Here, the Yellow Pages are marketed with the slogan “Stop searching, start finding. Yellow Pages - The Find Engine.”
It seems to me to be abysmally poor judgement to remind potential customers of the existence of the internet. Why would they invite comparison? Have they got some new format that allows you to find the closest [blank] to you, evaluate them based on unbiased reviews, visually confirm that they have good parking and that the premises are well-maintained, and print out driving directions from your home - in a fraction of the time that it would take to arrive at a shortlist from the phone book based on the single criterion of proximity?
I used to keep one around for internet outages - on principal - but don’t recall ever needing to resort to it, and now I think that if I ever find myself without internet in the home (ie; both ADSL and 3G connectivity have simultaneously failed) I’ll probably be more concerned with keeping the zombies at bay than trying to find a number for a pizza place.
Yet the phone books were delivered yesterday. Recyclng day is Thursday - I expect that I’ll be pitching 10 out of the 12 sitting there in the lobby of our building. (Not so bad. 50 out of 50 delivered to our office went into the recycling bins for three years before I could get them to stop delivering them. “No, really, we have redundant internet here - this pallet of books is nothing but a waste disposal problem for us. Just stop it!”)
If you ever do figure out how to opt out, please let me know. I get at least two new phone books a year, sometimes more, at home…and a truly ridiculous number of the damn things at work. It’s an obscene waste of resources. I don’t even remember the last time I used the things.
In my area they are not mailed. The various companies hire people to go around and deliver them door-to-door, and they always seem to come while I’m at work, so refusal is not an option.
No they’re not. As someone who spent a good chunk of his life working with people who deliver the damned things, I can truly attest that they don’t burn well at all.
I had this one dipshit contractor in Louisville, KY who took out about 800 phone books, put them in the middle of a corn field, tried to light them on fire, then panicked when the dried stalks around him started burning faster than the phone books. I get a call around 7 in the evening from the local fire department wanting to know what I wanted to do with the books - 800 books and about 20 of them were scorched (the rest were destroyed by water damage), in the middle of about a half-acres patch of burnt corn.
Oh, you have no idea. You go to some of these company’s websites and you can barely find mention of their printed product at all.
The above is for a company that used to be called “White Directory Publishers”, and they still publish (as the largest share of their revenue base) about 5 million books up and down the eastern seaboard. But looking at their site you don’t see a single reference to the product that brings them their largest share of revenues, do you?
Since 2007 the number of printed phone books in the US has decreased from 600 million to 425 million. It is a rare book that is expanding nowadays, and the publishers are doing all they can to slash costs - removing the white pages, shrinking the size of the book from 9X11 to 7X10 and smaller, etc.
If my internet connection is down or the power is out and I need to call someone, I’m hosed without a phone book. And yes, it does happen more frequently than I’d like.
With two or three strategically place bookmarks I can frequently find the number I need in the book before the browser has had time to launch.
Bonus third reason:
Every once in a while someone just does not show up in an online search, even though they are listed in the physical book. This is especially true of small businesses.
I use it occasionally. It’s surprising how many businesses hereabouts have little or no web presence, sometimes you’ll find a number online for a company and it’ll be a disconnected line, or just plain wrong. When that happens I consult the phone book.
The internet is ok for business numbers. Only if you know a business name. If I need a hardware store, then I look in the yellow pages under hardware.
I always look up individuals in the phone book and get an address.
I use my phone book every week of my life.
I do use google for business names. “Pizza Hut” search gives the addresses and phone numbers in my city on googles 1st page. Saves time and I can order my pizza
I’m surprised to see how many people don’t use phone books anymore. It’s the first place I go when I need to find a business for something or need to find the phone number of a business I know the name of.
My business has 9 telephones. So, we receive 9 phone books. I then have to find a way to dispose of or recycle 9 phone books. A small town nearby had a nice recycling dumpster with paper/glass/plastic/etc slots. It was removed last year because it was being used too much.
I’ve used the things until fairly recently. We’ve lived where we are now for, let’s see, four or five years, and I don’t know whether it’s a local thing or the state of the industry, but the ones we’ve been getting here just suck. They have LOTS of listings for businesses that aren’t there (and in some cases haven’t been there for years), and are missing lots of others. So I’ve got out of the habit. The last time I used one it was to try to brainstorm for a restaurant we weren’t bored of that would deliver, and it was a great big puddle of fail.
All the time. Usually, it’s a business, rather than an actual person though.
How do I find your restaurant? Do you have X in stock? How late are you open on Sunday? I need to set up an appointment for an eye exam. That, and think about any kind of remodelling. Last year, I had to find a couple of city offices for permits, a plumber, and electrician, a painter, an appliance store and a cabinet seller.
My wife at home during a power failure, calling me at work: “Could you go online and look up the number for XXX?”
Me, wanting to sleep on the couch: “You know, someone should print out all of those numbers and take a copy to everyone’s house.”
I do use the phone book on occasion looking for repair services which have coupons in the yellow pages.
“Only if you know a business name?” You’re kidding, right? If I Google “hardware store” and my city, it will give me a list and a map of all hardware stores in the area and all their contact info, I can zoom into my neighborhood and look at Google Street View to see each store front if I want to.
And agree with whoever said some of the categories suck. I needed to buy a new suit for a funeral from a specific shop that does custom-tailored suits. Never found the shop I was looking for in the Yellow Pages because it was listed under “athletic goods”, because they make “sportcoats, suits, and formal attire.”
We keep our Yellow Pages around, but we use it mostly for physio exercises, and it’s the right high for my front wheel when I’m using the bike trainer.
Yah, we don’t actually like being slaves to electric gizmos and tend to have some alternatives around the house.
