Glorious day! Just as Oregon is poised to possibly become the nation’s first opt-in phone book delivery state, Yellow Pages has launched a new opt-out website. in the olden days (yesterday), you had to call a complicated phone line to opt out, so the website should be a big improvement.
However, apparently everyone on the entire internet is psyched about opting out of phone books because YellowPagesOptOut.com is mind-meltingly slow. Perhaps their servers are overloaded, perhaps this is just one final jab at Yellow Pages’ unwilling consumers, either way, open up a separate tab and schedule a solid 15 minutes to rid yourself of phone books.
I finally managed to click through the slowly loading pages to opt my house out of seven phonebooks. I walk you through it below the cut.
Okay! Here is the website. Enter your zipcode. I don’t have time to download their “sustainability report” but I will bet it’s pretty hilarious. A study in Oregon found that there are five times as many phone books as homes and that 80 percent are thrown away.
Step Two involves giving Yellow Pages personal info such as an email address, phone number, and your physical address. The email address needs to be real, since they send a confirmation email, but I’m not sure about the phone number. One Twitterer reported numerous 1-800 calls to her phone immediately after opting out, so it’s likely Yellow Pages will spam you if you stick in a real number. I put in my work phone. Sorry, Brad the Office Manager! Anyway, wait for a few minutes and a confirmation email will arrive.
Step Three is surveying the insane amount of phone books one home can receive! Change all the numbers to “zero”. Or, change them all to the maximum and build yourself a phone book guesthouse over the coming year.
Step Four: After you opt-out of all the phone books, you have to click a tiny disclaimer button on the next page and then hit “confirm.” If you don’t do this, the opt-out doesn’t count!
Step Five: Feel smugly eco-conscious for the rest of the day! You’ve earned it!
(The h/t for this goes to various people, including Yellow Pages’ PR agency, but shout out to commenter TK who emailed in the link)
Thank-you Sarah.I will do this immediately.There are 3 phone books on my front porch now that I never ordered that will need to be recycled.
Thank you! This is awesome and useful and one-bajillion percent better than any Blogtown post related to Justin Bieber.
I’ve got to remember to mention it to my neighbors as well. There’s enough smug for us all!
@JStreckert
You may also “opt out” of having to read any Justin Bieber posts by following the steps below.
1. Click the close button on your browser window.
2. If any offending Bieber memories remain in your brain at this point, simply knock them out with a ball peen hammer.
Here’s an idea for recycling those old phone books.
http://pinktentacle.com/2010/04/manga-farm…
Created a filter to catch any email spam they send my way. Recommend others do the same. gmail makes this easy.
Inspired by the absolutely selfless actions of Yellow Pages, I’ll be creating a web site that allows people to opt-out from receiving my flaming shit bags in exchange for some of their personal data…
@WSH: I know this is totally juvenile and has nothing to do with the above post, but I’ve always found the term “ball peen hammer” to sound sort of snicker-worthy.
I always just leave the unsolicited materials in the lobby of the largest advert I can find. This also works with those pesky Willamette Week bundles.
I don’t know. Phone books are kinda useful. What if the internet goes down and you need to find a business?
This is actually a pretty bad idea, on many levels:
1. There’s no guarantee that they will not resell this information, as the twatterer mentioned. Or secure it in a proper encrypted format. Or really not just fuck your shit up in any other numerous ways companies do with your data.
2. They now have much more marketable information than they had previously. Why does the phone directory company even get to do this when I haven’t owned a landline in ~9 years? Fuck that shit on principle alone.
3. We shouldn’t have to do this. It should be opt-in, always. In fact, what I do when I get these phone books is toss them into the middle of the mother-fucking street.
My advice is to civilly disobey the acceptance of these books until everyone is required to opt-in.