Opt-Out for the Yellow Pages? The Deadline is Friday

Bill Miller at in downtown Los Altos admits he has "a love-hate thing" with the Yellow Pages.

Now AT&T is giving Los Altos customers a chance to say "thanks, but no thanks" to business phone directories this month. They can opt not to have one delivered. And it makes him nervous.

"I definitely have to reach customers," said the proprietor of the self-described hole-in-the-wall shop of collectibles and coins on First Street. "A higher percentage of people I do business with go to the Yellow Pages."

But then there's that Internet thing. More and more people are turning to search engines and online directories—the Yellow Pages has YP.com and YPmobile—and that means unused directories.

With many customers somewhat guiltily dumping their Yellow Pages directories into the recycling bin almost as soon as they get them, AT&T figured it might as well give people the chance not to get the business directory delivered to them in the first place.

The opt-out program deadline is Friday and can be done online or by phone.

AT&T says people who want to stop the automatic delivery of the AT&T Los Altos Real Yellow Pages, or directories from other publishers, can do so at yellowpagesoptout.com. Or, they can call AT&T at 866-329-7118 to request that a book not be delivered to them.

This will allow AT&T enough notice to produce fewer of the 132,000 directories that are scheduled to be delivered to Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Sunnyvale and Mountain View on Oct. 29, said Ralph Vitales, general manager of sales.

Paul Brunmeir at ., on the edge of San Antonio Shopping Center, still has plenty of customers looking through the Yellow Pages, he said. His trade, plumbing, is the kind of local business that still takes people to the directory, particularly in an emergency.

Some 78 percent of adults still use paper directories, said Vitales, citing Burke Research figures for 2010, but "there's no doubt there's a transition taking place," said Bob Mueller, executive director of business affairs for AT&T. "People use multiple sources."

With the sight of phone directories piling up unused in apartment building lobbies, San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance in May making receipt of a Yellow Pages directory an opt-in requirement. But AT&T has fought that, filing a lawsuit on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.

The opt-out option is a tip of the hat to the inevitable, perhaps.

Brunmeir thinks so.

"My wife, when she gets the phone book, she recycles it. She says it's only for old people. I know it's heading that way. My kids don't watch TV; they watch all the shows they want on the computer. As soon as they release the phone books, people recycle them, and the cities have to process them.

But does it hurt his plumbing business if they throw away their phone books?

"Yeah, it probably does," he said.