wow,...people surely are angry. Its a friggin phone book people. Its not sucking the life out of you or asking for your social security number.

Take that damn book like I do and use it to light your fireplace with!

Phonebook? Haven't used
once since I got an iPhone.
What a waste of trees.

I make a point not to do business with companies that advertise in phone books.

@ChrisC1234: Maybe they thought you could use them to rebuild?

@mac-phisto: I'm thinking about building a wall out of them to keep the phone book chuckers out.

What bothered me most was the timing. December 23rd? Quite a few people are out of town right around Christmas, and it was pretty obvious who was on vacation just by looking around to see which driveways still had phone books in them a day or two later. It was like a big beacon that screamed "break in an burglarize me!". This was a nice neighborhood with pretty much no empty houses due to foreclosure or anything of that sort.

I understand there are those out there that want their phone books, just like their are those that want the PennySaver and Val-Pak. All I ask is people, like me, who choose to not recieve these items be given a way to opt-out of receiving them.

And hey, when you're done -- you have a souvenir Book of Meals you can keep next to your scrapbook!

In an area where most of your referals are word-of-mouth, a phone book is just kinda useless as opposed to completely useless.

@Eyebrows McGee: I just call 311.

I listened to one of the yellow page sales pitches by phone several years ago.

She goes: "....and it's only $67.00 PER MONTH. For just that low MONTHLY price you can expose your business blah, blah, blah. And because it's only $67.00 PER MONTH, etc...."

I go: "OK, I'll try it for a MONTH."

She goes: "uh, uh, well, no... You see, you can't only do it for a month...."

I went: CLICK.

@CityGuySailing: beautiful

They also list all the various utility vendors that provide service w/in the city, so, first off, you get a one-glance look at who provides high-speed internet and secondly, you don't have to go dig up a bill to find the number to call. :)

I honestly find it considerably more useful than the city website.

Hey, that city services thing sounds really neat. I wish I had one of those.

Our utility company gave everyone a refrigerator magnet with the number to call. But that was because they had to put a new number in, to handle all the calls during the January 2007 ice storm.

Personally, I had it memorized because I had to call it 400,000 times. I finally got through by waiting until midnight.

My paper recycling bin is on my front porch for a reason: Religious flyers, "drive-by" landscapers and phonebooks from at least four different providers.

So they drop garbage on your doorstep and then call you to confirm you received it?

I like phone books and think everyone should get one.

Disclaimer: My job entails verifing information to be published in phone books.

i like getting a printed phone book. its useful for finding contractors when something breaks in my house, part suppliers when i'm looking for something for one of my cars, etc.

@gparlett:

I too live in Dallas, and its odd. When I didnt live in quite a big city we got one a year, updating what had changed. Now we get them every 2 months maybe. I am so tired of them. I stop picking them up personally, I dont know who in my house does but they usually sit for a good couple weeks.

1. Make sandwich on page.
2. Eat sandwich.
3. Turn page.

@CityGuySailing: Brilliant!

I called the cops on a delivery truck dropping phonebooks in my neghborhood.....they came out and made them pick up all the phone books. I don't really know if the cop knew the law on that or not, but the next day, the phone books were back again. I have also chased the delivery van down and handed them back the books they left me and told them not to litter on my property ever again. Bah....never works....I must get a dozen or so phone books a year. Quite a waste of money....

Phonebooks don't annoy me as much as those Supermarket Circulars that are tossed in front of my house. I get 3-4 a week and they go right in the trash (I refuse to take them out of the bag to recycle).

I especially enjoy collecting them after it rains..

Any tips on how to get those stopped?

@MissedTheExit: And of course, the phone books update less often than Google. I've heard that about 0.75% of numbers go bad between when a phone book is compiled and whn it's delivered. And it's potentially much higher by the end of the year.

@Hooray4Zoidberg: or the free variants like 800-GOOG-411, 800-FREE-411, etc. Why give the phone company their nickel and dime when you can dial a couple more numbers?

