Summit Ave neighbor Russ with an alert and a tip: “Local directories” are being dropped around the Hill. It’s supposedly still legal as the City Council has passed legislation calling for a city-run opt out process that hasn’t yet been put into motion (which yellow pages companies are suing the city over, by the way, saying that the industry-provided www.yellowpagesoptout.com service is good ‘nuf).
Here are the two notes we received from Russ:
In the interests of reducing land fill and neighborhood litter, I submit the following tip:
Apparently a company named Frontier purchased Verizon’s business interests in Seattle and several other western states.
I got not one but two *sets* of directories dumped on my porch, as did most all of us.
After an hour on the phone I did manage to get two telephone numbers:
562-594-5461 (better)
and
1-888 473 7622 (they route you eventually to the first number)
So far they pretend to be not available, and all you can do is leave voice mail — but if enough people attempt to call, it could make a difference.
Russ then followed up with what he says is a better number to get the job done:
I found in fine print a phone number that is the one to call:
1 800 888 8448
Ironically and you gotta hear this: they try to sell you a road atlas and other products at the end of your call.
He wouldn’t stop talking I had to hang up on him! haha
We gave Frontier a call and confirmed the details of Russ’s report. You can read more about council member Mike O’Brien’s push to reduce the waste created by the directory business here. Looking forward to the newspaper tax, also.
I just had Frontier for phone service in Bellingham and I think they are owned by the mafia. They tried to charge me $300 for a phone bill, when I only had one month of service even though they get the order wrong THREE times and hooked up my next door neighbors and not mine. Even though they had proof of this, they still tried to get me to pay. I’ve argued with them to send a bill. They finally did. They are either just plain stupid and inept or crooks, probably both. So anything to get them out of business or make their business less profitable I’m for.
I live in a secured building and they left one in front of my door on the 5th floor
This may sound lame, but anyway a complaint with the police can be made about trespassing?
It’s 2010, not 1995. I haven’t used a phone book in ten years and won’t. I hate the feeling of walking straight to the recycling bin and chucking it in. I have the feeling that there are tens of thousands of others in Seattle that feel exactly the same way.
Great, that dreaded time of year approaches again and 99% of Americans get a phone number by searching on their iPhones/Blackberrys/Androids. Last year a guy came to drop off the phonebooks and he was upset that I wouldn’t let him in the building and I told him to keep one set because I did not want one. He actually expected that I would let him inside our secured building!! I can’t believe that people are stupid enough to let some random delivery person into their building, especially when they are delivering something that nobody wants!!
there was an address for this company so i could go dump my phone books there and see how they like that.
Indeed. If someone can come up with a local business address for these clowns, I would love to have it. I manage a building on Capitol Hill, and a couple times each year I have to call someone who dumps forty or so sets of yellow pages on my doorstep. They typically take about a week to come back and get them, over which time drunks and junkies and other dipshits will kick them over and make a huge mess for me to clean up.
I will be happy to dump the next load on somebody else’s doorstep.
Oh yeah … that would be fantastic! Screw the phone numbers … give us an address so we can return these en masse … if we dump them on THEIR porch, it’s no more litter than when they do it to us, right?
Also — who the hell still buys advertising in these things?
I don’t want to give my address, telephone number, email address, SSN, and all the stupid information they require in the yellow pages “opt-out” sites.