[utterly pointless phonebook rant] arrgh [/utterly pointless phonebook rant]

[serious-noir.livejournal.com]

I assume that many of you, like myself, have been gifted with little 1/2 lb bundles of dead-tree joy. Fortunately they seem smaller and less numerous than in previous years but as always, it seems an exercise in urban pointlessness and corporate fiddledee-dee.

It does make me wonder though: why am I being gifted like this? I don't have a landline so it is not "the phone company" who are doing this. Also, I wonder about what law or city regulation makes it legal for some company to deposit unrequested (and in my case, unwanted) materials on my porch. (further, as an indication of what a complete crank I am, I also wonder what city regulation makes it legal for all those horridly ugly and typically neglected newspaper/ad paper boxes to be plunked down in the public space but I digress). Can anyone get a truck and haul around stuff to leave on people's porches or stoops?

But seriously, is there any way to opt out of being part of this distribution count scam?

Comments

[thesoxgap]

I enjoy how every year, without fail, phonebooks arrive almost simultaneously with the first snow.

[ron_newman]

And how, every January, someone posts this rant to davis_square. Two years ago, it was me:

I Am Furious (Yellow)

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

find someone with a wood stove?

or dump them at town hall :D

#

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

hmmm... what would happen if all 30,000 somerville households dumped our unwanted phonebooks on the steps of city hall?

[serious-noir.livejournal.com]

I would love to do this - but not at city hall (unless perhaps there is an angle of responsibility/enabling that I am not seeing, aside from the lack of an ordinance against phonebook spam).

But a flash mob dumping them in the doorway of a Verizon store? Building a phonebook spam fortress or a monument to stupidity? I'm in!

[ron_newman]

Verizon's local landline facility is on Central Street, just south of the railroad bridge, between Spring and Winter hills.

(But I don't think it's fair to blame them for Yellow Book.)

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

No, but I have a recent delivery of phonebooks from Verizon and am sorely tempted to go drop them off.