Phone books- biggest waste of paper ever?

Question

They are so pointless and unnecessary! We can find all the information we need on the internet but people still insist on spending money to produce phone books. I honestly have never consulted one for information. You?

Answer 1

Yes they are!! Especially in the computer age. I realize not everyone has a computer, but I swear we get a new yellow pages where I live every three to four months.

Answer 2

Those who have never consulted a phone book must be very young. There was a time, no less than 15 years ago, that nobody used the internet to look up phone numbers.

Because some of our phone books have been published by phone companies eager never to assist other phone companies we still have phone books that do not cover all companies in the local market. Those are useless.

But we find the same problem with some of our internet phone directories. When will they ever learn?!

Our problem is that we do not have an option, we can not opt to forgo the book to save some money. I really do not mind if someone does keep getting a book. I only want to save the price of it.

Answer 3

I AGREE WITH YOU

Answer 4

Try living in Hawaii, I have 7 phone books on my shelf right now. Every company here feels compelled to drop these monstrous paper blocks on my doorstep. I have never seen anything like this. I'm quite surprised with the cost of shipping all this paper here, you would imagine they would want to get away from them. The only thing that keeps them coming out are the households without computers.  maybe someday they will leave phone book compact disks on your door. then you can complain about the plastic use. Until then the best you can do is make sure you recycle those old phone books. I bet they make great toilet paper.

Answer 5

There are people who still use them and in some of the rural areas people do not use the Internet. The phone companies should give the option to people, because I surely don't want one.

Answer 6

Yes, either people should use internet or the telephone companies should provide directory services on the phone instrument itself.

the latter can solve problems of people who dont have computers.

Answer 7

Yes they seem to be a relic from a past era.  

They were very useful once, but not anymore.

Answer 8

yes

Answer 9

They are outdated but they apparently are making money for the phone companies. They sell ads in it. So really it doesn't matter to them if they ever get used. As long as they're making money on it. I haven't used one in years.

Answer 10

same here... i just think they are waste of paper. Ive never used one. i usually always end up calling 411 for info or the internet

Answer 11

Yes, they are pretty much obsolete, and a couple things have happened that will eventually kill them off.  The first is as you stated, the internet.  Most households with disposable income have the internet.  Lets face it, it's a better information medium, no big book to store.

What is really killing off the usefulness is the number of companies issuing Yellow pages.  As an advertiser, and I am one, I've seen the value of my advertising diluted with the number of companies issuing the books, with no real reduction in rates.  Quite the opposite, If I wanted to keep the same market penetration, I would have to increase spending.  As a result, I began canceling may ads last year, and the last one expires next month.

It will take awhile yet, but the books are on their way out, and as of today they exist only as an anachronism.

Answer 12

Yes i have because the internet sometimes does not give all information that you want that is in a phone book. Here in New Zealand we recycle our phone books every year. some of the older generation of people don't always have access to the internet so i think that phone books are not a waste of paper.

Answer 13

I agree! I know not everyone has computers.. maybe we should have the choice if we have one or not?? Most people these days would opt out I think.