who co-ordinates distribution of The Phone Book?

LittleVoice

"The Phone Book" has just now been delivered to my house.

It is a slim volume, easy to push through a letter box - but the person didn't bother to get it more than half-way through the door.

This must be against the instructions provided to the distributors - so who is monitoring how well they do their jobs?

Auntie-Dolly

I did it once & its a cr*p job for little money, so don't be too harsh on them.

melbell

Dial 999 and ask for plod

Tell them about this travesty and they will get MI5 onto it.

MothballsWallet

Perhaps use the BT website to send them a message about it as BT (afaik) still produce the Phone Book and therefore would hire the distribution firm?

If it's Yellow Pages, then I'd recommend the Yell.com site and do the same. Or the Thomson Local would be thomsonlocal.co.uk.

Around here, they just leave them outside the front door, brilliant strategy guys! Way to tell a would-be burglar if no-one's at home!

QuackQuackOops

The people who deliver your phone book generally have 100's of them to deliver in 2-3 days.
First off, they have to pick them up. So you drive to the pick up point, find your amount and then load all the books you need off a lorry into your car/van.

You cant deliver them all in one day so you have to store some of them in your house/garage so that means off-loading them.
There are lots of streets per allocation and these people have to deliver to every single door carrying as many phone books as they can to avoid too many trips back to the car although you have to go back to the car to move it up to where you are. So you cant carry too many anyway.

It is a horrible, hard work job for little pay. It really makes you think about your own property.
How hard is it for the gate to be opened with one hand?
Is the letterbox easy to open with one hand?
Does the book push through with ease or is the letterbox small?
And so on.

No, they are not supposed to leave books out of letterboxes but it isnt the end of the world if they did. If you phoned up to complain, the person who did the round could well have all his/her money stopped.

QuackQuackOops

MothballsWallet wrote: »

Perhaps use the BT website to send them a message about it as BT (afaik) still produce the Phone Book and therefore would hire the distribution firm?

If it's Yellow Pages, then I'd recommend the Yell.com site and do the same. Or the Thomson Local would be thomsonlocal.co.uk.

Around here, they just leave them outside the front door, brilliant strategy guys! Way to tell a would-be burglar if no-one's at home!

Most of them are told that you MUST leave them outside so that there are no complaints of "the dog ate it" or whatever.

Mrs_Arcanum

QuackQuackOops wrote: »

The people who deliver your phone book generally have 100's of them to deliver in 2-3 days.
First off, they have to pick them up. So you drive to the pick up point, find your amount and then load all the books you need off a lorry into your car/van.

You cant deliver them all in one day so you have to store some of them in your house/garage so that means off-loading them.
There are lots of streets per allocation and these people have to deliver to every single door carrying as many phone books as they can to avoid too many trips back to the car although you have to go back to the car to move it up to where you are. So you cant carry too many anyway.

It is a horrible, hard work job for little pay. It really makes you think about your own property.
How hard is it for the gate to be opened with one hand?
Is the letterbox easy to open with one hand?
Does the book push through with ease or is the letterbox small?
And so on.

No, they are not supposed to leave books out of letterboxes but it isnt the end of the world if they did. If you phoned up to complain, the person who did the round could well have all his/her money stopped.

The only upside in doing this now rather than when I did it, is the books have got smaller. The Yellow pages used to be done in pairs.

You really felt like kicking all the doors with tiny letter boxes or the ones at the bottom of the door by the end. Let alone the ones with death trap springs.

QuackQuackOops

Those death trap letterboxes!! Oh I know just what you mean about those!

I really do feel for our postmen and women. It really opens your eyes to the awful job that it is.

Azari

I can honestly say I haven't opened a telephone book in the last five years.

About 2-3 years ago I decided all mine were superfluous and threw them out. They are now classed as 'direct to recycling' material.

MothballsWallet

QuackQuackOops wrote: »

Most of them are told that you MUST leave them outside so that there are no complaints of "the dog ate it" or whatever.

Then I hope they are prepared to be called as witnesses if a house gets burgled after they've been - or be prepared to face being a defendant in a civil action.