request one for free from the phone company.
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Just ask the folks in the midwest who didn't have power for weeks after a major winter storm.
How deep is your battery backup, 2 hours?
We don't need a new phone book quite so ofter, but if I were you, I would keep one around. Just in case.
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Pretty silly.
If Qwest instead gave me a DVD with all the white/yellow page info on it I might actually use it as an adjunct to the web.
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cross platform
It's not that hard to do: just use a good file format and make sure the data is available as a csv file. But somehow I suspect they'll also include a bloated windows-only program so they can also show you advertising next to the listings.
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Re: cross platform
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Yellow Pages aren't dead
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Re: Yellow Pages aren't dead
Yeah, and once they have internet access, they'll never look in the yellow pages again.
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Re: Yellow Pages aren't dead
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Here is a great business idea...
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unwanted phonebooks
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I know the audience for this site is self-selecting - you all might want to remember that not everyone has a computer.
Having said that, if the states don't allow you the ability to opt-out of receiving a phone book, they should.
"...the vast majority of which are never used, and only a small portion of which are recycled."
Can you prove these assertions? Or are you just assuming everyone behaves the same as you?
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but what about the other uses
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I say both. Print a smaller book and make the directory available online.
Oh wait....
http://anywho.com/
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It used to be that we got one phonebook each year. Now we get about 6-8. White pages, yellow pages, alternate yellow pages, yellow pages for other towns, etc.
Even so, I can never find what I'm looking for half the time. Case in point; I recently had problems with my ear and my joint doctor recommended that I see a specialist. The only ones I could find in the yellow pages under Ear, Nose & Throat were in other towns and wanted $200-300 just for an office visit. I ended up going to a walk-in clinic and the doctor there referred me to a local specialist who only charged me $105 to clear my ear and prescribe drops for an infection. I asked why he wasn't in the book and he said he was, just not in the yellow pages. Ok, how am I supposed to know about him if he isn't listed under the specific category that I need?
I wouldn't mind having the directory on CD, IF the listing was in plain-text format that I could view and search using my own software. If they want to put a Windows only viewer on the disc, that's fine with me, as long as you don't actually need it to search the data.
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Laws VS operations
If you've ever heard that phrase and believed it in any way. Then you'll understand why there are laws requiring the phone company's to do this. What if you could only call people or places who's number you already had...
It's easy to think everyone does as I/you do but there are plenty of people without computers.
Would you really force little old laddies to have to call in to get a phone book?
Or, for those who just have a desktop with no power back up. Look at what happened back in the east with the ice storms... I'll bet a few of them used their phone books.
Yes, the law should support customers who opt to get it on CD or not at all.
Though the problem here isn't necessarily the law so much as the way things are done. The phone company contracts a company to make the books. Then that company subcontracts to have them distributed. The subcontractors then often hire day-labors to deliver. Who are many times paid buy units delivered.
It just becomes simpler and more effective to give everyone a book. Then having to go back out weeks later to get those that where missed.
Now the yellow pages are a whole other mess. Basing there sales off how many go out on to door steps.
So laws or regulations that I'd support are ones requiring these companies. To have recycling initiatives for a set pound or tonnage delivered to any given area.
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Re: Laws VS operations
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Very Young People Here
I'm with the people who point out that on-line yellow pages and search sites are of very limited use. They not only take longer to deliver results (i.e. turn on the computer, enter the search term, sort through the results) but they also provide incomplete results. Even something as obvious and simple as looking for pizza delivery provides incomplete results, or results for areas well out of my geographic boundaries. (like, say, several towns away, or even in a different state.)
I still use both the yellow pages and the white pages (and the government pages) as frequently as I've ever done in the past. Yes, it's a nuisance to try and find people who have ditched their land-line, but on-line searches don't work well for them, either. Nothing beats a phone book for speed and reliability of results, not to mention ease of browsing. Despite all the whining here, phone books are still commonly used by most households, and businesses.
A CD would be a pretty big handicap for that percentage of the population that doesn't have computers, or isn't on-line. This is not an inconsiderable amount of people. The ccallousness and indifference of the people here in this forum to those who for whatever reason (age or economics, say) are unable to keep up with the digital revolution is pretty astonishing. Having nearly complete agreement with the author's point by commentators here does not actually prove the author correct, as this is an audience with a fairly limited perspective.
As for getting rid of the books that one doesn't need, well, that's just one small thing on the list of life's annoyances. In my state, recycling is mandated, and every community provides curbside recycling. It hasn't been any more difficult for me to get rid of my old phone books as it is for me to get rid of all my junk snail mail -- which actually is considerably more in quantity and weight than the phone books I get rid of.
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some of us are more frugal than you
I use a long distance provider (actually a reseller) that charges 3 cents a minute, less if you talk to somebody else that also uses them. I don't make enough calls to justify signing up for a plan that charges me a fixed rate per month. I find the per minute costs of a cell phone ludicrous.
Where I live the main choices for Internet access are the cable company or DSL. I save a good bit by using DSL with a regional ISP. My main gripe is that I can't get naked DSL, I rarely make local calls.
I like having a phone book. Most of the time when I lookup a number I'm calling a business. Typically I don't know what business I want to call, and the additional information in the yellow pages is useful.
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Too young to relate
I'm not entirely sure if this may be due to living in Rhode Island. Here, there is absolutely nothing that is more than 30 minutes away. I live within a half hour of 5 malls, 9 super markets, 4 Wal-Marts, 3 Targets, 3 Lowes, and 2 Home Depots (and probably 500 Dunkin Donuts, I kid you not). Not to mention hundreds of small shops, mechanics, auto-body shops, hardware stores, barber shops, liquor stores, etc. Although I haven't traveled across this country much, it's my understanding there aren't many areas like this. So, if I need something done, there are probably about 3 places that can do it for me that I drive by on a daily basis where I can just jot down their number
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Against the Law
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Change the law (UNLISTED NUMBERS FREE)
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Phone books thrown on yard destroyed by rain moisture
I have pictures and the books that are destroyed...anyone have this happen to them where the books are damaged due to the elements?
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