Verizon Cuts Residential Listings from Mini-Book
Below is an article that appeared in the Curry Coastal Pilot in Oregon. In the "mini-book", Verizon decided not to include residential listings.
The residential listings are already included in the larger overlay directory, just not in the local directory.
Why, pray tell would they do such a thing?
Money. Residential listings are expensive to publish and there is no revenue associated with them. Since Verizon met the FCC requirements to publish listings by putting them in the overlay book, leaving them out of the mini-book is a no brainer . . . kind of.
Trouble is that consumers USE residential listings, and pulling them out of the directory would normally cause a major problem. The usage will slip, but I suspect that it is a calculated risk on Verizon's part.
The Verizon spokesperson says that they have pulled residential listings out of other markets and are not aware of any complaints.
Huh?
They removed half of the directory and nobody noticed?
Or perhaps they noticed and didn't complain.
Either way, cutting expenses is important when you're spinning off the directory business. Got to boost margins and profits to get highest possible price. The sale of the directory unit is likely to be completed before any advertiser backlash is felt (if there would be any backlash).
Hey, need residential listings? Go to WhitePages.com
CHANGES TO VERIZON YELLOW PAGES IRKS, CONFUSES CUSTOMERS
Published: June 14, 2006
Click this picture to view a larger image.
By Ellen Babin
Pilot staff writer
Verizon customers in Brookings-Harbor are finding some changes in the pairs of bright yellow telephone books being delivered to their homes.
The biggest change: no residential phone listings in the smaller book.
Instead, the 140-page Brookings-Harbor area supplemental phone book contains only numbers and ads for local businesses.
The larger phone book, which covers 16 towns within the entire Southern Oregon Coast, contains the residential listings for Brookings-Harbor. And the listings are in smaller type over five columns, rather than the traditional four columns. It also has 222 pages of advertisements from those 16 towns.
The result was numerous calls to the Curry Coastal Pilot from residents confused or angry about the changes.
The reason for the change, according to Verizon spokesman Karen Testa, based in Dallas, Texas, the content of the business' more than 1,400 directories nationwide occur at multiple levels: from the top brass in Dallas, to "regional and local."
Testa is the area public affairs liaison for Verizon's yellow pages in the western and independent markets.
Testa could not be reached by phone, but in an e-mail to the Curry Coastal Pilot this week Testa said:
"Using a basic model, our local marketing and sales teams provide feedback and recommendations specific to their markets so that the local directories meet marketplace needs.
"The removal of the residential white pages is an initiative that affects numerous markets nationwide. We looked at where we have a large ‘core' directory with neighborhood ‘underlay' products that duplicated listings. In the other markets where we have made this change, we are not aware of any negative feedback.
"We do take advantage of demographic information to develop our products, and we do offer our advertisers options to be in both our large and small books. There is no ‘buy one get one free'; however , we do offer advertisers incentives.''
Testa says her firm does value the feedback they receive from our consumers and advertisers and will take it seriously.
The residential listings are already included in the larger overlay directory, just not in the local directory.
Why, pray tell would they do such a thing?
Money. Residential listings are expensive to publish and there is no revenue associated with them. Since Verizon met the FCC requirements to publish listings by putting them in the overlay book, leaving them out of the mini-book is a no brainer . . . kind of.
Trouble is that consumers USE residential listings, and pulling them out of the directory would normally cause a major problem. The usage will slip, but I suspect that it is a calculated risk on Verizon's part.
The Verizon spokesperson says that they have pulled residential listings out of other markets and are not aware of any complaints.
Huh?
They removed half of the directory and nobody noticed?
Or perhaps they noticed and didn't complain.
Either way, cutting expenses is important when you're spinning off the directory business. Got to boost margins and profits to get highest possible price. The sale of the directory unit is likely to be completed before any advertiser backlash is felt (if there would be any backlash).
Hey, need residential listings? Go to WhitePages.com
CHANGES TO VERIZON YELLOW PAGES IRKS, CONFUSES CUSTOMERS
Published: June 14, 2006
Click this picture to view a larger image.
By Ellen Babin
Pilot staff writer
Verizon customers in Brookings-Harbor are finding some changes in the pairs of bright yellow telephone books being delivered to their homes.
The biggest change: no residential phone listings in the smaller book.
Instead, the 140-page Brookings-Harbor area supplemental phone book contains only numbers and ads for local businesses.
The larger phone book, which covers 16 towns within the entire Southern Oregon Coast, contains the residential listings for Brookings-Harbor. And the listings are in smaller type over five columns, rather than the traditional four columns. It also has 222 pages of advertisements from those 16 towns.
The result was numerous calls to the Curry Coastal Pilot from residents confused or angry about the changes.
The reason for the change, according to Verizon spokesman Karen Testa, based in Dallas, Texas, the content of the business' more than 1,400 directories nationwide occur at multiple levels: from the top brass in Dallas, to "regional and local."
Testa is the area public affairs liaison for Verizon's yellow pages in the western and independent markets.
Testa could not be reached by phone, but in an e-mail to the Curry Coastal Pilot this week Testa said:
"Using a basic model, our local marketing and sales teams provide feedback and recommendations specific to their markets so that the local directories meet marketplace needs.
"The removal of the residential white pages is an initiative that affects numerous markets nationwide. We looked at where we have a large ‘core' directory with neighborhood ‘underlay' products that duplicated listings. In the other markets where we have made this change, we are not aware of any negative feedback.
"We do take advantage of demographic information to develop our products, and we do offer our advertisers options to be in both our large and small books. There is no ‘buy one get one free'; however , we do offer advertisers incentives.''
Testa says her firm does value the feedback they receive from our consumers and advertisers and will take it seriously.
posted by Dick Larkin at 12:10 AM
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