Comments on: European Directories sends legal threat to guy who wants to make it easy to stop receiving phone books

By: Martijn

Martijn — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:06:00 +0000

This single thing weighs as much as quite a sizable pile of other junk mail. I have no interest in volunteering to throw out other people’s crap because they seem so interested in generating crap.

They can go on graphic designing and printing them if they really want to, as long as they don’t deliver them to me. Although to be honest, the printing kills an unnecessary amount of trees.

By: Martijn

Martijn — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:02:00 +0000

The cool thing is: they have a website too! The Dutch Yellowpages/De Telefoongids, at least. So there’s really no need to kill that many trees at all.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:10:00 +0000

It takes a vast amount of trees and polluting energy to produce huge stacks of things that mostly nobody uses anymore and then haul them around to be dumped on doorsteps.

By: jordand

jordand — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 08:31:00 +0000

Who cares? Just get the phone book and throw it away. How hard is that? Do you really wanna get rid of the jobs involving the admin of these things, the graphic design, the printing and the delivery? How hard is it to just chuck them out once or twice a year?

By: toyg

toyg — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 20:31:00 +0000

Geert Wilders is a recursive problem: assuming he’s right about throwing out people to make the country nicer, he should also be thrown out, at which point clearly he wouldn’t think the place got nicer after all.

By: C W

C W — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 19:31:00 +0000

We have the internet in our country.

By: C W

C W — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 19:29:00 +0000

So OPT IN, I know how to search for things online, I don’t need shady helpers.

By: C W

C W — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 19:28:00 +0000

Of course they do. In Seattle, they’re dumped in the rain to rot. It doesn’t matter if anybody reads them, because the book publishers claim the delivered as “customers”.

By: C W

C W — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 19:25:00 +0000

Multiple updates, multiple companies all trying to spam me with them, yes.

By: catgrin

catgrin — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:03:00 +0000

It would also cost them less to produce. The idea behind the paper book is that it caters to those who aren’t that comfortable on computer, but that makes little sense. Age ranges have changed, and most people are now basically computer proficient. In fact, seniors get a lot of use out of social network sites!

As long as they set it up to be viewable at multiple sizes (for those with vision problems), and easily searchable, there’s no good reason for all the paper waste.

If they were following their existing model, the ads would be prepaid inline ads, charged by size.

By: catgrin

catgrin — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:50:00 +0000

Not only that, here in Long Beach we sometimes get a call to see if the book has been delivered, and would we mind taking a survey? I’m on the DNC directory, and have notified all callers that I did not initiate any business with them, so they should not be calling me. They stopped after the first year.

By: Anselm Lingnau

Anselm Lingnau — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:43:00 +0000

No problem. You can have my old one as I just picked up a new one from a huge pallet at the supermarket. Feel free to come by and collect it.

By: Ray Perkins

Ray Perkins — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:59:00 +0000

I always wondered why they didn’t have an option to receive the book on a CD. It would be much more useful (as it would be searchable), and I’m sure they could have unblockable pop-up or inline ads in it.

By: branko

branko — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 07:15:00 +0000

Update: as a result of Klöpping’s action, Dutch parliament has called for making the phone book opt-in.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 06:58:00 +0000

Aren’t they getting smaller? The latest copy I have seen of the London Yellow Pages was about the size of an average novel. You could get half a dozen at least in most mailboxes.

By: e40200287

e40200287 — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 05:03:00 +0000

I would love to have a phonebook. In my country nobody gives you a phonebook for free.

By: Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 00:15:00 +0000

He should probably put avertising on his site to create revenue.

By: nixiebunny

nixiebunny — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:52:00 +0000

As far as I can tell, it’s not littering if it’s done by a corporation.

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:48:00 +0000

We did – as Jason notes, different providers – two different yellow pages and a white pages. Now that I think about it, that’s not including the two more local business directories.

So 5 times a year, not three.As so many other cities have done, mine has eliminated that ridiculous nuisance littering.

By: petz79

petz79 — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:26:00 +0000

I’m glad that my country’s got only one phone directory company (the former telecom monopoly, postal and telephone) and doesn’t deliver the books to the households anymore. They only send you a flyer which you can use to get a phone book at the next post office. In recent years I’ve seen more and more phonebooks staying on the huge pile in that office. Apparently nobody really wants them anymore.

By: dbergen

dbergen — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:04:00 +0000

Good you you. The internet isn’t for everyone by any means. But does that mean that everyone should have giant, wasteful phonebooks shoved down their throats?

A pallet of phone books gets dropped off at my office building every year, this year the pallet was picked up by the recycler’s the same day, untouched, and taken away for recycling, this is insanity.

By: Frederik

Frederik — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 18:55:00 +0000

In The Netherlands they’re freely isseud via the local government offices. Two versions: the “no no” variant means you don’t want to recieve any un-adressed mail. The “yes no” version means you do not want advertisement but do want to recieve the free local newspaper. It’s legally binding, ofcourse it’s rather difficult to complain against junkmail since there’s no return adress. But it does work most of the time.

http://www.milieucentraal.nl/Domeinen/algemeen/Images/Overig/ja-nee-sticker.jpg

By: SoItBegins

SoItBegins — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 18:51:00 +0000

And you can use a browser extension to make Google ads disappear.

By: Palomino

Palomino — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 18:21:00 +0000

Yes, and my landlord shows up with a truck and takes them to be recycled.

By: SnortJr

SnortJr — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:55:00 +0000

You know, I find the phone book significantly more useful than Google. Recently I searched for television repair (my local city) on google. It recommended places 50 miles away. After 10 minutes of reading search results i was fed up. When I opened the yellow pages, I found a conveniently alphabetized list of places, many within 5 miles of my home. I’ve had other similar experiences.

By: Crashproof

Crashproof — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:32:00 +0000

Whereas here, because I have opted out, AT&T calls me to confirm that they didn’t deliver a phonebook. Invariably they deliver one two days after the phone call.

By: Bastiaan van der Peet

Bastiaan van der Peet — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:20:00 +0000

A phone book doesn’t fit in the average Dutch mailbox so they have no choice but to leave them outside.

By: Jason Baker

Jason Baker — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 15:57:00 +0000

It’s not uncommon. Many areas are served by multiple competing directory services, on top of the “white pages” version that the phone companies produce (or “produced” – not sure if those are still made, actually).

By: Fang Xianfu

Fang Xianfu — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 15:53:00 +0000

Anyone got more info on those stickers? I’m interested to learn more given the rampant advertising mail here in the UK.

Fun fact – destroying junk mail costs Cornwall (population ~500,000) County Council roughly £700,000 a year. If they recycled it all, it’d still cost £500,000.

Total cost to the taxpayer of disposing of marketing emails? £0. Direct mail sucks :(

By: Fang Xianfu

Fang Xianfu — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 15:53:00 +0000

They leave them outside? Isn’t that littering?