A Yellow Pages Rant – What’s With The Phone Book Company SCAM? Americans Go Digital and Save Our Resources and Our Landfill Space

Once again I have received the damned Yellow Pages Phone Book. I do not want these books - I have not used a phone book in nearly five years. Ever. Not even once in five years! Usually I toss the old book – which is still in pristine condition - in the recycling bin annually and accept the useless new book. But this year I have chosen to do something different – RANT!

Yep, I know I rarely rant, but this time it’s personal. Several times a year I receive pounds and pounds of unwanted phone book on my front door step. Because most of my referencing is done online, I find it a tremendous waste of paper. There are some people who might need or want the annual Yellow Pages distributions – but my preference is the distribution of phone books should be consumer driven. In other words, we should be able to opt-out of receiving this junk mail or better yet, if the books are wanted, they should be requested individually on an opt-in basis.

Think about that – how many people would actually take the time to phone the phone book company and request a free book? Seriously. Not a single person I know. This is surely why the program does not exist. IT IS A MONEY MAKING SCAM!

According to the Yellow Pages Association, consumers reference print Yellow Pages directories more than 12 billion times per year while Internet Yellow Pages sites receive 4.6 billion references each year. My question is where do these statistics come from? NO ONE HAS EVER CALLED ME FROM THE YELLOW PAGES COMPANY! EVER!!! Are they out there dialing up everyone in the United States to get a truly accurate number instead of an estimation?

Information from www.stopthephonebooks.com really puts the phone book scam into a green perspective:

Creating 500 phone books takes:

TREES -- according to a study in California 17 to 31 trees- depending on how much is new paper and how much is recycled paper .

ELECTRICITY – 4100 kwh (a 3 bedroom house in Colorado uses about 600 -1500 kwh per month-- so that about 3-6 months of electricity)

WATER -- 7000 gallons of water (that’s about 14 gallons of water per book - Gee, I thought we were trying to cut back on wasting water).

GAS – ????  -- how many gallons of gasoline for the delivery trucks? Gas for the trash trucks? Gas for the recycling trucks?

So-- how much did we use for 615 million phonebooks ? -- Well, that’s about 1.23 million times each of the numbers above -- in just one year (and we are not even including the electricity and water it takes to recycle these products yearly). Also, guess what? Only 15% to 20% of the phone books created are recycled annually. 

Of course, that’s an estimation, right? It’s just my opinion, but according to the Yellow Pages Association website, it’s okay to estimate, right? That’s how they got their 12 billion number. Apparently estimating how many people are actually utilizing their phone book product justifies how much of our natural resources we are destroying. With this mindset, estimating is a great way to justify tricking businesses into advertising in a useless, wasteful, out-dated, resource-sucking product also.

My thought is this is a SCAM to take money from business owners and is an utterly useless and ridiculous piece of advertising SPAM which we do not want. It’s time for all of us who agree with the this rant and opt-out of this insanity and do something kind for the earth.

I phoned the below phone book businesses today and tried to opt out but could not. ATT/Yellow Pages was impossible. I tried to opt out, repeatedly, but no one ever answered the ATT number so that I CAN opt out. I will try again tomorrow.

— ATT/ Yellow Pages: 1-800-479-2977

— Verizon: 1-800-555-4833

— DEX: 1-877-243-8339

— Yellow Book:1-800-929-3556

In my opinion, it’s part of the SCAM – they avoid you on purpose so opting out is not a consumer choice – how unprofessional. But then again, businesses which build scams really are not very professional are they?

Here’s the reality - most of the directory companies do not offer telephone menu options which include opting-out. It would be great if they provided an online way to opt out – I guess that’s just asking way too much from a bunch of scam artists!

This is an issue we should be contacting our government about. Contact your local representative and tell them you want something done about this outlandish scam built to steal good businesses money!

Please help come up with additional ideas to make a difference. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think -

Do you feel this is a giant underhanded SCAM like I do?

What can we do to stop this unprofessional practice from phone book company’s around the globe?

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

Comments

[Beverly]

Yellow Pages is archaic in their print and delivery. There are much more efficient ways to advertise, and, anyone who chooses to advertise in the Yellow Pages, well, I don't respect them, I take my business elsewhere. They are Dinosaur SPAM.

[Becky McCray]

Shawna, based on the comments on my yellow pages rant, there are still some small businesses who actually benefit from yellow pages ads. So they are not without value. But I still stand behind my rant, for many of the same reasons. You go right ahead and rant!

