We’ve all been victims of FUD — fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It’s a shady tactic and one that we hope most people see through. This post was originally published in 2010. It’s now a whopping nine 14 years later and we still get a handful of emails each month from people who feel they were scammed by Yellow Pages.
Often, those people are asking for us to put them in touch with other people who have commented on this post so they can try to get a lawsuit going.
In addition to selling services that appear to be basically useless because they are expensive and provide little to zero value in terms of ROI, Yellow Pages now gets the people they call into verbally agreeing to contracts without those people necessarily realizing it. For those who do sign a formal contract, an auto-renew clause is buried in the terms and conditions.
We hear from people who are shocked when they receive bills from Yellow Pages for hundreds or thousands of dollars, and when they call the YP customer service line (if they’re even able to get through), they are told there is nothing to be done because they said yes during a phone call with their rep or signed a contract at some point.
They’re even being charged through bills from their phone companies (like Telus and Bell). According to the pattern of complaints outlined by the Better Business Bureau, people are also complaining about auto-renewals happening after a cancellation has been sent.
Overall, it’s an absolute dumpster fire.
Shady business practices aside, we don’t see any logical reason to get involved with Yellow Pages beyond the free basic listing. No matter how small your business is, it’s too big to spend your hard earned dollars advertising with them when there are better options.
Even if you can’t afford to work with us, get in touch and we’ll make sure you get set up with someone trustworthy who can help you grow your business.
What lies do Yellow Pages reps tell?
Nine years ago, Yellow Pages reps were still trying to talk people into print ads—for the past several years they’ve switched to pushing them towards what we view as terrible online advertising options and even more terrible Yellow Pages websites.
The Yellow Pages reps continue to tell people the same old BS stories, but they’re getting more insistent as they become more and more desperate. Their FUD runs along these lines:
1. We are the only authorized Google Ads reseller in Canada.
There are two parts to this. First, it implies that being a Google Ads reseller is better than a Google Ads Partner. That’s absolutely not true. You do not receive better rates by working with a reseller — if anything, it costs more and they provide you with less reporting. Secondly, they are not the only authorized Google Ads reseller in Canada.
2. Having a paid listing on the Yellow Pages will improve your rank on Google.
No, not true. But a lie the reps seem to tell a lot, based on what we hear. Check out a Yellow Pages listing. You’ll see that the link to the website is actually something like http://www.yellowpages.ca/gourl/http://www.yourcompany.com— that means that the link actually is a redirect from the Yellow Pages site, not a true link to your site. It may pass along some link value, but it’s of very low quality.
Having a free listing provides you with a small boost for local SEO, but the paid packages at Yellow Pages won’t impact your visibility on Google.
3. The Yellow Pages website gets more traffic than Google!
Absolutely not. The below chart of monthly visitors in Canada will paint the real picture. This data is provided by Amazon’s Alexa Internet, a well-regarded provider of competitive website statistics.
4. We have special ways of making your site show up on Google — no one else can do that.
They’re talking about pay-per-click advertising here. They’re just using the local business options available to any Google Ads advertiser. Nothing secret there, just knowing what boxes to click.
And the worst one of all…
5. If you cancel your ad with us, your ranking will go down on Google.
An absolute lie. Ask them for proof — how will this happen? Ask for specific examples. In our experience, we have not seen any detrimental ranking effects when a client has canceled or downgraded their Yellow Pages listing. If anything, they can improve their reach because of the money they saved and reallocated on better advertising options!
We discussed this issue on Twitter back in 2010, and if the folks at Yellow Pages even noticed, they never said anything. If Yellow Pages was as web-savvy as they claim, they would have picked up on the Twitter mentions by now and gotten in touch.
Updated 2019:
How to cancel your Yellow Pages subscription
1) Check your contract
We were able to get our hands on a recent Yellow Pages contract, and the terms and conditions mirrored the comments we’ve received here. They put in an auto-renew clause that states that you need to give 3 months notice before your annual contract ends.
2) Call this number: 1-877-909-9356
In many of the comments we’ve received, people have struggled with actually getting a hold of someone to submit their cancellation.
Thanks to Mel for sharing this phone number where she had some success.
3) File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau
If you’re being charged for something you never agreed to, can’t get in touch with anyone at Yellow Pages in order to cancel, or are being hounded by credit collectors, file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. It looks like Yellow Pages is actually responding to most of these complaints, but it’s not clear if they’re truly rectifying each issue.
Help stop Yellow Pages
Frustrated by the FUD business practices of Yellow Pages? Here are some suggestions we’ve received from users on how you can draw attention to their tactics:
- Share your story with CBC Marketplace.
- Report an incident with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
- Warn your friends, family, and business colleagues.
- Post about your experience on social media and tag Yellow Pages.
Updated May 16, 2019.
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This company keeps billing me after my cancellation request to manager . The year contract was renewed AUTOMATICALLY without my agreement, and my cancellation request was issued to Manager Susie(I can provide email history).I stopped using service for months, even before contract was renewed. So, I DID NO ASK FOR THIS SERVICE, NOR USE THIS SERVICE .There is no reason this company is still billing me.
What a terrible situation, Jasmine! Have you looked into small claims court or similar?
I am a small business just starting out and I am being sued by yellow pages for refusing to pay for a service that was never fulfilled by yellow pages.
Please help me if you can, I have the recorded verbal contract which is full of in true statements, and contradicts , not to mention the yellow pages salesperson divulging private information about other yleeow pages clients.
Call me anytime as I am going to fight them in front of a judge , and any and all information you can give me would help me . 1 statement yellow pages made is that they are NUMBER 1 on Google.. .I don’t think this is true, and if someone can verify this is a lie it would help. Also I was promised a big ad in the phone book…I never got a phone book and I want to know how to learn if the book was even put in circulation where I live in Edmonton Alberta. Also if it was put out , how many books were delivered as I have not gotten a yellow pages phone book in several years
Dan S ( electrical business)
Thank you in advance for your help
GREAT POST!!! I bought a business last June, and never sign any contract with yellow page. But In July 2017, this company keeps billing me ,the only reason is previous owner did not cancel the service after they selling the business. They also add the their bill in my bell invoice .If I did not pay ,the bell company give notice to discontinue the phone service. (yellow page and bell are different company ,how can they do this) .I called bell to explain this issue, the answer is because Yellow page send the invoice to them, so they have to put this in my bill.
I don’t know where can I complain this issue ?
YC, I sent you a separate email about this with some suggestions! I hope it helped.
Good day
I recently advertised with yellow pages in 2015 to 16 without the knowledge of this automatic renewal. Once my listing was complete in Sept 2016. I assumed the listing was terminated. 4 months later I received an outstanding bill for 4 months of advertising, to my surprise of course. I admitted that I should have ensured that the cancellation was done agreed to pay the 4 months outstanding and told them to pull my listing immediately. Of course, they continued to run my ad until the full term ended last September. I have refused to pay until they had a collections company named CTL Law began to contact me. I had paid the 1500 dollars and change directly to yellow pages but have continued to hear from CTL telling me I’m being sued and I’m already on the hook for an additional 1000. I don’t understand how yellow pages has confirmed that everything has been paid but yet it continued to be harrassed by this 3rd party legal department. I have began to search for legal assistance but am a new home owner and struggling to come to terms with having to pay anymore out for advertisement that provided zero benefit. Please if anyone can give some kind of direction id be forever grateful as 1500 already paid plus the 1st 4-month amount is more than anything I can currently afford.
I have been advertising through YP for years, and I have not seen results. I recently contacted them to cancel the service, and since then I am unable to get through to anyone. When I call, my call is on hold for an hour until it gets redirected to a voice message. It is extremely frustrating to be heard that they need a confirmation in order for them to cancel the service, however we can’t get a hold of them ever since. Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated. Thank you kindly in advance.
Hi,
I am the owner of my company. My colleague called and signed up for YP for my company using my name and my credit card information. After a month, I refused to pay and called YP multiple times and stated that i never signed a contract. They sent me to collection. Please help.
I was tempted to try this YP digital ads Nov 2017 and a few months after I felt it doesn’t work at all I called for cancellation. The person who answered me told me I agreed to a contract and even if I cancel I am still charge the whole year. But they can’t do cancellation only before my contract ends. Customer service is my only option to get hold of someone to cancel account but it always says no available customer service each time I call. I can’t afford to waste my time for whole day calling. Then tried to call many times and leaving messages yet no reply or return call. Now I tried and able to talk to someone on the line but 2 months pass my 2018 contract. My hard earned money will go to this rabbish again for a whole year. The only person who can answer you is the option to pay bill and that’s the only person who answer call because I think its important getting peoples money anyways. The guy got all my bad temper and still end up paying for another year unless you get a proof you applied for cancellation before your contract for a year ends. How can you even find a proof when each time you call no one answers. They also increased my monthly fee without your knowledge because it’s according to my contract. They said it’s also in my contract that it’s automatically renewed every year. No permission or messages sent to you if you want to continue or end it. They are so bad and confusing customers. I will never ever try them ever again. Just by looking at their names they get deep into my nerves. I have to suck it up! These is just how they make money, no paper contract and just do cancellation by calling customer service number that doesn’t even work. I am scammed and forced to give my hard earned money to an ADs that doesn’t really work when you look online. They’re so called partner, It was just a bunch of problem because you need set up accounts yourself and such a bother on your part. YP won’t set it up for you… your name will appear on their list and will call you and offer you better options and another way of being charged too if you want your ads to work.
YP did the same to me. I got suckered into a one year verbal. They renewed without consent even after verbally telling them I don’t want it and in writing. Even after going through BBB and settling on $500 which I paid. Another year later and theyvd sent me a $1200 bill for the year. Anybody been summoned to court and been through the process?
Planning to fight them in court. Does anyone have the experience fighting them in court? in my situation, the advertisement wasn’t working from the first day. They were telling me nothing to worry about. As soon as they will fix it, they will reset this. After a year and a half, they just started to send me different legal messages to push me to pay.
Dex YP was referred to me by a company that I bought its assets. I didn’t buy their name. They continued to list that company’s name instead of ours. I spoke to a representative of Dex YP and informed them that they had the wrong name, and the only thing they corrected was the name on the billing. So they wanted me to pay to list a company that wasn’t mine. Now I’m disputing an 800 dollar bill they sent to collections. Seems like they are just freeloading off the credit system.
