Has anyone else had problems with Yell/ Yell.com? Going to court?
Comments
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We paid 15k for banner adverts in 4/5 areas, new website and 2 ads in the Yellow pages (paid around June 2012) as to our present site we have just got that developed 2/3 weeks ago.What exactly did you pay Yell 15k for and when did you pay them?
If it was for your site that is in your profile then you really need to find a professional web developer. That site will never get anywhere in the search engines with all the text stored as images.
Thanks for advice0 -
FortisUmbra wrote: »We paid 15k for banner adverts in 4/5 areas, new website and 2 ads in the Yellow pages (paid around June 2012) as to our present site we have just got that developed 2/3 weeks ago.
Basically Yell saw you coming - your only recourse would be to take them to court, but you would only be able to do that based on the actual losses you incurred due to the errors you detailed in your OP (was that 15k or 5k you mention both figures in your OP?).
As to your current website - it might be an idea to ask your new designer why he decided to make all the content into images. How much did you pay for this version out of interest?0 -
Unfortunately, Yell (now known as hibu) do use very sharp practices to 'convince' potential customers that they offer a service that guarantees you'll get so much extra business that you'll be beating them off with a stick as demand will be so high. Firstly, no business can 'guarantee' any increase in business and we should know, as we too got our fingers burnt with Yell and their ridiculously high prices. Look closely at their T's & C's and you'll note that you need to cancel the renewal of your contract 60 days before the end of the existing agreement otherwise you get stuck with automatic renewal for a further 12-months. We got out of our contract at the end of the first year and reviewed how best to promote our business. We tried newspaper advertising and got very few enquiries and those that used us did not generate enough revenue to justify the cost of the advertising. After speaking with a reputable SEO company, we were advised to do two things. First was to get our website improved so it moved up Google rankings and secondly to take a business listing with Citylocal. Our SEO contact rated them highly and even used their service. Why we asked? "Because Citylocal generates a large amount of traffic because of its content." We looked at our local Citylocal site and were pleasantly surprised to discover what he was talking about. This was not just a directory website. It had useful content for users and business listings openly showed the number of visits right there on the page. Very refreshing to see. When we previously asked Yell to give us these stats, they provided stats for the number of times the business category was visited and not the stats for our business only. When we finally got our stats they were very low and certainly didn't justify the annual spend.
Our final solution to increasing business was a combined effort through Citylocal and local door drops of well designed leaflets.
There is no one solution to increasing business but, we can recommend our final solution of local door drops and a listing with our local Citylocal site. I should tell you that we were sceptical about Citylocal given our experiences with Yell.com but, they were very accommodating and let us evaluate how their service worked by giving us a one-month without obligation trial of their premium listing service. Whenever we received a call, we asked the caller where they found our details so we could monitor the effectiveness of both the local door drops and our listing with Citylocal and were very pleased with the results from both. So thanks to our graphic designer for the great leaflets, the SEO company for increasing our site ranking and to Citylocal for providing the service they promised.0 -
I'm sceptical about anyone joining up to recommend a company (a franchise at that) no less than 8 times in their very first post.
:think:0 -
I've not knowingly used YELL since 2011. Yesterday I received a letter from a debt recovery company - Moorcroft, informing me I owe YELL £244.80p. I informed then I had not used YELL for sometime, the lady advised I check with YELL.
I haven't even used the e mail address I had with the business. So I checked that, turns out in 2011 I've somehow without knowing agreed to carry on using their service???
In the last conversation I had with one of their repesentatives back then, I informed him that I wasn't doing my service anymore, he said he would pass that on. I also wrote to them. I didn't e mail them, I wrote a signed letter.
Currently I'm waiting for them to contact me, as they said they would to "resolve" the situation.
I never in the three years with them generated one client from them.
I will never use these people again. This forum at least has made me aware I'm not the only one.0 -
I have had a similar experience with Yell, they scammed me, they have harassed me for over 2 years now for money I do not owe them. I had the fee waived for them miss-selling and luckily asked them to send me an email confirming this, as they contact me about once every 5 months saying I owe them £x and they have no record of them waiving any fee. If I had not kept that email (it has been 2 years now!) then I am sure I would have been taken to court by them for a service I never had. They are the worst company I have ever come across, google adwords are much better. Clear and simple in my experience.
Everyone should email the Chief Executive mike.pocock@hibu.com as he should really be made aware of what is going on in his company.
Good luck.0 -
thewillo16 wrote: »Unfortunately, Yell (now known as hibu) do use very sharp practices to 'convince' potential customers that they offer a service that guarantees you'll get so much extra business that you'll be beating them off with a stick as demand will be so high. Firstly, no business can 'guarantee' any increase in business and we should know, as we too got our fingers burnt with Yell and their ridiculously high prices. Look closely at their T's & C's and you'll note that you need to cancel the renewal of your contract 60 days before the end of the existing agreement otherwise you get stuck with automatic renewal for a further 12-months. We got out of our contract at the end of the first year and reviewed how best to promote our business. We tried newspaper advertising and got very few enquiries and those that used us did not generate enough revenue to justify the cost of the advertising. After speaking with a reputable SEO company, we were advised to do two things. First was to get our website improved so it moved up Google rankings and secondly to take a business listing with Citylocal. Our SEO contact rated them highly and even used their service. Why we asked? "Because Citylocal generates a large amount of traffic because of its content." We looked at our local Citylocal site and were pleasantly surprised to discover what he was talking about. This was not just a directory website. It had useful content for users and business listings openly showed the number of visits right there on the page. Very refreshing to see. When we previously asked Yell to give us these stats, they provided stats for the number of times the business category was visited and not the stats for our business only. When we finally got our stats they were very low and certainly didn't justify the annual spend.
