Unfortunately, the Yellow Pages industry appears to be incapable of treating people respect. At least, that’s my conclusion based on the fact that they fight to keep states from mandating opt-out systems.

Your comparison to the mail falls short. Direct mail companies are more than willing to remove people from their lists when requested to do so. Their businesses thrive or fail based partly on the quality of the lists they maintain. They’ve paid based on response, so mailing only those who may potentially respond makes financial sense.

The yellow pages, on the other hand, appear to be running on a media model where their rates are based on perceived distribution rather than direct response. Being able to say they deliver to every home in a community appears to be important to them, even if that means delivering to vacant properties and homes of people who’ve informed the companies that they no longer used their print directories.

That plumber scenario receives so much action, they should consider renaming the yellow pages, “the plumber’s helper.”

It seems like the “going to turn on your computer” line is going to get tired as well. It’s becoming more common for people to never turn their computer off at home unless it starts to run like crap or perhaps overnight or during the work day while they’re gone. In a race to look up a number, yellow pages probably fare pretty well vs. a Windows box that has to boot. But that’s not the reality of many environments these days. And people could also access the same information without getting off the couch if their phone, cell phone, smartphone, itouch, etc. is within reach.