We would like to cancel our contract with Yellow pages, they have not provided the services that were detailed in the contract. We have asked for updates to our website in regard to covid and this took over two months. The social media package is not what was outlined, they are to be working on Google my business and they don’t have access to my page.
Advice on the cancellation policy??
Make sure you cancel in writing (email and physical letter, certified), and by a phone call, and essentially by any means you can to show that you’re cancelling. Then when they refuse to let you cancel (and they will) and send you to collections you have documentation to show.
Yup. My exact experience. Do not waste your money and time with Yellow Pages! They are a total scam.
I tried to cancel via phone numerous times. They never stopped calling. Finally they kept billing and I got a letter from one of their shady collections lawyers. Needless to say I will be hiring a lawyer. Their contracts are THE most unrealistic thing I have ever seen in my life. 3 month minimum..auto renew and the inability to get a hold of your own account manager….. absolute fraud
Yellow pages had a call center call to promote my business and have qualified 10 leads call me per month for purchasing and selling homes in my area as i am a local realtor. 2 weeks in there was no leads so i contacted them directly wondering where and how the leads will be sent as i was yet to receive anything after the sales rep sold me the contract and they shipped me around to 3 different managers that would call me back. They had said the sales rep who committed to my year contract left the company and they do no provide leads nor ever had provided any leads to clients. So they wouldn’t let me out of the contract and they terminated me with full pay for the year after it was obvious they scammed me to sign on for something that didn’t even exist. I asked over 10x for the voice recording that they are in possession of to send to my lawyer to clearly show the promise of minimum 10 pre screened and qualified leads monthly for a year. There never was one lead sent nor any leads ever going to be sent as agreed upon with their call center rep.
Manager Charbel Abou Harb [email protected] gave me a lawyer contact that would respond within 48 hours. That was 3 weeks ago and 6 emails later with multiple voicemails to contact me regarding the fraud they had done to me. Not one lead and hundreds of dollars spent with absolutely no leads in sight and thousands that will be spent over this term for absolutely nothing. They dont ever respond to any emails or calls its a literal scam from the beginning that im shocked i ever got myself into. At first i signed up for 3-4 leads per month at 90$ per month. Then when he told me about the 220$ package for qualified vetted and sent 10 leads + monthly I quickly jumped on that package to upgrade for more potential clients for the business. Not 1 lead was ever sent. Only thing I received is bills and more bills for absolutely nothing. Its crazy how a professional company like this would be scamming people in this fashion.
i was lied to by these guys , they sold the service like it was a one time payment for a year of service, not a monthly fee. they misquoted the amount. they did not tell me i was signing a contract (over the phone?) i did not sign anything. had i known this was a monthly contract service i would never have signed up. I was surprised when another bill came and i contacted them immediately only to be told sorry you signed a contract and they have basically been extorting me ever since. i think they have me in collections now, i just saw an email saying i owe over $1,700 so yeah.. FU*K Yellowpages
I don’t think Yellow Media is going down anytime soon. They are an invisible local advertising behemoth with 1.5 million business listings under it’s belt that are ready to be serviced for hyper local online advertising. They also have over 2200 media consultants spread out across Canada selling the same online media services that you offer. By this I mean, pure SEO/SEM, “groupon type” coupons, website design services and HD video advertising that gets SEO’d across the web. Print is becoming a secondary issue as they morph into what is already Canada’s largest Internet company. Not even Google can field that many expert media consultants. I also find it quite interesting that the Google Maps in Canada would be quite useless without the Yellow Pages feeding them 99% of their listings with the most up to date information on them.
Take a look at their smartphone apps for Iphone, Blackberry and Android. Most people in Canada with a smart phone now use this free app. The Ipad app is amazing. With one touch you can get all the local advertising that you could want. Apps like POYNT also use Yellows database of information.
This has become one of my top apps on my iphone and ipad. Cheers!
@ Bob
“Most people in Canada with a smart phone now use this free app.” in reference to the YP app.
You sure about that? Got any data to back this up? I’d be very happy to see this so i could advise my clients on the this 🙂
Also, i agree that YPG isn’t going anywhere, and they do supply Google Local Business with data, but i just cant go along with business practices like this. FUD is never the way to go and as in Internet company, they should be the first to know.
I agree with the previous disillusioned- and worse- ripped-off users of Yellow Pages. To convince me, YP sent me some impressive 1-page websites which I thought would be adequate for my long-standing language service company after my 15-year-old site got “pirated” and put up for sale! The information YP sent for us to fill in was so badly explained that I finally told them to just use info from my longer website to build the 1-pager- UP said they had a “special site-building team”, YP has have been billing me monthly via TELUS for a site I never got and which is much needed as my last site other one was dropped by another mega-company ( GoDaddy ) that did not bother to contact me, personally, other than through dozens of emails sent continuously simply advertising multiple “new” GoDaddy services and we missed their one email demanded another yearly payment for the site. GoD supplied unexciting site building material which I – stupidly!- believed was a one-time payment as they were not asked to do any SEO,! The size of these mega-companies is the problem: they don’t care one iota about small business Clients who have traditionally been the fiber of the business community….but no longer, as we are being squashed!, Worse though are the phone companies like Bell and TELUS billing for YP instead of hearing the myriad grievances from abused or neglected YP customers, And no, I also cannot reach YP management by phone at all, so far and my previous 2018 agents’ extensions no longer exist! SO WHAT CAN WE DO, PLEASE?
@ Bob How long have you been working for YP?
A very interesting article with very interesting responses. I read every single one of them, with much sympathy (in most cases).
I have a whopper of a Yellow Pages scam story but cannot divulge it yet. Once our legal dept resolves it I will return to post everything in great detail. Maybe it will help some little guys here, the outfits who don’t have our resources to fight.
Yellow Pages practices underhanded, deceptive business. Very, very sneaky outfit. And to add insult to injury, they are ineffective at digital. This is all just my own opinion.
Yellow Pages stock price was $25 four years ago. Today it’s flirting with penny stock status. This makes me smile. They will either be acquired or they will file, in my opinion.
These people are thief’s pure and simple need to be in prison. Got involved with them early on in my business paid them off they are back again calling daily threats of court appearance if I do not pay them.
I cancelled back in July 2018, I started getting bills again. I’m taking my bills to the RCMP, local and federal government representation. I encourage you all to do the same. Maybe if they get enough of them they will do something.
I came across this post because my sister in law of was telling me that there was a scam that was going on with the yellow pages in regards to how they were rerouting phone numbers that were listed in the book to another business. The only reason it caught my attention is because from 1998 until say about 2014 my Car rental /car sales business did very well. Our phone would be ringing off the hook. So around 2014 until we went out of business around 2016 our phones stopped ringing. So I was on the phone with YP on many occasions telling them something was wrong. I was paying for 3 books Ft Lauderdale area Pembrook pines\ Hollywood that I was advertising paying about 3500.00 a month. Maybe even more. So we kept calling them and they gave us a discount on our bill. But it never got it fixed for about 3 to 4years. Our phones died and so did our business. So now I am thinking about what happened to us only because my sister-in-law told me about this scam they had where there was phone numbers that YP were putting in the phone books were numbers were being re-routed to another business. I was like flawed because I remember when I was trying to figure it out I was trying by calling a number of ours in the phone book and it went to someone else. When I called YP they kept saying we had to call google to get it fixed. Well, it never got fixed because it was impossible to even get through to google about this problem. They just gave us some money off the bill. We had to close up our business because we were not making the money we were making before this all happened. Our phones used to ring off the wall and it went from ringing off the wall to a morgue. Very busy to a dead silence Just terrible. This has destroyed our business, and our lives and they should be held accountable. I am now going to go through all our boxes and see if I saved all the paperwork I had when we were going through this. Yellow pages were great until they changed us to the internet. This thing about re routing the phone number to another business. This has blown my mind.
Ahhh, Dana. I’m glad to see another has picked up the gauntlet and is valiantly fighting for the defeat of the yellow bullshit.
My particular favourite is when Yellow Pages reps claim to have “merged” with Google. I contacted Google directly about that one. I thought it would be funny if I asked them for the official press release about it.
I have written 2 blog posts now on this crap and tweeted incessantly. Yellow Pages did actually contact me after I left a comment under a press release about YP on MarketingMag.com They absolutely do not monitor their social media but they do check up on their more prominent press releases.
Check out my latest post on SEO benefits (or lack thereof) to having a Yellow Pages ad. You may get a laugh out of it and it might be of interest to your more nervous clients.
Does Online Advertising in YellowPages.ca Improve Google Ranking? http://bit.ly/emVa6E
Keep up the good work. Nice to know we’re not alone. And it’s great to know that Yellow Pages is soooooo clueless about SEO, articles slamming them rank instantly. How do you think I found you?
Thanks for the great comment – I enjoyed your blog piece as well. Nice in-depth analysis.
We are having a similar issue. We tried to cancel our service with YP after several months of zero results. We are a small business and we explained to them that we didn’t want a refund for the months that we paid, but we just wanted to cancel the rest of the contract.
I studied SEO for over a decade and continue still, It is amazing to hear such dribble from Yellow Pages on how important they are supposed to be and trying to make this known with aggressive falsehoods. My reaction in response to Yellow Pages having any kind of importance regarding SEO on the whole is……hahahaha. I mean they have basically have become a secondary index directory. Sure there are some folks on the tail end of generations who would rely on it by brand name only, online and offline. Yellow Pages have become mainly an aggregate informational source. There role in citations can be significant only by associations if one has not submitted NAP info elsewhere. Google does not have to rely on them in but probably does just out of convenience at this time. Things are so hyper competitive information wise online particularly with Google (Google My Business?), social media and review sites that any perceived dominance or importance associated with YP will be drowned out in the noise and forgotten. Their aggressiveness and lack of integrity to salvage their business model is annoying and sad. I used to love the YP before the internet, I could find everything, but now its becoming the way of the dinosaur. Yellow Pages is irrelevant to SEO.
@Bob.
No YPG is not going down anytime soon. They’ve amassed a fortune off the backs of SMBs.
Yes yes, at one point they did provide them with a return however their greed and ego made them complacent and caught them asleep at the wheel.
