Complaint Review: Yellow Pages Group Co.

Service Problems over a whole year:

I paid up front for an online business listing for 2014.  In January 2014, I found that Yellow Pages Group Co. had my company listed under "Escort Services" as well as the actual category it was supposed to be listed under.  I asked them to remove it from the "Escort Services" category, which they eventually did.  Next, I noticed that my listing wasn't rotating with the other online listings.  I contacted them and they tried to upsell me on higher priced listings.  I said I'd stay with the listing I had.  I could never get into my online account with them no matter how many password resets I did.

In November, I called to pay for the next year's listing and was told that I had been switched to a higher priced listing which I did not authorize.  They started an investigation they said could take 2 - 6 weeks, but I was told within a week that I would be switched back to my old lower priced listing.  I was told not to pay yet, but to wait for my billing date in December.

In December, I called to pay for the next year's advertising.  I did.  The same afternoon, their AR department was calling me to ask for payment for November 2014 for the higher priced listing I hadn't authorized.  I also mentioned that they had removed my listing in late November 2014.  They started another investigation that they said would take 2 - 6 weeks.

Too many problems with the service. Too much upselling.  Too many different stories from different departments.  I told them I wanted to cancel altogether.  They told me I couldn't cancel with anyone but the account manager.  I requested that they take my company name off their website because although they'd removed it from the industry category, if my company name was searched for on their homepage, my company information would still come up.  I informed the account manager that I wanted to cancel by email.  I heard nothing back from her.  I put a complaint in with the Better Business Bureau.  I had to keep requesting that my company name be taken off their website for over a week and finally they took it off.

I got a call in January 2015 from a senior customer service representative saying they'd give me a free listing, (her idea, not mine) and I had a credit of over $500.00 on my account and they could refund the amount I'd paid in December.  She went right ahead and put up the free listing. I didn't want their free listing.

By now, I've told them numerous times that I don't want to do business with them anymore.

Now, they have cached pages of my company name and information that show up in the search results with my company name, leading to their website with a bunch of other companies' listings.  This is like a Black Hat SEO doorway.  I asked them to remove the links to my company name and their website in the search results, but they won't.  They say the search engines will remove those results, but search engines won't remove live results.  Yellow Pages Group Co. has to removed them from their website.

I still haven't received a refund for the credit they said was on my account or the money I paid in December 2014.  Nothing they say over the telephone can be believed. 

This company tries to upsell every chance they get.  They will not take responsibility for listing errors.  They want to have as many companies listing with them as possible so that they can promote and demote companies' websites in search results like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yelp, etc.  They are very reluctant to let go of a customer even when it's clear that the customer doesn't want their listings anymore.

Such a scam!