Stop Putting Yellow Pages Directories on My Doorstep

yellow pages directory

Yellow Pages directories used to be such useful tools. Remember those days? Everyone had one in their home in close proximity to their landlines. You could walk down the street and find one attached to every payphone in town.

I don’t know about you but Yellow Pages directories don’t seem like tools anymore. They just seem like really heavy trash. Especially when you come home or open your front door in the morning and find one sitting on your doorstep.

When I get one on my doorstep I immediately throw it away, which is funny since the Yellow Pages I got on my doorstep today said “Do Not Recycle Before May 2009“.

If I want to look up a telephone number, locate a restaurant or find a good bail bondsman I immediately head for the Internet and Google search. Not Yellow Pages.

How long before AT&T and other directory makers stop putting them on my doorstep? Not only are they ineffective search tools when compared against Google but they are also wasteful.

I understand that AT&T earns ad revenues by putting directories on my doorstep but it seems like they could earn valuable goodwill and also valuable attention for YellowPages.com if they ran a final season/last tour/retirement campaign for their doorstep directories.

Tagged as: at&t real yellow pages, yellow pages

Elaine

You're missing the poitn- I didn't ask for the book and I don't want it. There are millions who have the same preference. Get it if you want it- but don't deliver me unsolicited items. I can stop unsolicited phone calls, unsolicited mail, the phone book should be no different.
kenc

perhaps the 18-34 subset has never had a reason to you use the print YP. Case in point: Case in point – my 26 year old son, one of those people under 30 who you say never use the Yellow Pages, buys his first home. He asks me to come help him fix a old floor. We rip up the old wood floor to find all kinds of leftover glue and crap still on the slab. After 10 minutes of trying to scraping this stuff away, I know this is going to take the rest of the weekend on my hands and knees to get this done – and that’s not my version of a great weekend. My son runs upstairs, fires up his pc, and starts searching. 10 minutes later he is no closer to a solution then when he started. I grab his print YP and in one minute I’m talking to a local equipment rental shop that has a special buffer with a steel wool pad on the bottom that is perfect for the job. Problem solved.
Andrew Meyer

Thanks for the facts, SHobbs.

I agree that I'm part of a smaller subset within the 18-34 who uses the Internet for everything: Watching TV, paying bills, writing documents, etc.

As this subset grows and more people start using the Internet for everyday tasks it will become more and more apparent that Yellow Pages should stop putting books on our doorsteps and instead focus on the Internet (which will be painful since that means getting rid of their cash cow).
SHobbs

FYI, last year U.S. consumers went to the printed yellow pages 13.4 billion times, and that includes usage by the 18-34 group. Small businesses rely on the books to reach customers who are "ready to buy" and our industry uses recycled paper and the residual wood from lumber production to produce the books. Many people use print and internet together for the best search results. Full disclosure, I work for the Yellow Pages Association, for the facts on our industry go to ypassociation.org.

Stop Putting Yellow Pages Directories on My Doorstep

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