You do know that everything you mentioned that they do “for” these SMBs, websites, HD video etc- ALL belongs to YPG and not the business owners. So they again strong arming the little guy into staying with them, having them become dependent on them and thus providing the fuel for their continuous FUD tactics.
They have the business listings, I get it. I use Poynt and its a great, useful tool. However, it wasn’t YPs solution and by no means is it generating SMBs any sort of relevant income.
They call themselves Canada’s largest Internet company? They’re a print company still trying to become an internet company, plain and simple.
They could have easily, EASILY become a credible and valuable asset to SMBs across Canada if they weren’t so greedy. No reason why Yellowpages.ca couldn’t have taken on the form of a Yelp! No reason why they couldn’t have white labelled their HD video and given the client’s ownership, no reason why they couldn’t have been designing real websites for them and doing SEO, no reason why they couldn’t have created a proper PPC program that drove and tracked results to their client’s ACTUAL websites rather then directing people to their print ads on yellowpages.ca.
They spent billions of dollars (2.5 to be exact) to acquire Superpages in 2005 (?) simply to gain a monopoly on the Canadian market with directories. Talk about shortsighted. Now they’re desperately trying to position themselves as an internet industry authority by preying on the uninformed local business and preying on their reliance on them. “Canada’s largest Internet Company” that can’t properly run PPC campaigns and doesn’t even monitor Twitter? Humorous.
They have the means to be a GREAT asset to the Canadian internet industry and Canadian businesses. The ability to be a respected internet company but like anything, you have to earn it. YP is simply trying to buy it. Get rid of the old (*cough, Marc Tellier) and inject some fresh thinking and new approach to selling.
My 2 cents.
Cheers
Bob sounds like an YP employee,
I know, I used to be one. Inside the company walls they feed us the rhetoric daily. Whenever I questioned the data compilations or asked what are the strategies for remaining competitive I was shut down. For example using an ad company they own Mediative ( reps can’t sell for Mediative) stats and allowing them to appear as Yellow pages stats. Um maybe I am wrong but I would say that is very misleading.
The reality is things are changing, and they like Blackberry, Yellow Pages are behind the times and show no real signs of catching up. They had the pieces in place to be a market leader. Their profit margin on the old print products was high, and they had little competition ( Canpages took a big chunk so they bought them too) so they are trying to hold on to it and milk it for as long as they can and maintain their share value. Web products have a much smaller margin and are offered everywhere. They began their transition far too late, their own sales reps have been begging for good web products for years but were told “prints not dead, get out and sell”. Whenever a company thinks marketing and salesmanship can overcome poor product development they are in trouble. Just ask Blackberry. Seriously Blackberry, try making a phone that doesn’t suck, everybody else seems to be able to do it.
When Yellow Pages did release web products they were behind the market, buggy and over priced.
They boast about website sales, they never mention how many of those 10,000 websites sold in the first 6 months were actually online and working (it was in the hundreds).
Imagine going in to renew a customer when the website you sold him 6 months ago is still not working and online, try and spin that to a customer that trusted you Marc Tellier.
” They’re a print company still trying to become an internet company, plain and simple.
They could have easily, EASILY become a credible and valuable asset to SMBs”
I totally agree, even a moron could see the transition coming. With a huge sales force, strong brand identity, existing customer relationships, etc,etc they could have been at the forefront of web/online directories and SMB marketing. Now with the market crowded they are arriving too little too late. Don’t pat yourself on the back for growth by comparing yourself to other company’s failing to transition as well.
Here is a great article.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/how-did-yellow-medias-stock-go-from-17-to-17-cents/article559444/?page=all
I will say working for them was very frustrating, my customers trusted me and often bought based on my word, unfortunately Yellow Pages usually failed to deliver. I enjoy helping businesses grow and market themselves, Yellow Pages was not the place for me to do that.
I will say that unless some MAJOR changes are made Yellow Pages Media will not make it in the next edition of Jim Collins – GOOD TO GREAT. The Yellow Pages story is a perfect fit for a follow up if Sydney Finkelstein does a follow up to his great book WHY SMART EXECUTIVES FAIL.
No I do not receive anything to promote those books, I just wish Marc had read them a few years ago.
Finally I cancelled all the ads with YPG, a great saving of thousand dollars a year. Their online ads is useless, and their services were awful. No more wasting money on Yellow Pages, business owners!
YP advertising in print, or online, is an enormous waste of money. The company salespersons deliberately mislead when selling their “service”, usually to administrators who dont’ really understand what they’re signing up for. The cost for these services are ridiculous – $1000 a year to have your name appear in Bold in a print directory. $500 per month for a oneline-listing at YP.ca which (in our case), appeared about 300 items down in the category. The contract deliberately says nothing on cancellation on the customers’ part (which they interpret as no cancellation possible) but rambles on about unilateral cancellation on their part. It took months of endless calls and stalling on YP part to cancel some of our “services”. This shady operation is one giant rip-off.
Thanks for this article. I am going to link it on my web site. Beyond the issues you mentioned, there is also the harassment and horrible service Yellow Pages provides. They harass my clients making the same claims mentioned in your article. Then once they are in a contract provide horrible service. I had one new client that told me she had been trying to get them to update the phone number on the Google Business listing YP setup for over a year. I wish there was a way that your article could show up on any Yellow Pages related search. It’s generally too late by the time my clients come to me looking for work because they have fallen for this crap. Thanks.
YP — endlessly frustrating…
Great post! Couldn’t agree more. More and more business owners come out with YP horror stories. Spending thousands of dollars in advertising with YP gets them nothing but telemarketing phone calls. Which YP proudly puts in the leads column.
Thank you for speaking up on this rising issue Dana!
Dana, If I already have a yellow page website and decide to build another one myself with a different domain name, will it be detrimental to my business as far as SEO ranking with google? What is the best course of action, because my google ranking with the yellow page site is horrible.
Thanks,
Hi Terry! Can you get the domain name from Yellow Pages and build your new site at that domain? It’s probably not a good idea to have two sites for your business at two different domain names. That can cause issues further down the road.
So… how do I cancel my contract with YP? For all the reasons mentioned above, I want out of my contract before it gets renewed for another year. Any advice?
You should be able to not renew your contract when it’s up (which should be right around now). If you hired YP to do your website design or anything else, make sure you understand what you have access to before you end the contract, though.
Hello! This is a very useful post! I want to explain you my situation and see what you think. I have an online store, I’m not good with publicity on the internet so I decided to try Yellow Pages. They offer me a lot of “listings in different web pages” with a contract of one year but when I checked my analytics I saw i got cero traffic thanks to Yellow Pages so I decided to cancel the contract since i’m paying for nothing plus i’m closing the store, also i saw the famous web pages that they use to list my web site and honestly i never saw that web sites before. But now they want to force me to pay the monthly fee until the end of the year even if i don’t use it!!! It’s there a way to avoid this? I would appreciate a LOT your opinion. Have a good day!
Hi Doris! I’m sorry to hear you’re in this situation. Check for a cancellation clause. They also have an auto-renewal clause in some contracts so watch out for that.
Hi I have been paying for YP ad for a number of years and debating to cancel my contract. My contract renewed end of august this year and they renewed it automatically, even though I spoke to them and asked to give me a day to decide if I am renewing. Due to some personal issues I am currently dealing with I totally forgot. I got the bill this morning and contacted YP, they said I have a limited time to cancel my renewal. My question: I am not getting the traffic I thought I would from my ad so I wanted to check what page I would be found on google from my YP link, I can’t find it. How would I go about searching for this YP ad? I am not very internet minded. thanks
Hi Cat — you would have to get that from your YP rep unfortunately. Sorry we can’t help more!
Has anyone else been tricked into a contract with yellow pages? They offered our new business a 30 day free trial when we started up in the spring. We asked specifically that we would not have to sign up for a contract for the trial. We had refused their offer on many calls before since out business is only open for 6 months of the year and they only had a 12 month contract. The sales rep assured us it was just a trial and they would let us know how much their service helped us at the end and if we were happy would could sign up for the contract then. They started the recording after that conversation and locked us into a 12 month contract, with no free month, for a total of over $3000. If talked to senior managers and numerous other staff and they hold on tight to that recording being a valid contract and there is no way for us to cancel. I have one other business so far that had the same tactic used on them. I’m looking for more people out there with this experience. I want to fight this and the more of us the better.
The exact same thing happened to us been fighting to get out of it for months. They just keep sending us a bill in the mail that we said we are not paying since it was supposed to be a trail and so on just like you said.
Hi Jackie — Let us know if you do manage to get out of paying it!
Up doing me the same way got Lawyer’s calling and sending emails threatened me if I don’t pay they can take my house car ect.i been cancelled the contract.they saying I owe them 4,000 sum dollars .xo you know anyone that can help me with this.
I’m in the exact same situation Stephanie. I insited that I wouldn’t agree to their offer until I reviewed the terms by email. Now, after over a year of them demanding payments for advertising I never agreed to, I’m getting calls from CTL Legal Professional Corporation claiming I owe over $2000 and will file a claim in court against me unless I settle. They are willing to accept $1600 out of court. Lol!
Has anyone taken this to court? How do they manage to keep these bogus sales tactics going?
Yes. They used the same one month free tactic to have our business agree to a one year contract. It was paid and cancelled but months later got another invoice. Account was not cancelled when we were told it was. This should go to CBS go public. The whole country should know about this.
I have been trying to contact YP since April 2018 to cancel. The run around, transfer of account reps and no call-backs meant that the contract auto renewed because they stalled. Very sneaky on their part. Little did I know, that was only the beginning. It’s now DECEMBER 2018 and they are still dodging me. I have called, been on hold for hours and hung up on, promised a call back, promised a resolution to cancel, lied to and diverted so many times, i’m dizzy. One thing I am not? A quitter. This does not end with them taking our hard earned money. Did i mention they also INCREASED our monthly bill? For what? We’re not sure. Their notes/files and tactics are contradictory each time I speak to a new person. This is so frustrating and disappointing. We trusted them when we signed up and it has been a nightmare. I have been on the phone since early this morning. My time total spent on-hold has been about 2.5-3 hours. Who has this kind of time? How are we to be heard? Why is this allowed to continue?