[Isky Soma]

So you guys will be ok with the thousands of jobs that would be lost. What about the local phone companies that have a phonebook distributed, should they not produce them or are you talking about just independent phonebook publications that have nothing to do with the phone company. By the way most of these companies have an opt out on their websites. How about the population that does not have access to a computer, or the elderly, also half the numbers on online phone directories are wron. Harsh reality as long as there are phones phonebooks will be around.

[Andrew Shane]

Thank you for providing me an opportunity to comment.

I understand and appreciate your frustration. That might sound weird coming from someone who works at Idearc Media, a company whose legacy is as the official publisher of the Verizon Yellow Pages.

What also may sound weird is that I want to give you and your readers the URL to opt-out of all the directories you receive - - www.yellowpagesoptout.com. On this site, you can include your zip code and all the publisher's that deliver in your area will appear with their opt-out information. Your blog included our opt-out number - - 1-800-555-4833. Hit option two.

I respectfully disagree/question the accuracy with some of the data points you cite regarding the environment. I know www.yellowpagesoptout.com includes the facts.

I understand my opinion is skewed, but I do believe one yellow pages that actually offered something special is a great resource to have. Problem is, folks like yourself get inundated with directories that have almost the identical information.

Until now.

Problem was publishers were busy defending the yellow pages in general instead of differentiating them.

We pride ourselves on not being your father's yellow pages. We've introduced something new and different for consumers that is available online on our www.superpages.com resource and in print in the yellow pages. Our free SuperGuarantee program is designed to put your mind at ease - - when you hire a contractor, auto mechanic, painter, plumber or other of our service provider clients, we will stand by their work. If something goes wrong, we will step in and try to make it right or, if we can't, we will give you up to $500.

Now I understand you may be thinking since the program is available online, I still don't need our yellow pages. Fair enough, but I do think you would agree our yellow pages would be a great resource to have if you needed a painter, contractor, auto mechanic a mover, etc. One yellow pages that provides you with something special.

You mention scam to small businesses. I hope you see the value of the SuperGuarantee to businesses. Wanted to quickly share with you something else we are offering our clients (businesses) as a way of providing additional value to them. Our SuperTradeExchange (www.supertradeexchange.com) provides businesses with a network of other businesses to barter with - - a great opportunity during a recession.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Andrew Shane

[Shawna Coronado]

Currently got through to ATT/Yellow Pages at this phone number - 1-800-479-2977. A lady directed me to another phone number saying she could not help me - 1-800-922-0008.

I called the number and was sent to an automated telephone messaging system. It told me to call customer service at 1-800-479-2977. Note - this is the original phone number I called.

Nicole at ATT in California answered after I had a nervous breakdown and began banging on the "0" number over and over and over in frustration because I was sent to 4 different auto links.

Nicole said I actually need to speak with the delivery department. I was put on hold for five minutes while she researched where the delivery department telephone number is for my area.

I listened to lovely elevator music and stewed a while. Nicole came back and asked me a lot of questions, but was overall very polite and helpful.

After letting her know which phone books I get (we calculated six of them every year), she promised to have the local delivery people NOT deliver any more. She also mentioned that wasting paper is not good.

I will let you readers know what happens next mass phone book delivery day.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could just go online and click a button to make this happen?

ARGH~!

Shawna

[Joe Lamp'l]

Well for your first rant, you picked a doosy!
I totally agree. For the phone company, it's all about the circulation. Our newspaper startup in town did the same thing. They give us this crappy newspaper each day so they can tell their advertising prospects they have a larger circulation than the more established paper in town. Unfortunately, it's a piece of junk compared to the paper we pay to get.
I hate the phone book and would love the option to opt out. But until its a law, we'll never get that option from the phone book company. Stay at this Shawna! Great post!!!

[Mike Lieberman]

There was a huge stack of these in my building lobby. Need to figure out ways to use them.

[Shawna Coronado]

Thanks Alan - this is unbelievable, isn't it? When I started doing the research I was shocked and angry. I hope we come up with some creative ideas to make this a better situation for the United States.

Shawna

[Alan Bechtold]

Shawna -- the scam goes even deeper. They don't want to allow you to opt out so they can continue to charge outrageous prices to businesses to "advertise" within their pages to reach over-inflated numbers.

It's the same scam perpetuated by so many cable TV channels that tell you they are "in X million homes" or that they "reach X million" homes and base their rates to advertise on that reach when, in fact, 90% of the homes they reach often never watch the channel.

The difference is -- cable at least isn't destroying so many trees and resources to keep the lie going. Thanks for making me aware.

If ever there was a need for an "opt out" law like CAN SPAM it should be for phone books!