Our final solution to increasing business was a combined effort through Citylocal and local door drops of well designed leaflets.
There is no one solution to increasing business but, we can recommend our final solution of local door drops and a listing with our local Citylocal site. I should tell you that we were sceptical about Citylocal given our experiences with Yell.com but, they were very accommodating and let us evaluate how their service worked by giving us a one-month without obligation trial of their premium listing service. Whenever we received a call, we asked the caller where they found our details so we could monitor the effectiveness of both the local door drops and our listing with Citylocal and were very pleased with the results from both. So thanks to our graphic designer for the great leaflets, the SEO company for increasing our site ranking and to Citylocal for providing the service they promised.
So what your saying...citylocal !!! Jeez this has got spam written all the way through it...
Trying to flog a francise on a moneysaving website is not going to work....
And yell....now one big scam0 -
i have just had a email from hibu (yell) saying i owe them £1277.34
Thing is i had a year of a sales rep phoning my to use them for some advertising,any way she said the add campaign and web site would make a massif difference to my business. So after her constantly calling i said ok i will give it go they set about building a web site and and doing a add campaign then i got a email to say my website was ready to view ,Well iam not joking my 10 year old boy could have built a better site ,i phoned them and spoke to the designer and told him that it was rubbish he thought it was ok. i then showed him a web site i had built myself using vista print, any way the web site didn't change the adds didn't get published as they missed the date so i cancelled the direct debt also the sales rep said i would get a refund for the payment i have made.
Also i had not signed any agreement.
The deal was original for the sum of £908 so i don't where £1277.34 has come from.
I have also found out that that are doing the same thing to loads of other people. I think their should be a standard for web site designers and advertising firms as it is the easiest way to rip off hard working business that are struggling .WATCH DOG NEED TO LOOK INTO THEM ROUGE TRADERS. any way i am willing to got to court over this .
BY THE WAY THEY ARE ALSO £2 BILLION IN DEBT
Please do not go near yell YELL.0 -
i have just had a email from hibu (yell) saying i owe them £1277.34
Thing is i had a year of a sales rep phoning my to use them for some advertising,any way she said the add campaign and web site would make a massif difference to my business. So after her constantly calling i said ok i will give it go they set about building a web site and and doing a add campaign then i got a email to say my website was ready to view ,Well iam not joking my 10 year old boy could have built a better site ,i phoned them and spoke to the designer and told him that it was rubbish he thought it was ok. i then showed him a web site i had built myself using vista print, any way the web site didn't change the adds didn't get published as they missed the date so i cancelled the direct debt also the sales rep said i would get a refund for the payment i have made.
Also i had not signed any agreement.
The deal was original for the sum of £908 so i don't where £1277.34 has come from.
I have also found out that that are doing the same thing to loads of other people. I think their should be a standard for web site designers and advertising firms as it is the easiest way to rip off hard working business that are struggling .WATCH DOG NEED TO LOOK INTO THEM ROUGE TRADERS. any way i am willing to got to court over this .
BY THE WAY THEY ARE ALSO £2 BILLION IN DEBT
Please do not go near yell YELL.
You don't need to sign anything. Contracts can be legally formed verbally.
You said the original contract was for £908 which presumably you failed to pay. Do you have anything from Yell that suggests they have agreed to anull the contract formed?
You are entitled to a breakdown of the costs demanded. Presumably there's some late payment, interest, etc that has been added. Probably has VAT added too.
I suggest you get your suit cleaned & pressed ...
Edit: Btw, I don't know where you get your figures from, but the last accounts filed at companies house for the period ending March 2012 showed liabilities (debts) of just under £0.5 billion and assets of just under £0.75 billion0 -
paula.paula13 wrote: »Thanks. Just to make it clear, Mistral, my bill was paid in full up to when I cancelled the contract with Yell. I cancelled due to their breech of contract but they refused to acknowledge cancellation. I did complain to Yell many times but they refused to respond to my complaints or let me speak to a manager.
Yell did not occur any charges as a result of my contract cancellation - it was their decision to continue to bill me for a service I had already cancelled.
When you get the court papers, put it all in writing, times and dates, with a counter claim, demanding return of what you did pay them. And in the small claims court, you will win.
Basically. You paid them for a service you did not recieve, you spent time and money trying to get them to provide the service going forward, and becuase they did not provide the service, you gave them more than adequate time to make it better, and when they did not, you cancelled because they had breached the contract. You now claim, the money you did pay, because you haven't recieved the service you did pay for.
They are muppets if they think they can win. :beer:0
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