The cool phone with the iPod may soon decapitate your legendary tree-chopping record. The first bills for the early iPhone adopters arrived at their doorsteps this month. And the bill’s bulkiness in some cases matched the hype surrounding the gizmo that some hailed as the Jesus Phone.
The epic-like statements have run into the hundreds of pages for some users, detailing every Internet surfing moment, every gossipy text and mundane call. It forced recipient Justine Ezarik, a Pittsburgh graphic designer and Internet blogger, to shoot a video posted on sites such as YouTube, Revver.com and Break.com. Her message “Use e-billing. Save a forest.”
Ezarik became a celebrity overnight this week with her video of ruffling through her 300-page, $275 bill. On some sites, her post has received close to 400,000 hits.
Found by MJ Hopper.
They should bill extra for all the paper and shipping involved. My phone bill is only two pages long.
Really 300-pages for a $275 bill!!!???
I saw the video the other day and naturally assumed it was for an equally an unreal amount – but $275….as there was no mention of the amount. That is plain STOOOOPID! (with four ‘o’s) but well it is AT&T I guess,
Cheers
Really? I expected better from the DVORAK blog. Trees used for paper have been genetically engineered to produce consistent and high quality paper throughout several trees. These trees are specifically planted with the intention of becoming paper. At no point in modern times does a paper mill go through your randomly-grown forest gathering every tree and making paper. It’s sensationalist, silly, and factually wrong. ~sigh~
If the $275 size of the bill didn’t bother you, then the 300 page actual bill shouldn’t either.
No worse, really, than the forest of junk mail I pull out of my mail box in a weeks time.
#3 Yes I agree, you are correct – These trees are specifically planted with the intention of becoming paper.
it has become a war cry of sorts “Save the Trees”
No one ever cries “Save the Corn – Use Oil!” do they?
Cheers
#3 – Tongue in cheek… ever heard of the expression?
Think of the poor postman who had to deliver this bill
R.I.P. Charles Bukowski.
She states on MacBreak weekly podcast she has put 30 thousand SMS messages through that iPhone in a month. Sick puppy. That accounts for all the paper. 30 THOUSAND!!
You can save more forests if you don’t ever go to McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC or whatever fast food chain you favor. Just think how many trees you get down just to produce pasture to a cow. And the sheer amount of junk you left behind when you eat in one of those places. And since roughly one third of what you pay for a burger goes directly into advertising, just think of the billboards you personally subsidized over your lifetime. That sure beats a 300 page phone bill. Although 300 page phone bills alone would be grounds for me to cancel my contract alone.
I’m not sure why AT&T wouldn’t deliver such a bill via email. In fact, perhaps for those with iPhones, email delivery of statements should be required.
#3, #6,
Actually, it depends on the paper company. For example, for a different kind of paper, Kimberly Clark (Kleenex, Scott) uses only old growth forest. They have flatly refused to even consider recycled paper. They do not use tree farms. As for old growth forests, I wouldn’t wipe my ass with them, literally.
Further, what was there before the tree farm? A tree farm is monoculture that supports little or no wildlife. If that is taking the place of a mature forest, we should probably avoid cutting forest to make more tree farms.
Oh, and please do save the corn, for use as food. Instead, we should drive electric cars powered by wind, solar, and tidal forces. All of this is tried and proven technology available today.
Ok well first off – old growth tress are used all the time for many things including Kleenex etc as mentioned above.
Coming form the interior of BC Canada where I have seen whole mountain sides of old growth trees wiped clean to feed the USA’s apatite I have to disagree 100% with #3 and #6.
The headline is more a metaphor anyway to grab your attention.
Lastly the story should not be about the bill, but that this girl makes 30 to 35 THOUSAND texts a month thats more than 1100 texts a day. Is that humanly possible ? does she have time to eat or sleep?.
#15 She said during a news interview that she subscribes to Twitter and that a lot of her text messages are incoming to her phone to keep her informed.
About what I have no idea………..
#15 – Reg,
On behalf of the U.S., I apologize. Though the apology cannot replace the trees. At least not in under 800 years or so.
Personally, I buy Marcal T.P. (100% recycled, 30% post consumer) and Green Forest tissues (100% recycled 40% post consumer). I also use cloth napkins. And, I don’t buy paper towels.
Seriously though, for everyone else, please don’t buy Kleenex or Scott. Try some recycled products if possible. Try cloth napkins, available fairly cheaply at Blood Bath and Beyond or similar.
I guara-damn-tee it though, that the video would have had but a small fraction of the hits if she wasn’t that cute.
That being said, she’s pretty damn cute and that’s a damn big bill.
I can think of better things for her to do than text-messaging. 😉
P.S. If she’s underage, I take back all that, and don’t even think she’s that cute anymore.
She could recycle the bill by using it as toilet paper.
And follow Sheryl Crow’s advice: only 1 square per wipe.
Here’s another great idea for saving paper and reducing all of the annoying junk mail you get.
http://www.greendimes.com/
Scott, I agree.
BTW, most of the British Columbia forests are used for lumber. Most of the Canadian paper comes from the northern Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick forests. Those trees are mostly much less valuable for lumber. They are very good for paper and do well on mono-culture tree farms.
BUT, mono-culture tree farms do not encourage healthy wildlife growth.
I say all iPhone users should switch immediately to paper statements and text to the skies.
After about month of every iPhone user getting a 5-10 pound pack of paper through the mail, ATT will wise up and summarise their statements and add that IF users WANT an itemised statement they may log into the website and view via PDF.
There really shouldn’t BE paper ANYTHING for people that use technology. It should all be be on a site, login and browse.
This is what happens when you leave luddites incharge of technology companies.
Cursor_
#23 – Cursor_
This is what happens when you leave Luddites in charge of technology companies.
LOL!
I can’t say I agree with the means by which you want to get their attention, given that they’d just look at the $300 phone bills, ignore the several bucks for the ream of paper for each, and declare huge boni for their execs and dividends for their shareholders. I think the point would be missed completely. You’re giving the Luddites too much credit, not to mention too much cash.
I love it people miss the point or just take time go out of the way bash people who try to care about causes.
The bill is freaqing huge for no good reason what so ever. This is not about deforestation.
I have Ma Bell for home phone and internets. They constantly send notices aboout going paperless. And I think there is some benifit for them that would make it worth their while to this over a 275 buck bill.
And trees for paper are farmed and are not super genetically engineered super trees.
Fags like them are killing our planet
With a $20 unlimited data plan, $10 unlimited text message plan, how the hell do you rack up a $275 bill? Is that all voice minute overage? Or is she just stupid enough to not get the unlimited plans? Maybe she should be more worried about the cost of the bill than the number of pages. Though the AT&T bills do detail everything and thus are massive, not to mention all the ads AT&T includes in each bill. I’ve never gotten one in a box though, but I’m getting mine via e-mail, on my phone, now.
I guess if you want to have the network with the fewest dropped calls you have to cut down a few trees (#3, yeah, I understand they are from a tree farm, but it still costs energy to process them and uses up land that could be used for other things)…it would increase each tower’s coverage area anyway.
Oh, and #6, living in Nebraska, all I ever hear about is corn… :p
All the Bells have been doing critically stupid things for years. What’s one more stupid thing? ATT in the 90s was famous for buying companies and then trashing them. Verizon customer service is byzantine, 1/2 the time they don’t actually know what services they sell.
The only thing that saves them is that products are really good, so you put up with the stupidity and inept customer service.
>>The only thing that saves them is that products are really good
Yeah, cell phones work like a charm. I don’t think I’ve ever had a dropped call.
#26
And that’s thanks to fags like you.