Our business has been threatened. I don’t have a physical copy of the contract, nor have I ever been told about automatic renewals, nor has anybody ever called us about this service. Bell was sending bills, we cancelled ALL Bell services due to their own screw ups and went with another provider. Suddenly we got bills from YP, never got them before from YP. We told them we cancelled all Bell services, they kept saying they are not part of Bell. Then why did Bell bill on their behalf? We told them we did not want to continue. We object to this “contract”, which seems to put people on a life sentence with them that they cannot unravel from. I don’t recall any actual services from them either. They sent us a recording, there is not a fulsome discussion of the terms of their contract, arguing an oral contract was valid. My understanding is that for a binding contract to hold, both parties need to be clear on the terms. There were never any terms, such as cancellation, amendments, etc. Different very much from other media of similar structure. I tried other campaigns with other companies and we were basically able to cancel online, or just call in to have your profile removed. Simple. So this bill started at $340 and change to over $2500. I NEVER signed up for a contract that would cost that much. No way! This is deception. If anybody can find a law firm willing to take on a class action suit against these people, I am game!!!
Great article Dana, I hadn’t realized that YP was up to this type of marketing. Good Info!
Stephanie. I am dealing with the same issue. I asked if he could call me back in 3 month, gave me some nonsense on how in order for him to call me back he needs my consent even tho i had asked him to stop calling me yet he called almost daily. After i agreed for him to call me back he used that as me agreeing to the contract and started charging me 3 months later with no phone call like we agreed upon. I tried talking to management but the numbers i get aren’t connected and when i finally get one that works I am forced to leave a message and they never get back. For some reason they can’t send me auto that works. I have a Mac and they say it won’t work on a mac. these are there people who are suppose to set something up on a computer yet they can’t use one. Does anyone know if a voice recording is an actual binding contract even when they refuse to prove it?
Hi Justin! I’m going to put you in touch with Stephanie. We emailed privately after she left her comment and I think you could benefit from what she’s working on to get out of her contract.
We would recommend speaking with a lawyer to see if a voice recording is a legally binding contract.
Hey. We are in a very similar situation to some of the last commenters. After asking them how they got our business name and info (surprise: Google!) they went on and managed to get a “yes I agree” recording from something we said… When we were surprised with an e-bill for $55 we sent an email saying we had not made a contract. They emailed back a couple weeks later with a recording of us “agreeing” to a year long contract. Are they editing voice recordings?? We sent a letter by registered mail today to say that they must immediately cancel any contract they have with our business as we had no intention of getting into a contract with them and won’t be paying. Will this work, do you think?
Hi Rose — you are not the first person to tell us this. The registered letter may not work. You may need to speak to a lawyer.
So YP contacted me offering to put me at the top of the local search . Blah blah blah . Not one call. Don’t get me wrong … if I got business off YP I would pay monthly , but as a small business owner , paying yellow pages is like paying an employee that’s supposed to make you money just to sit around all day: so I’m avoiding them. Until I see results . Has anyone been threatens they’re going to involve a lawyer and I’ll be paying the court fees ? That’s where I’m at as of right now .
Hi Brock! Another commenter here is working on a possible lawsuit. I will put the two of you in touch.
YP did the same auto renewal crap with me even though I told the Sales Rep that I did not want to continue to advertise with them. I have used their services for over 10 years with no great return on my investment. I called YP when I received a bill from them with much surprise since I said NO and they said that my Sales Rep no longer works for them and that the contract is binding. Please connect me with anyone that has had success fighting this rip off company. This is not how customers should be treated.
Yes, they are already at some law firm now threatening to take it to court and add their costs and garnish bank accounts, etc. They are not threatening anything they don’t have the authority to do, but they are creating major issues with me. They haven’t served us with anything yet, but people here should be discussing a class action.
I just had an incredibly uncomfortable time with YP’s collections today. They tell me I had verbally agreed to a new contract extension. The collections guy I spoke with told me there was nothing conclusive about my recorded agreement so it was going to a higher contract monitoring dept. (or something like that) It might take 2-3 weeks to find out if I had indeed agreed verbally to take the contract. My contract was coming up Feb 1st and I had been discussing with them for a few months changes I wanted to make, category changes and company name & detail changes. I had been wasting $23 month last year with them. Over the past few months we were discussing details while I kept asking my new rep to give me alternative pricing for the different levels, she keep coming back to the package I had @ $55. saying I had discussed and agreed to take with some other sales rep a few months ago on the phone. Quoting her on one one email: “You’ve agreed to a package of OBST2” I was thinking all the while we would get to a conclusion amicably like most business dealings. I thought he was giving me options and we were discussing them initially a few months ago. No where was I informed my conversion or our discussion was legally binding. They are telling me like everyone here that I agreed verbally to the $55 month contract. Making matters worse is that most of the companies in my category above me (mississauga decks) I doubt are paying anything. Top website has no details and is deleted. They have no customers, that is why the big adverts lately for companies to join Yellow Pages free.
I would like to contribute money if you would like to get some adwords going on this article you wrote. There must be more people in this situation. I think YP are in trouble and this is their last fight using real tough ‘cookies’ to get the contracts in.
This was thankfully the only article I found. Comforting in a strange way to read these other similar comments in a way.
This is really terrible business for such a high profile company.
I had no idea who I was dealing with! They were different last year and the years before that.
Allow my contact info to anyone with ideas to fight this.
Thank you all so much!
Hi Brian,
Thank you for sharing your story. I’ll be in touch via email and will hopefully be able to connect you with some of the other commenters on this post.
Someone claiming to be from Yellow Pages Group called my client, asking for ~ $450. This was after registering for the “free” listing. I immediately thought it was a scam. After doing some research, even if does turn out to be “legit”, it still qualifies as a scam in my books!
Anyway, I asked my client to cancel/reverse the payment. Should we be expected some BS like has been mentioned here already?
Chris,
Thanks for sharing your YP experience here. I really hope that you and your client are able to avoid the expense and frustration that the rest of the crew here has had to deal with.
Good stuff right here Dana. YP is seriously the worst. As an SEO myself, it’s very hard to talk local businesses out of using YP when the company uses such misleading business practices. I can’t tell you how much clients I’ve missed out on because of the domain name contract.
The very fact that YP rents out websites and doesn’t actually give the owner control is enough for me to consider them a dying company. Looking forward to the day that it shuts down, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon.
How do you deal with a potential client with a YP site? Just wait until the contract expires, or go ahead and make them another site? Would be great to hear how you handle it.
Mohammad,
With a very comprehensive migration strategy, and yes usually after a contract is over. It’s frustrating for sure!
Thanks for the reply. We’ll see how it goes. The “verbal contract” seems to be in conflict with the existing contract I already have with my client. Also, my client was confused, thinking the call was related to my work. I’ve filed a complaint with the BBB, and will also file a complaint with the provincial consumer protection agency.
I’ll never do any business with YPG or its subsidiaries ever again!
We too fell victim to YP’s FUD Gestapo tactics. Advertising with them for a year with little to no noticeable results. At renewal time we were aggressively lured into a renewal and upgraded package with promises of more traffic to our web site. Disputing with customer service on several occasions saying that we agreed to something which in fact we did not; saying that they had recorded verbal proof of a commitment to them and there was no getting out of another annual contract. We asked for a copy of these ‘recording’s so we can validate this ‘proof’ which they never did supply. Long story short, we will never advertise with YP’s again. A years’ worth of wasted advertising budget for next to no results. Very unprofessional company. In the end you are paying for customers to ‘proxy’ threw their web presence. YP’s has become a dinosaur trying to avoid sinking into the inevitable tar pit of their demise. Avoid like the plague.
This group at YP are a complete joke.I would like to know how you get out of this contract.Now they have a different phone # saying it’s call tracking for us to know how many call are coming in.I have had this business for 15 years and everyone knows the #.I said I don’t want this number up and don’t want this service.No where on there recording does it say anything about the contract would this be renewed.I can not even get a straight answer of when the contract started.They say get hold of [email protected] there legal team.Is there more people out there that would like to go public on these jokers.Thanks D
Well thank you very much for a well written article. Using the information from the OP and all the people submitting comments, I was able to very effectively put YP in their place. Just one letter is all it took. if anyone is looking for pointers, just ensure you state right at the start that you are dissatisfied with the product/service, and not satisfied with a very poor ROI. Also state that their sales tactics are very vague, and the most effective (For those who YP created a “Landing Page” for) is to state that they failed to put webmaster contact information on the “page/Site” to report errors and omissions. No fuss or fight from them. Compliance in less than 48 hours. Good luck to all!
Thanks for the feedback! We’re really glad it worked out for you and we’ll point others to this comment.
I’m in the same boat as everyone. YP entered me into a verbal contract. I called them to cancel and they sent me a recording stating that i agreed to a 1 year contract. I called their claim dept and same thing. Did anybody go public or have a lawsuit that i can join in?
They (YP) don’t have any payment info from me. Every time they send me a bill, I send it right back to them.
Hi Al — there was talk of a lawsuit but I haven’t heard back from the original commenter who was going to get that started. One thing I am suggesting is to talk to a lawyer and get them to send a “go away” letter. Perhaps that would help?
Hi, I was looking to get more information on this. I am also in a 1 year verbal agreement and have reached out to them several time to no avail. They did send me a copy of my “verbal contact” yesterday after calling me to see why I had not paid. I need advice! 🙁
Hi there,
We are at the beginning stages of this process. Can anyone provide a letter that they used successfully?
Hi Dana, thanks for your blog. I am so ticked off right now. As a small service company with no real website experience and zero budget to hire someone, we got suckered by yellow pages. They offered free website and promised the world all for a contracted $900 per month. Well, we got very free responses for a year and things got so bad that we couldn’t pay our phone bill and cancelled our phone service. It ended up ok in the end. Handled the ph # change and a lady in the office put a website together and did her own SEO and we are now getting 10-15 times more web responses. We learned a very valuable lesson. DONT USE YELLOW PAGES. THEY ARE USELESS!!!
Thanks for your comment, Amy! I’m sorry to hear you went through all that but your site looks fantastic now. We’re glad you’re back on track.
I recently sent an email regarding a major issue regarding Yellow Pages business practices to the consumer protection gov. BC.
