Complaint Review: YellowUSPages.com

At my office, on December 17, 2012, an unsolicited phone call brought madam Louise Madrigal, a representative for www.yellowuspages.com, along with her Spanish accent and scripted sales pitch.

"Get a free two month trial period with Yellow US Pages, effective today!" she said. Except this madam's tone was rather dry, yet determined despite my initial rejection of her offer.

After a couple rounds of "It's no cost to you." and "You have nothing to lose" [but my time of course]." I cordially accepted her offer, taking care to avoid the term 'yes' out of deep suspicion she might alter the taped conversation, manufacturing a few verbal agreements:

****************

"Do you want to pay for one year's service?"
'yes'
"Do you want to pay for the customized listing?"
'yes'
"Do you want the bouncing hydraulic system with spinning wheels and pine air freshener?
'yes'

****************

After hearing in so many words that I would accept the two month trial subscription, she asked to  whose attention the confirmation mail and further invoices - if needed - should be sent. After mentioning my name, she forwarded me to her supervisor to complete the transaction.

The supervisor spoke English without an accent (or rather with a generic American accent that I don't recognize as being an accent). She asked if I was authorized to enter a contract for the business and asked that I please respond yes or no.... With hesitant reservation, I said 'yes'.

The woman gave me a contract number, user name and password. I asked for the customer service number that I could call in order to cancel. In all our time talking, they conveniently forgot to give me a way to contact them. (The number, by the way, is 866-398-3612).

Ten days later, On December 27, 2012 at around 11am PST, I decided to visit YellowUSPages.com to see what our listing looked like. After trying to enter the term dentist and the city at which we are located, an alert box appeared that said the city name or zip code was invalid.

See, in more reputable online directories, they'll ask what state you are in or guess it based on your IP. But the less talented coders for yellowuspages.com make no such allowance. Fortunately, I realized what was going on and entered my state after the city, though I imagine other users might get frustrated and leave the site for more convenient ones.

Anyway, a search for my office type yielded one similar office in my city of which I'd never heard. I tried dental office and even my exact business name and nothing came up.

Already aware this wasn't a "real yellow pages", I now saw it was an incompetent fake. Immediately I called their phone number (which by the way, is 866-398-3612).

After 16 minutes on hold, I hung up and called again. While on hold the second time, I began writing a note which I sent to them using their contact page (http://yellowuspages.com/contact-us.php) asking them to cancel the trial subscription for the dental office immediately. I also left a name and phone number in their prompt for them to call back.

After listening to some pleasant music for nearly an hour, a co-worker advised me to hang up. Dejected, I took that advice, thinking this scam of a site would never answer the phone and then send an invoice two months later as if I owed them money. I started to imagine their "threatening letters" describing how much I "owe".

The following year (or actually about a week later), I called again at 11am in a third attempt to cancel the 2 month trial subscription. To my surprise, after three minutes, a woman answered the phone with an accentless accent.

I said I wanted to cancel my subscription, and she asked for the invoice number starting in Y 115. I took the "contract number", gave it to her, and she said the subscription would be terminated in 15 minutes. She gave me a confirmation number, and I rushed to ripoffreport.com to warn others of the neglectful act that occurred on December 27, 2012.

There was no service during that trial period, and there was no service when I initially called www.yellowuspages.com. I imagine that If I had waited to "take advantage" of the full two months, they easily may have spited me and said I owed money despite their failure in service.

Beware of Yellow US Pages.