Sensis has a wonderful service where you can opt out of getting the physical White and Yellow Pages directories delivered to your home. Wonderful as in “I wonder what I’ve got to do TO MAKE IT ACTUALLY WORK”. Warning: Rant ahead.
I haven’t used a white or yellow pages for… hmm. I don’t recall using one this century to give it some kind of meaningful timeframe. So when Sensis announced its Directory Select program that lets you opt out of receiving Yellow and White pages, I was all over it like a rash.
In fact, I’ve just looked up the exact date I signed up to no longer receive the books. It was the 3rd of September 2010, and since that date, like clockwork…
I’ve got them anyway. The picture above is of the most recent White Pages, dumped unceremoniously near my letterbox recently. One particularly charming soul even dumped a load of yellow pages into my green waste bin one year.
Sensis says its signup is good to cancel deliveries for three years. In that three years, I’ve got the full set, every time, despite complaints. As such, as much as my inner greenie (and user of online search tools to find phone numbers, the same as just about everybody these days) would very much prefer not to get them at all, I can’t quite see the point in signing up.
It doesn’t seem to make much difference if you’re signed up at all, making the whole thing a bit of a mockery — and a hideous waste of resources — in my estimation.
Update:Sensis tells me they’re looking into it.
Well we’ve never signed up.. but each year, without fail there is a pile of books (block of units) stacked near the entrance gate.. and they sit there… for weeks, sometimes months, until the cotnracted groundskeepers probably get sick of seeing them there and dispose of them…