In brief:
I was contacted over 30 times to advertise with this company.
The sales rep used Extremely high-pressure sales tactics to finally get me to say yes.
Was made to agree to a verbal contract over the phone even after saying I wanted to have them send me an email stating what I would get.
Was told I would get 30 or more calls from this advertising. (Didn’t get one call or hit in my SEO)
Couldn’t find my advertising online or on their website.
Told them I felt under extreme pressure as a new business owner to work with them and told them to stop calling many again over 30 times.
I was in a meeting with a client and strapped for time when I got the final call and felt under duress when I finally said yes but wanted to see what I would get first.
Also was told I would be on the first page and again never could even find my advertising
I was also never given a log-in to right description so on.
Please respond back to me via email and look forward to speaking to someone.
Subsequently, they have taken me to collects and again harassing my company with 5 calls a day.
Looking into legal action as now they have sent my company to collections for over $3500.00
Let me know if anyone has experienced this type of business practice, and what else I can do?
Hi Chris! Unfortunately, many of the commenters here have had a very similar experience. I would recommend speaking to a lawyer or paralegal who specializes in small claims court, if possible.
We are having the same trouble with yellow pages taking something we said and putting into a verbal contract. Numerous phone calls and emails and they won’t cancel it
We never agreed to any of their advertising. I have been battling with them since October 2016. Anyone have any luck getting them to stop billing and cancel contract?
Sorry you are experiencing YP issues, Laura! It seems fairly rare that people are able to get out of these bizarre contracts — a few of the commenters here have tried taking legal action, to varying degrees of success. We hope you find a way to get out!
Sometime in March, I was contacted by these guys….
Let it be known:
Sales rep did NOT explain price per month of service, how long service would be, did NOT mention a ‘oral contract’ nor the length of the contract.
I said that I would NOT be looking to purchase anything at this time and that was when he suggested that I did not have to pay anything until April 15 and would only have to pay after that if I decided to go ahead with the service. In that respect, I agreed…basically he made it sound like I could cancel anytime before the ad was posted. He asked me what my business name would be and so on and so on…
Got an email saying my ad was going up on April 15, to my surprise. So I phoned customer service to request cancelling the ad.
1st customer service rep said I couldn’t cancel, even though I requested, and said I had been locked into an oral contract even though the sales rep (who made no mention of such a contract, nor a price or length) told me that I would not have to pay anything until April 15 and I had that time to decide if I wanted the services. She told me to hold the line while she listened to my initial conversation with the sales rep. She got back 2 min later, (my conversation with the sales rep was approximately 10-15 mins) and said that I had indeed been asked by the sales rep if I ‘agreed’ to the terms and conditions and that I had said ‘yes’. This is not only a fabrication, but a blatant lie as he made no mention of terms of conditions to me and did not request that I review them or ask if I wished to hear them. She said she would send me a copy of the recording.
2nd CSR said that the 1st put a cancellation in for next year 2018, but I would still be liable for the 12 months. She again said she would listen to the conversation I had with the sales rep, got back to me 2 mins later and this time she said that the sales rep indeed mentioned the price, length, and conditions of oral contract. Absolutely a blatant lie! I told her that I was not made aware of a contract, nor the price or length of contract and that as an uninformed individual, a verbal contract was not possible. She said she would have her sales rep phone me, I declined and said I wanted the manager. She said it would take 2 business days for the manager to get back to me. I never received a call back. I also never received a copy of the recording that they said they would email, as well.
It also should be noted that I do not own a business, they contacted me via an ad I put up on kijiji looking for side jobs. I am not licensed to do business in my jurisdiction, nor am I registered. I do not possess a GST number…I did not provide them with any payment information, nor did I provide them with my address…but yet somehow, someway, just today, I got my first invoice for $75 dollars. 🙁
Hello everyone. I wrote on this wall a while ago and see yp is still scamming.
I was tricked in to agreeing to this contract. Their tech personal was unable to get me a recording i could open on my mac… I know right… They gave me a phone number that was not connected. Then after I called back the rep denied it was till she finally dialled it herself. She then told me she will leave a message and he would call me back. Still waiting now at 375 days. I then got a call from the ” legal department”. I told them I was tricked in to agreeing and that the ENTIRE CONTRACT was not read to me WORD for WORD. Which I’m pretty sure is how these contract thingys are suppose to work. They left me alone after that!!!! Until yesterday. They want to take me personally to small claims. I closed my business months ago it was a limited company. They are still advertising it. I don’t know about you but if someone isn’t paying for my services I no longer provide them. Anyways. I’m lawyered up now and I want to see what can be done about this. I’ll let you all know what happens.
Thanks for the update, Justin! Let us know how it goes.
How did the legal battle go?
I’m interested in pursuing this.
I have been working in the SEO and website industry for many years now and have seen many things and I have to say that a lot of smaller SEO/Website agencies are just as bad if not worse than Yellow Pages in some cases. I have seen them charge many thousands of dollars for a website for a small business that is practically useless.
As a small business owner these days you can build and optimize your own website for a fraction of what yellow pages, SEO’s, and other agencies charge. You just have to educate yourself.
I also own a small business myself and advertise online with YP and I do get leads from them. I can show you emails from people who have found me from yellowpages.ca. It’s not many because we don’t spend a lot with them but in order to be successful these days the reality is that we need to make sure our business is found everywhere. I also built and optimized my own page 1 ranking website for less than $100.00 with hosting for only $10.00 per month. Like I said all you need to do is educate yourself. There is a learning curve but once you have it you are good to go.
As for people complaining about getting locked into a contract due to shady sales tactics, I have to say that, while there are many sales people these days who “embellish” what they have to offer due to targets on their own backs, perhaps it was also your greed that may have helped you get into the contract in the first place. If an offer sounds too good to be true then don’t buy it. Research what they are offering and then make sure you are comfortable with your decision about going forward with them with your eyes wide open. I have yet to meet a sales rep that tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth..LOL!
I also seriously doubt that an organization that has probably been around for over a hundred years would still be in existence if all they did was scam people everyday.
I have to say that I researched their new website offering and it looks very solid and certainly is very competitive in the industry.
Hey Bob (or is it Bruce),
You’re right — we often see small business who have been taken advantage of by design agencies and freelance designers. Usually in similar ways to how we see YP customers being taken advantage of!
It’s tough to place the blame on people for not realizing that something is “too good to be true” in this case, when that’s not really what the commenters above you are upset about. The sales pitch / acceptance / agreement method that YP uses is questionable at best and has resulted in many small businesses being locked into contracts that they did not explicitly agree to.
How does a business that has been around for so long continue to exist if it is a scam? With threats, mostly. If you try to cancel YP, you’re told that you will lose your rankings completely, or that you don’t actually own your website OR your domain — so you’ll have to start over. People feel like they have no other choice but to stick with YP. Unfortunately, all too often, this works — at least until people find each other in the comments here and work towards a joint lawsuit.
Or until they start working with an agency or freelancer who understands how the Internet works now, and will ensure that your website will be sustainable into the future, without having to pay YP FOREVER.
Anyways, glad you have had a good experience with your $10/month hosting and your $100 website!
Hi,
I never got scammed by them, but i know lots of businesses in my home town that got scamed.
Yes, I also was scammed into “getting” a contract verbally. I thought I was getting a contract to look over not agreeing to an impromptu contract immediately. Either way, I asked to cancel within 30 days which I was told by them I had to cancel within because the written terms came after to so-called agreed verbal contract. So here is the thing… YP breached my contract by a recorded verbal term. Sent a letter to their legal department to nullify the agreement as a breach but I still am being billed after two months. It looks like I have no choice but to take legal action. Does anyone know even who YP to send court papers even too? I think this company Yellowpages is now Federally committing corporate crimes but I cannot be sure. I can prove all of this of course. Cheers
class action lawsuit? I got suckered into a verbal agreement for a different name then what they billed me with, after I agreed to receive information about the plan the YP rep was talking about. That agreement turned into a 900$contract where I received zero service from.
I have read all the comments and What happened to everyone else exactly happened to me. Brutal outfit.
> Claimed I entered a verbal contract
>I called to say I did not want any services… Claimed I could not cancel until after 1 yr
> E -bills monthly for $50ish
Same as everyone else.
So here’s the thing I did not have a company set up. Only a website with a name of a potential company. They don’t really know who I specifically am. It is now in a collection company hands and they call leaving messages. I don’t respond.
SO my question. If there was never a company with a registered name, limited or incorporated, and I am some voice on the phone with a name others have…. How do they ever collect? Any thoughts from anyone?
I am dealing with this kind of problem with YP now , so terrible with SEO service!
Another YP horror story with possibly a little better ending (still ongoing). we have sent letters, emails and voice calls for the last 2.5 years trying to cancel our YP contract. The letters they claim they never received. The emails they claim they never received, the voice calls, they claim they forwarded our concern to our account manager and that our account manager followed up with us and we wanted to continue our services and that they have recorded proof of this. I asked for this proof but they were unable to supply. They are so incredibly sneaky and deceptive in there business dealings. We finally stopped paying in May of 2017 after sending a registered letter advising them of our long hard road trying to cancel our contract. I stated in the letter that they must cease and desist all communication with us or I would take this to every news outlet at our disposal and bring in our company lawyers (not sure if the lawayers could do much). 1 month passes without a YP bill, 2 and 3 months pass with a YP bill. I was so proud…thought I had beaten them and they were finally realising their mistakes. Come January 2018, we receive a call from a collection company that YP hired. Demanding $4800.00 to resolve this matter immediately before further legal action is taken. They pretend to be a law firm by the way but they are just a collection agency and the owner is a lawyer. My draw just about hit the ground. Being who I am always up for a good fight so I explained to the collection agency my attempt at cancelling my YP contract for the last 2.5 – 3 years. Waste of time that was. They still insisted on $4800.00 or they would be proceeding with legal action. I had a half hour meeting with our lawyer about this situation and discovered the following. We are in B.C. and YP and the debt collector are in Ontario. In order to get a judgement against us they would have to sue us in small claims court in B.C. He said it’s unlikely they would send someone out but they may have colleagues in Vancouver who could act on there behalf. I also found out that the actual amount owing was $3800 and the debt collector tacked on a fee $1000.00…WOW!!!.
