New phone book — but you can choose to say no

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

People who do not want the 2016 phonebook delivered to their house have until January 2 to opt out.

To do that, visit www.ypgbooks.co.nz or call 0800 803 803.

Deliveries of next year’s directory will be made around the Gisborne region from April 1 next year.

Yellow CEO Michael Boersen said the 2016 phonebook would have a new cover, and all households would receive one unless they asked to be taken off the delivery list.

So far only eight households in Gisborne have asked not to receive one — that is 0.04 percent of the 18,765 households in Gisborne.

Mr Boersen said the company understood that Kiwis now searched in a variety of ways — online, offline and a combination of both.

“We want to give people a choice in how they search.

“The opt out programme started in March 2014 and non-delivery of the books began in 2015.

“We know that people in Gisborne use both offline and online sources to find what they’re looking for.

“There are 52,960 look-ups in the Gisborne Yellow Pages phone book each month, and 58 percent of people have used the book in the last month.

“Yellow digital and print directories get 164,700 look-ups each month in Gisborne.

“This includes Yellow Pages, White Pages, Yellow Local, Yellow Online, White Pages Online, Yellow Mobile and finda.”