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SBC Yellow Pages SBC Yellow Pages Advertisement is a Total Rip Off + Scam San Diego, California
Hello Everyone!
I am writing to let you know of an indecency of SBC Yellow Pages. I wasted my yet-to-be hard earned $ with them!!
I am a small business owner and paid for an ad that cost ~$10000 for 1 year. If you are small business owner, you will know this is a whole lot of $! I got only 1 customer who wanted stuff for FREE. I understand that advertising is not a guarantee of customers. However, what they advertised was NOT what I had approved. Their printing changed all the colors. Furthermore, they did not deliver ANY phone books that year to my work or home or to several homes of my friends. This was extremely disappointing, suspicious, and infuriating!! I am a small business owner, how can I prove this to them? I had sign in sheets of every customer who came to me and how they heard about us. Again, I only got 1 (nonpaying) customer from them.
It is my word against a powerful company with unlimited expenses for lawyers. I paid them to preserve my credit, but I do not like SBC Yellow Pages. I know I could have sued them and probably should have, but I was naiive and it is now too late. I realize now that what happened was a form of extortion. If you don't pay, we will send you to collections and garnish your income. I should have realized red flags when several attorneys I spoke with stated that they had seen SBC Yellow Pages tip small business owners into bankruptcy over similar disputes. What is legal is not necessarily ethical. That was one of the reasons I decided to put more energy into my business then fighting them. A dumb move I made was investing in print advertising instead of direct advertising through the internet, which is far more effective and cost-efficient. Expensive + valuable lessons learned. In retrospect, I should have taken them to small claims court. I had nothing much to lose that way. I was way too nice.
I met with what I consider to be an apathetic and arrogant leader in my local SBC Yellow Pages branch. His name is Phil Dunn and he refused to accept responsibility for the mistakes that his company had made explaining, "We are a Fortune 50 company."
This comment felt like a good hard slap in the face.
I wish I had flushed the $10000 down the toilet instead of giving it to SBC + Phil Dunn! In my opinion, Phil Dunn does not give a s**t about customer service. All Phil Dunn was primarily concerned with is the BOTTOM LINE for SBC Yellow Pages and he was out to get it by hook or by crook!! I do not trust or like Phil Dunn at SBC Yellow Pages in San Diego. I am a positive person, but when I think of Phil Dunn and SBC I feel disgusted! Thanks to the internet and this website, SBC Yellow Pages and Phil Dunn's philosophy can be exposed to the consumer to make up your own mind. Ironically, I've got my own free lasting ADVERTISEMENT exposing him and SBC Yellow Pages!
You have more power than you think! There is a revolution that has only just begun. You are more powerful than large companies like SBC Yellow Pages if you stand for what you believe in your heart.
Special thanks to this website.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Cory
San Antonio,Texas,
U.S.A.
FYI
#2Consumer Suggestion
Mon, April 11, 2011
Have had my shop for 17+ years now. Have used SBC/AT&T for all of those years. Times are changing. Don't get as much response from my yellow pages ad as I use to. Every year they TRY and convince me to spend more money. Their logic is a larger ad will get more results. Doesn't work. We have to look at how times are changing. Fewer people have home phones, fewer people receive a phone book. I live out in the country and I think I receive a disk instead of a phone book. Last year, I declined to be listed in their online yellow pages cause the prices were so high. A couple of months later the called back and offered the same thing at HALF the price. Interestingly just last week, the yellow pages rep called me and wanted to set up an appointment to review my ad for 2011's yellow pages phone book. The amazing thing is, I haven't SEEN a rep in 15 years. I don't know what's up with that. The reason they hammered you so much is because you were a "newbie" in business and didn't have a clue. That's pretty common. I suspect in the years to come, the yellow pages phone book will just about be dead.