Years ago, the local newspaper started dropping the daily newspaper off in my driveway. Unfortunately, we did not want the paper, and didn't read it, and the papers were starting to pile up. I consulted with an attorney friend, and came up with an unusual solution. I wrote a letter which I faxed and then sent certified mail to the paper which notified them that I was operating a business which was to recycle papers deposited in my driveway (offer) and for them to utilize my business services, all they had to do was to drop off identifiable papers with their company name on the papers (acceptance). The fee for this would be $5.00 per day, billable weekly. Failure to pay would result in legal action to collect, attorney's fees additional. Delinquent accounts 30 days past due would be refered to the local sheriff's department for theft of services. The contract was good boilerplate supplied by my attorney, and all I had to do was tweak minor verbiage. Wouldn't you know, that the day after I faxed it to the paper, the deliveries stopped.

While Mr. Kohler's goals are admirable, I suspect that what's truly holding him up is the First Amendment. While it's not impossible to draft a legal ordinance to control the problem, the inevitable lawsuit often drains city resources and causes legal headaches. The following cases are illustrative of the complications involved in prohibiting the dissemination of phonebooks and other circulars on private property:

Tillman v. American Distribution Services, 224 A.D.2d 79, 80 (N.Y. App. 1996)

New Jersey Citizen Action v. Edison Township et. al., 797 F.2d 1250, 1258-1259 (3d Cir. 1986)

Statesboro Publishing Co. v. city of Sylvania, 516 S.E.2d 296, 298 (Ga. 1999)

Ad World, Inc. v. Township of Doylestown, 672 F.2d 1136 (3d Cir. 1982)

Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 163 (1939)

What I actually find much more useful is a city services directory that city hall publishes and puts in the welcome basket and hands out at city hall. It has numbers for things like code enforcement, voter registration, animal control, animal shelter, trash pickup, water problems, electricity issues, etc. And it has some basic instructions that help save me time ("Call animal control for this kind of animal, but the pound for that kind of animal." "No trash pick-up on the following holidays" and that kind of thing.) That I keep very handy, it's often much faster than looking things up online, plus all the handy extra info. But it's probably no more than 40 pages.

@KyleOrton: I run a private, internal users only library - but - one of the vendors I use has sold our information and I get weekly phone calls from YelloBook trying to get us to buy ad space. Every week I tell them to stop calling, we are a nonprofit, non-public entity and to take us off their list, and then we get called again...

So I will gladly join you on the soapbox, but on the stop be annoying about getting people to pay for your ads side.

I'm also stock piling them in my basement for the impending apocalypse. They will be a great heat source!

Well since print media is dead, I use it to line the bottom of my bird's cage. So I actually do find them to be somewhat useful.

You know what else is annoying? Takeout menu spam.

I'd prefer if they left out all of the non-commercial listings. I also see how it's a huge waste of resources, and would also prefer if the coupons were available online.

BTW, if the power is out, my internet is down .. if my internet is down, my vonage doesn't work .. so whether or not I have a physical phone book makes no difference. Worst case scenario is I look up a phone number via my cellphone .....

"Look at me, I can find a pizza place without witchcraft!"

I don't want them gone for good. The web is great and all, but it's always good to have a second source for info, even if it is as rudimentary as a phone book.

www.bigyellow.com

I haven't used a phone book in probably 6 years.

If they actually showed someone using their service the reaction would be "Oh, like Google but with more ads."

Haven't used one since I got an iPhone.

What a waste of trees.

Dex publishes the AT&T Real Yellow Pages in Illinois and NW Indiana, the EMBARQ™ Yellow Pages, and the Dex© Yellow Pages (as the official publisher of Qwest®).

I don't know what that means, exactly, but I don't think I was completely off base.

i've tried getting them to stop before with no success. it's ok. i've learned to accept it. besides, i was thinking of adding an addition to the fort this year.

Qwest is not Dex, the article linked does not say Qwest is paying bloggers, it says Dex is.

However they are utterly useless in big metro areas. You should see the stacks of them in NYC apartment buildings - the deliverers usually can't get past the lobby, so they just dump them all there. And no one ever takes one so they just sit there collecting dust.

Not to mention it would take about a 20-pound phone book to be comprehensive in the NYC area...

Such a waste. My local post office always has a mountain of these things in the lobby that people don't want to take home.

I has internet-fu. Everything I need is right online.

"'give what for'; occ. 'what's what.' (With dative.) To beat, thrash; scold, reprimand: coll., the former C. 19-20, the latter C.20 and gen. jocular" ("Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English")

I usually reply with "Well, I put a large yellow book into the recycle bin last week, if that's what you're talking about."