The lawyer also advised not to be intimidated by going to small claims court. The judges are usually very reasonable to reasonable people and while they are required to follow the law, if you can show your attempts at trying to cancel the contract, this will be taken into high consideration. Also they can not sue for costs over the actual debt owed. so $4800.00 is automatically out of the question. He also stated that the YP group will try and show that we have still been generating revenue as our ad is still in the YP. While I don’t think YP brings in even .01% of our revenue, it’s a tough one to prove one way or the other. Basically at the end of the meeting he asked if I would be comfortable paying 2K to make it go away. He was pretty confident that they would accept $2000. I told the debt collector I am willing to pay the 2K and she replied that she can’t go below $3800. already knocked $1000 off the initial bill. I stayed firm and simply told her I will pay no more than 2K and that she should proceed with whatever legal action they deem necessary. Next day I get a phone call and her so called boss has agreed to settle this for $2800. Wow! $2000.00 reduction in 2 days. Still I stayed firm on my 2K. A few hour later she cam back that their final offer without proceeding with legal action is $2480. Don’t ask why the $80(probably some psychological thing). $2320 off the original bill in 2 days. I finally was making some headway and felt they were actually being reasonable now. I jokingly but seriously told her to make it $2400 even and I will agree. I guess she felt that since I went up from 2K to $2400 she had me and she tells me now she cant go below $2480. That this is her absolute minimum she can accept. I said “I look forward to seeing you in small claims court” or Civil Resolution Tribunal as it’s under $5000.00. It’s something relatively new my lawyer told me about in B.C. Suddenly she had a new figure $2452.80. I am not kidding here. I stood firm saying that I already came up to $2400 from 2K and that is it. She’s like “really you want this to go on for $52.” I said “that works both ways doesn’t it. She now has to talk her boss to see if he will agree to $2400.00. I actually hope they don’t because my next offer will be $1000.00 and I’m pretty confident that if the tribunal sees that I offered them $2400.00 and they didn’t accept, it will look very bad on there part. I expect to get a phone call back tomorrow about this.Sorry for the very long story. Just want you to now to not be scared by there scare tactics. Any reasonable judge that sees you made an effort to cancel will throw out their claim. Just bring in evidence of all the horror stories with people experiencing the same cancellation problems.
1 month passes without a YP bill, 2 and 3 months pass with a YP bill
It should read 2and 3 months pass without a YP bill
Hi Chris,
So how it is going, is there any update on your side? I would appreciate if you provide us with any update on your case!
Thank you!
The Dex YP reps are now selling marketing automation software branded as “thryv.” Anyone know anything about it?
We never agreed to renew our YP phone book advertising for this year for our company. Their sales rep. talked to us once on the phone about renewing our advertising. We told him that we were too busy and to call back in the near future and to talk to us { the owners } about the YP renewal. He called back when we were not at our business and talked to one of our employees. He never talked to us as we instructed him to. Next thing we know, we are on the hook for another year of YP phone book advertising. Advertising that we did not agree to. So we have not paid the bills and Bell YP are now threatening legal action through their collection division. We are not going to pay this bill as the YP rep. never talked to us as instructed prior to the renewal. Further we were never made aware that if we didn’t renew by a certain date then the service would be “auto re-newed.” We are looking into our legal rights on this issue at this point. WOW— what a unethical, unprofessional thing to do. They are being bullies ! Another reason why one shouldn’t get into a small business.
I need help we are served with a law sued from yellow pages we are in Florida and law sued is from Georgia can someone recommend me an Attorney
I am wondering if anybody in Calgary has hired a lawyer who has successfully defended them against Yellow pages???
I down size my add in the yellow pages over this past few years and my business never lost anything. should of done this a long time a go yellow pages are going to be like the dodo bird a thing of the past. Martin
Hi guys, has anyone had any success fighting their YP contract? It seems as though we all have similar stories as far as getting tricked into a yr agreement. We are a small business and this contract could potentially put us under. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated!
Hello,
I am a small business owner. I make less then 30 000 dollars a year and am currently struggling with raising a 3 month old all on my own no child support. I attempted to stop the yp contract i was unaware that it was legally binding when agreeing over the phone. I was so excited counting down the days when id no longer pay for a useless service. When i surprisingly called only to find I had been automatically renewed for the next year. The lady wouldnt allow me to speak to higher authority.Im so shocked and disgusted at this companies tactics. Anyone interested in helping me battle this email me [email protected]
Thanks every one to share your case, the YP seller told me that i will be not able to handle all jobs the yellow pages will send me getting $150 monthly. and guess what ? 6 months later no one single customer referral one YP. I refuse to pay, and a lady from collection told me that I’m stupid if be leave everything the seller told me, she told me, the seller will told you anything to convince you, and now she will do whatever it is to charge me because i have a voice contract.
the seller give me his email and direct contact number because he will help me, and answers any question i have in the future. guess what? he never answer me or helped me.
so please no not enroll to Yellow pages.
last year, i got a phone call from RedFlagDeals owned by Yellow Pages(that is what they told me)
they said they can put some ads local section in redflagdeals $350 per months. and they aggressively lead to say “YES” on verbal contract.
i didnt even have real business when they called me. i was trying to build up business, they found me few ads on kijiji i put. it was like home-based parttime window tinting service job.
English is my second language, i couldnt understand whole thing what they talk on the phone,
so i told them, “when i start the real business with company name and license, probably i will do.”
And they led me to say yes on ‘verbal agreement’
after few months, they sent invoice starts from 2017 march. i ignored couple months, because ads wasnt on RedflagDeal website. one day they called me and threatened me in order to get paid from me.
i kept ignored for 2years, now they found me my real name(cuz i told them my english name which is not legal name) and sent to cgc collection. they called yesterday.
now i really afraid of what they are doing to me. what should i do?
thank you for helping me! hope you understand my english.
Yellow pages billed me (relentlessly) for an ad which they never ran. I have a credit of over $800 which has been owed to me for years. They say they will refund the payment but they never do send a cheque. It’s six months since they last promised to send the refund. Over and above this, my business has been harmed because I did not receive the advertising which I purchased. Do you know how I go about suing them? I am in northern Ontario.
I am locked in contract with YP. They said they would give me 1 month free trial and never agreed to anything and then they started billing me 141dollars a month. I called and they couldn’t cancel it. Its locked for 12 months! I asked for a lower monthly subscription then…they gave me $82 still a lot of money. Can I cancel it saying I dont have business anymore? Please, if anyone can share. I want to completely cancel it.
Thanks!
Yellow Pages is organized crime treating small business as their ATM. I am wondering why the Federal authorities haven’t shut them down or a class action suit hasn’t been filed in every province. I called to cancel the “service” in October of 2016 after one full year of no leads or traffic. The only contact I received from YP prior was a rep asking me to add more key words at more money. At this point I was told that I couldn’t cancel because of an automatic renewal clause. “If I hadn’t actively cancelled in May, 90 days prior to the end the one year period, I was committed to another full year”. In December after getting no where, I called “customer service” and asked for a supervisor. I talked to the supervisor and was told that Legal would be the next step. I asked to be handed over to Legal and she admitted that she was Legal (Very revealing that customer service department is being run by the legal department.) I have had a Collection Agency and a Law firm contact me. Then after wasting time explaining the situation to the muscle, I have YP re-start sending invoices to my email with more interest added on just a few months ago. I am not going to pay these crooks another dime.
Yellowpages is a very poorly run business. The only well-run part of their business is running with your money. I do not trust them. Called and was told my account was cancelled only to have it auto-renew and invoiced. The last call was being put on hold and the call lasted 55 minutes, most of it was listening to awful phone music. Maybe they do not have the resources to provide customer service as their team of Twilight Zone disconnected from reality employees have less than a clue. My guess is they put you on hold hoping you go away in frustration.
I have contracted with Yellow Pages for 37 years. I am selling my business. The new buyer does not want to continue the contract. YP says I have to pay $2034 for 4 more months until the end of the contract. I can understand paying the term on the printed media, but most of this cost is for digital advertising that can be shut down theoretically at any time. How can I deal with this?
if you want to cancel… I was able to get hold of one person using option for handling billing & payment 1-877-909-9356. You can only cancel three months prior your year contract changes. It automatically renews your contract for another year and will increase automatically without any messages or without calling you first because they said it’s what your contract says. you need a proof of cancellation if you wanted to override that other year, but in my case— No one answers in the customers service and no other ways to send them message of cancellation but to call.
Hello! Thanks for the fruitful discussion!
Did anyone deal with a situation when YP started sending you bills without your consent whatsoever? Neither did I agree to their contract over the phone talking to YP representative (even though I received calls), nor I provided my information through YP on-line forms. I am afraid that my information is easily searchable, as I do advertise on another platform, not related to YP — and where I do pay a corresponding fee.
I also noticed my company is now searchable on YP web-page. Do you advise submitting a form to remove it first?
Do you advise ignoring YP rep calls and emails with bills? Or send YP privacy department an explanation of why I am not their customer?
I subscribed to a yellow pages ad after they replied to me about all the benefits of advertising with them. They promised me I would generate business but the only thing they generate is other advertisers and telemarketers harassing you night and day. I tried to get them to stop the ad as it was actually hurting my business but they would not. I quit paying. I told them verbally and through email to stop the ad but they continued to run it for a year and a half after I told them to stop then sent me a bill for it and if I don’t pay they are threatening legal action to which I responded by saying if they don’t leave me alone I will take them to court. What an awful, awful company. Maybe we could start a class action suit against them, I would certainly be on board
I have the same complaint as everyone else. Got suckered into a verbal contract in 2016. They took the wrong credit card so I didn’t get a bill until the renewal which happened automatically without consent. I ended up going through Better Business Bureau and paying them $500. the I verbally and emailed them telling them to stop the service.
Here we are in 2019 and they’re sending me another bill for the year $1200. I know it’s them as the logo is theirs. I think they themselves opened the “fake yellow pages” businesses just to extort people. However, this is not one of the”fake ones”, it’s them.
I reported it to cbc marketplace https://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/contactus/
as well as well as the Canadian anti fraud ctr
I can’t believe they are still being allowed to continue this fraudulent malpractice and no government body is doing anything.
