Yellow Pages Scam

How many business telephone directories do you think are out there calling themselves "Yellow Pages", or some variation thereof?

I don't exactly know the answer, but there are far too many, and most of them are scammers.

For my business, I willingly pay for a small yellow pages ad in our local telephone book. When I started, that seemed like a fairly simple venture, right? Wrong.

Ever since I opened the business, I have been inundated with mail and phone calls from people from "Yellow Pages" or "Yellow Book" or "Yellow Page Directories" or "Yellow Pages Online", ad nauseum. And they all seem to have picked up on the fact that we little business owners can't tell one from the other.

So they call me, and I say, "Didn't I already pay for my Yellow Page ad this year?". They try to change the subject, which I've learned means they're not from the same company that publishes our local phone book. I'm still kicking myself for one that fooled me into buying something, which meant I was suddenly getting invoices from them every month for an ad I didn't even know how to find that produced exactly zero customer calls. It took me 2 months, 3 letters, and about 5 phone calls to finally find the right person who actually said, "Yes, sir, I can cancel this for you."

Then there are the others that keep sending me invoices, even though I never signed up for anything. It's a scam based on the fact that they know we can't tell one yellow page company from another, and they think if they just send out a credible-looking invoice, they can trick us into putting it into our regular payment stack. And end up paying for some yellow page service that may or may not even exist.

Here's my current attitude on the subject: No more Yellow Page ads from me. I'm going to focus my advertising on direct mail, networking, and the internet. Don't call me, don't send me stuff, leave me alone. Your industry has been turned into one big scam, which I refuse to be associated with from now on.