Yellow pages has sent me to collections for an advertising that i have never agreed to, from 2016 . How do i know this because i am already way to busy to advertise and i had told them that. i know of numerous small businesses that they are ripping off every year, yet they seem to get away with it. Now that they have ruined my small business credit score, they will NEVER EVER get money out of me, i owe them absolutely 0 dollars, i have a collection agency hounding me to which i just hang up. i have no idea how deal with corporate bullies. i don’t roll that way.
I gave a verbal agreement last January that clearly stated was for a 12 month period. That contract ended 2 days ago. I talked to them yesterday and my contract was automatically renewed. They said it was because I never gave 3 months notice. In my eyes the verbal contract was for a 12 month period and also why didnt I get a call this year for another 12 month renewal. Is there anything I can do? I really dont want to pay for 12 more months.
Yp’s company and people are a big scam, fraud rude people, we bought a new running business but never signed any contract whatsoever with them. The previous owner had signed a contract that runs till 2020 and we didn’t have clue about it until we got our first bill through Telus. Yes through Telus, we were surprised to know that Telus takes care of their billing, Now all we know after all the frustration, that we own that contract (automatically transfers to a new owner without their consent) which we never signed and asked for it. In fact ,in our sales agreement, nothing was mentioned about YP’s contract. Roughly 2000 a month with absolute zero return. Does anyone have any suggestions for us?
Any advice will be appreciated.
Everyone should report them to CBC marketplace! If there are complaints from hundreds of people they will have to do a segment. My story: My partner agreed to 12 months over the phone and then we were told we agreed to a contract when we tried to cancel. Told them that the verbal yes for 12 months and not auto-renewal (I listened to the recording). They don’t care. Sent a complaint to BBB. They still didn’t care. As of right now, we are stuck paying until 2020. I am currently trying to at least cancel so we don’t get auto renewed, but I was told that a rep will contact me at least 3 months before the contract is up. 8 months for a response? And I’m certain that they will simply say they called, we didn’t answer and auto renew us again and I will be right back to the beginning and locked into a never ending contract. I don’t understand why they can’t offer to cancel now if we pay out the contract at least. I would gladly pay right now just to have this put to bed and know that we are through with them. I’m not sure how anyone can work for this company and be able to sleep at night.
These ppl send an advertisement saying add your location and nothing else with a name . Now they are saying I have to pay and this is not my business . SHAME ON YOU
I’m looking for people to come to join me in a class-action lawsuit against Yellow Pages/Dex YP. I don’t want money – so this isn’t to get money from you. I’m looking to go after them for their consistent acts of bad faith. The only thing they care about however is a class action lawsuit. You can reach me at paralegal2therescue (dot) com or [email protected], this is my paralegal helping me fight Dex YP/YP. let me know if you wish to join. I am already in a lawsuit with them and their collection agent called JSD Management in federal court.
thanks,
HI,
Is there a class action lawsuit?
Today a Lawyer called me asking for $5,200 for an outstanding bill with yellow pages, to be paid within 4 hours time, or they will serve me tomorrow and it could cost me anywhere from an addition $9,000 – $52,000!!! This is wild. The services were initially fraudulent. They said I would be on top of yellow page listings. Which I was not.
Please help [email protected]
A bunch of crooks
So frustrated here too. Received a call that was apparently about helping me complete my free listing, which was a no-brainer. The YP caller described more advanced services that were possible, and pressured me into providing a verbal confirmation of interest and CC info to “get things rolling” – all while promising that more information would be sent to me and that I’d have time to confirm or make changes later.
Weeks went by and I heard nothing back from them. Suddenly two and a half weeks later, my visa was charged. At that point, I wasn’t yet entirely turned off of the services (despite not knowing what exactly they were, and the sleazy way of green lighting my ‘contract’) and emailed that person back with all the information they needed to fix up my profile for me – and I asked what exactly the services entitled me to above and beyond the free profile. No response to that for another two and a half weeks (to today).
So now, having received no services yet having paid… I’m trying to cancel and of course run into the standard “customer care” line that I said “yes” to something and that I’m now on the hook for a full year. I’m continuing to fight this as much as I can, and in particular have pointed out that:
-I never received a copy of my contract, description of services “Advertising Services”, or terms & conditions from the sales person.
– My credit card was never charged within “72 hours” as sales promised, and I took the lack of a charge and lack of service to be a lack of contract.
– Terms and conditions indicate that YP may terminate the contract at any point, and that they are liable to refund for any unrendered services provided notice is given within 45 days.
So I’ve essentially tried to get them to dump me rather than have them accept me dumping them. Overall, I feel embarrassed that I thought YP could actually help my business with SEO etc., and angered that YP uses such aggressive, entrapping tactics to create a ‘contract’. Disgusted that their only ‘customer service’ response is tantamount to sticking out their tongue and saying “we got ya!”.
Oh… if it helps anyone, here are their actual T&Cs:
https://business.yellowpages.ca/en/web/guest/terms-and-conditions/
Hi, I am in a similar situation – I attempted to cancel back in January and also asked for a copy as well as the terms of the contract. We had purchased the business and the service was just rolled over and I wanted all the information on what we we’re paying for and when the term was up. I can never get through to their customer service, I am on hold forever and then it either cuts off or goes to a voicemail. The location that we are being billed through is also in Quebec which apparently means the BBB will not offer any assistance. Does anyone have any feedback on how I can cancel this terrible contract???
My husband signed up with Yellow Pages years ago and Bell Canada had always included payment for Yellow Pages on his Bell bill. When my husband sold his store and moved his business to Barrie due to chronic medical problems, he assumed that cancelling with Bell would also cancel Yellow Pages, but, of course, it did not! After two years of phone calls and talking to both Yellow Pages and their collection service, we decided that he should just pay even though the info in the small Yellow pages entry for his business was inaccurate due to relocation of my husband’s business. Well… even after getting verbal confirmation of cancellation (which I witnessed because the phone was on speaker), as well as payment of the final bill from Yellow Pages, my poor husband is still getting harassing phone calls from the collection service!!! My strong suggestion to everyone: DO NOT USE YELLOW PAGES and STOP USING BELL since Bell should have informed Yellow Pages about the cancellation of service but Bell claims that they are not affiliated with Yellow Pages, yet, they cooperate with Yellow Pages by including Yellow Pages invoices on their own bills! Bell can’t have it both ways! Yellow Pages never sent a separate invoice to my husband after he stopped using Bell Canada yet they claimed to have forwarded bills to my husband’s old business address. My husband has kept in touch with the new owners of his former store and they have never received anything addressed to my husband’s business from Yellow Pages, so, we know that Yellow Pages was not telling the truth. By the way, they claim to have a recording of the verbal contract yet were unable to produce it when we requested it. We are now ignoring the collection calls but these constitute harassment since Yellow Pages claims that the account has been cancelled due to receipt of my husband’s final payment! I suspect that there may be scammers out there who may be actually capitalizing on this chronic problem with Yellow Pages so LET THE BUYER BEWARE! Don’t trust anyone claiming to be a collection agency! Especially, when you were told that the account has been cancelled and payment is up to date!
What an embarrassing company and I can’t believe how shady they are. I was given a notice from our accounts payable team that we were overdue on our YP account…I thought to myself I’ve never signed up for that. Like a lot of people, it was added to our phone bill through Telus (shady enough) and now they are just billing directly.
I talked to my rep and told them I’ve never agreed to this and have been here for two years and never been contacted by you or any of your YP reps agreeing to pay for this useless digital service.
I was told it was agreed by our owner over the phone. I told them to prove it…so they sent me a phone recording where the person speaking didn’t speak good English and asked if we would like to be on Yellowpages. No mention of their “terms and conditions” of auto-renewal one bit. There has never been anything signed or agreed upon and they have never reached out to us. Instead, they are now coming back trying to collect money for which we never agreed to pay them.
I keep asking for proof of explanation of terms and conditions or any form of written agreement to this as we were never given an understanding of this auto-renewal…of course, it doesn’t exist! I will be spreading the word and complaining on ever platform possible about these scam artists!
Darren, that’s awful. You are not the first person to tell us that they are suddenly being billed like this. In the recording, do you hear the owner saying “yes”?
Yes, I’ve listened to it over and over and not once do they explain the terms and conditions that they are claiming we agreed to but they just basically ask “Do you want your business on Yellowpages” from a foreign speaking person who was extremely hard to understand in the first place. After the Yes it was promptly cut off.
I understand that the owner says yes, my issue is how vague and unethical this whole thing is, they don’t explain anything and dupe businesses into agreeing thinking they are signing up for a free listing in Yellowpages. Embarrassing…I talked to someone else this past weekend and they said the exact same thing, how they continue to get away with this is unbelievable.
It’s likely because the amount they charge is too small to bother with hiring a lawyer. Someone with deep pockets would need to take them on and then get other businesses to jump in.
Same BS as everyone above… signed up for a 1 year contract and they automatically renewed my contract for another term. Can not cancel, customer service is brutal, fear of stop payment sending me to collections. I requested the voice recordings for the “contract” and they did send them to me.. nowhere did I ask to be renewed or was I asked if I wanted to renew the “contract.”
Jeff, if you never said “yes” in the recordings, you might be able to get out of it. Try that!
These guys are leeches, plain and simple. They had an employee who threatened to kill another employee and didn’t even let the employee know for fear or being sued. It was an actual article on CBC. As a small business owner, I ignore YP when they call or contact me because so many of my retail and small business friends and clients have been burned.
They will lie, cheat and steal to make a buck. If you are having problems getting through to to the cancellation department, I strongly recommend bombarding their executives and board of directors that can be easily found on their website. Emails for these people are pretty easy to find if just Google them. One of the Board of Directors consults for the Dali Lama Center for Ethics in business. LOL The hypocrisy is just too much!
YP are useless middle-men.
I got contracted by a YP agent in March of 2018 pressuring me into an ad on Yellow Pages. After a while of pressuring me, he got me to say “Yes I agree” Then after that, he told me that it would be $75.75 a month and I told him I wanted it cancelled but then he told me that I had already agreed to their terms and conditions. He also told me I would receive monthly statements. I didn’t receive a statement until September of 2019 and it was for 11 hundred dollars. This statement was also sent to me by CTL law saying if I didn’t pay in 10 days there would be the full extent of the law put on me. So here I am been fighting these guys over E-mail since then and calling any of their “help” numbers just redirects me to Bell Canada. I have also received phone calls from these guys saying there is a warrant out for my arrest. I have no clue what to do with these guys it’s obviously an ongoing scam that they won’t let go of.
This sounds horrible! FYI, collections harassment is not allowed in Canada – your province will have specific protections that I recommend checking and absolutely file a complaint.
in jan and feb of 1919 I was called continually by yellow pages to renew my contract.i told them i did not want to continue and then the automatic billing through bell stopped in March 2019.They did not take my website down but since the billing stopped I was confident they had followed my instructions.when I received my phone bill for march of 2020 bell has started billing me again for yellow page advertising and the amount owing went up from the original 130.00 a month to 170.00 a month.Tried on numerous occasions to get through to customer service , when I finally did they said it will take about 6 to 8 weeks to look into my complaint, Bell is telling me there is nothing they can do but they are the ones taking it out of my account.Who should I send an email to to confirm my cancellation. i have a feeling I am going to need to start building my case against these crooks
Good afternoon. I sold my business 2 years ago. One gets all sorts of weird stuff that really no longer applies so it goes in the shred bin. I kept getting this mail from a “Dex-YP. I’d never heard of them and thought they were some sort of weird company and tossed them. [I found later that they had purchased AT&T’s yellow pages. The bills were coming to two names. One was the name my old phone number was listed and one was my name. I finally opened one and I found that I was being charged for some sort of phone ad. I called them on the phone to tell them that I had sold the business 2 years prior. That did not matter one bit to the person I spoke to. She told me that not only was I going to have to pay the amounts on the bills but also a monthly fee for the rest of the year. Maybe I shouldn’t have called because one week later I got a bill from collections. I called them and they didn’t care either and told me I would have to pay, or else I would be reported to the credit bureau. Not something I want. I did call my lawyer who suggested I wait for the second letter from the collection company then call and offer to pay a smaller amount to settle all accounts and then demand proof of the conversation. I’m afraid I was rather frustrated by both Dex-YP and collections and gave up hanging up in frustration. Is there anything I can do?
Help stop yellow pages scams I have got trapped by a yellowpages.ca sales team got in a year long contract paying $72 every month I have received no business yet in past 10 months I have got one call in the entire period of 10 months i would highly recommend to stay away from yellow pages and even yelp they are the same company they wouldn’t deliver any results 0 ROI you will definitely lose your time and money 100% even after cancellation they will still charge your credit card as there hundreds of negative reviews available on many trusted forums against YP, I would highly recommend using FB and Google ppc or other online advertising mediums instead.
My issue is a little different than everyone else’s. I am down here in the US (showed up on a web search), but still I do subscribe to the YP print and online ADs. I started my advertising with YP in 2013. Back then it was a 12 month contract, seems logical. But these last 2 years I’ve recently realized I had signed a contract for 14 months. Yes, they are now having you sign (or at least me) a 14 month contract for a 12 month AD in the YP/online.
Here’s my first contract in 2013: “There are 12 payments of $21.00 due by the first of each month, beginning January 1, 2013.”
Here’s my second to the last contract: “14 monthly payments of $55.00, due by the first of each month, beginning January 1, 2019.”
Here’s my last contract: “14 monthly payments of $63.00, due by the first of each month, beginning March 1, 2020.”
I am definitely canceling my print/online AD due to their shifty contracts. Since I won’t be renewing for next year’s book, I’ll still be paying $63/m for Jan, Feb, Mar and Apr in 2021 for a print AD in a book that won’t be viable in 2021.
I voiced my opinion to the rep who called me last month trying to get me on-the-hook again for another 14 month contract. She was persistent in trying to get me to change my mind. In a perpetual 14 month contract, you’ll eventually get screwed once you cancel, like me. I should be paying Jan to Dec, a 12 month contract for the life of the print AD in the book no matter what. See ya later, YP! You lost a customer of 7 years 4 months.
I cancelled my account in January 2020 once I found out they separated their relationship with Bell. Long story short. Never heard from them again after cancelling. In August received an email stating they had tried several times to contact me about my cancellation request. I can assure they did not. I was the only one working in the office due to covid and no one from YP called. Again I receive another email stating they had tried several time to contact me about my cancellation request. Never received an invoice by mail or email. Fast forward I receive an email October 22, 2020 requesting payment and an invoice for total amount of $4,011.08. The bill is for September for $393.02 and a previous balance owing of $3618.06.. They are still billing me!!!! I contact the BBB and was not surprised to see “CURRENT ALERTS FOR THIS BUSINESS” under the Yellow Pages. Is anyone aware of a class action suit against this company.
Yellow pages is a scam now. Once you give them your credit card number they start collecting money. First they say that we will send you an agreement to sign. If you don’t sign they start collecting money from your credit card. When you will call they say you have one year verbal agreement. When you cancel they say you have to cancel 3 month in advance and even after three month they keep charging you.
Thank you – blog very informative. Rep from YP made monthly EMPTY promises, that has Not materialized over 12+months. Contracts & renewals were signed at the most inopportune time, sometimes with wrong company name, addresses, and phone (which then would be crossed out, then corrected by hand. Major digital errors were made, and always assured by Rep it would soon be corrected. Often just left till it’s found …next time. Was almost fined by my governing body for breaking Ethical Bylaws pertaining only to YP’s method of advertising. Sold company 3 years ago, suddenly an invoice (2017) is added to Outstanding Balance! Gave notification to Terminate, changed web designer (due to infractions by YP), Yet, YP continues to bill. For digital work Not done by YP?
Would be interested if there was a contact available for Class Action Lawsuit.
The media consultant/sales rep who call you get a good commission if I remember correctly (I think 20-30%). That’s a good incentive for them to do anything they can to make a sale (in this case, verbally agreeing to digital advertising and giving your credit card information). That includes omissions, white lies, exaggerations of potential results, and persuasion through some FUD. They hire pretty much anybody to these roles and one does not become an expert in digital advertising with only a couple weeks of training.
It is up to business owners to not fall for any type of emotional sales pitch over the phone. Ask to read the contract before signing. If they refuse, just walk away.
A bird in the pocket is better than two in the bush.
how do I cancel my account with thryv–they are enforcing the year contract into the future. What is up–they say I must set up a portal account access. Can you help. Ralph Foster Foster Co. 2189 Bancroft Bay Berkeley, Ca. 510-845-3015. Ralph Foster
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I have canceled my agreement an year ago but still receiving invoice every month regularly. Yellow Pages is sucking our hard earned money. Yellow Pages is a scam. Nobody use yellow Pages in these days. I believe government of Canada should take action against Yellow Pages.
In hindsight, I see now that yellow pages quite obviously employs numerous deceptive business tactics. I got suckered in by a seemingly nice salesperson and I really regret signing a one-year contract with them. Amongst their deceptive business tactics is that they refuse to send you a written contract and instead tell you that they only make verbal contracts over the phone. This is unusual and it’s designed purposefully this way to trap people. They also are not upfront about the results that you are getting from their advertising campaigns. They use vaguely defined terms like “meaningful contacts” to make you think that lots of people are contacting you through their advertisement, when you know that this is not the case based on the number of calls that you are receiving. Now that I think about it, all the warning signs were there from the moment they contacted me. I look forward to my contact ending so that I never have to speak to them again. I highly recommend to stay far away from this company. I wish I had come across this web page earlier, I would have never spoken to them further.
I have tried canceling and of course rep on the phone says ” they never received a letter in writing”. What has everyone else done? Do you just not pay? so annoying how they keep taking your money. I had a similar situation with Yelp
I just found myself to be trapped in a one year contract by YP but it is just been a week since the contract started.
Is there anything i can do to get out of this?
I have been through the same tricky conversation as almost everybody here, with a recorded yes in their database for a shady conversation
Please help me, my business is based in Quebec
So my story with YP is I run a small business. I signed a contract back in October 2018 then I cancelled them back in 2019 cause I was not happy with their services. Paid all of 2019 even though I repeatedly asked to cancel. Shortly we got Covid19 spreading around and all the more so to make sure I cancelled with no work. I kept getting invoices anyways. I just stopped after 2020 all together cause I told them I was not happy with their services and finally YP was cancelled so I thought. Then I got collection agency saying I owe for 2020 and 2021 which I never signed or agreed. So I believe it’s some scam. They first said to pay them 4,300 within 2 weeks. We apparently owe 5,800 all together. I got some letter recently stating I now owe them 6,000 and if I don’t pay them within 2 weeks they will take action. This seems like a red flag too me. Who can just come out with paying something like that anyways when you owe a small company and your just getting by? I actually don’t care if they go after me cause it’s not something I agreed with. I feel I’m getting Harassed after no contact in 2 years and YP should be sued for Negligence if they are involved. I have to look into it further cause more and more ppl are getting scammed these days.
Does anyone here have any idea how to find an email address for this company? Ridiculous that this supposedly tech forward company does not provide email addresses. Can’t find anything on my bill or online.
I am sending a letter, and will do so by registered mail, in case by some miracle that makes a difference, but I also want to email.
I have been trying for 3 weeks now to reach them by phone. I have tried every number that I can find, both on their website and in other online results, or on my bill. I have left multiple messages, pleading
with them to call back. doesn’t matter which number you dial, you get the same voicemail box.
Absolutely pathetic company.
It is now March 2023, can someone advise me if there is a civil lawsuit against YP in Ontario that I can join? I started a YP subscription thinking it is momth to month. When I saw no value in it, I asked to cancel for which they said I can’t cancel as I verbally agreed. Now they are having a law firm call me and threaten me with a lawsuit. What do I do?
How to terminate a contract with YP, as they are not fulfilling their obligations? The contract has not yet expired.
Well well well looks like I’m not the only one to be scammed by yellow pages and very interesting to see nothing can be done about this as big as they are I’m going to fight them till the end and shut them down I work so hard to make a buck and all of a sudden I am bullied by collection agency I tried many times to cancel my subscription and was unsuccessful next thing I’m under auto renewal with no phone call or email giving me the heads up and if I want to continue my service with them now I’m getting billed thousands of dollars per month which I refuse to pay as they haven’t for filled my needs for our business