YellScam.org

Letter to John Condron from YYTLDAAG The Yell Your Town Lichfield Directory Advertisers Action Group  (YYTDLAAG) sent a letter to John Condron from YYTLDAAG to Yell CEO John Condron in October 2008. Copies went to various organisations, including the Direct Marketing Association and the South Staffordshire Chamber of Commerce & Industry. 32 of the advertisers “signed up” to be included in that complaint letter. In January 2009, following an ongoing complaint to the Direct Marketing Commission, Yell made a “Goodwill Gesture” to all advertisers. The “Goodwill Gesture” did not amount to a full refund except in some exceptional cases where Yell had made errors in the minimum circulation figure quoted on some contracts.  There has to date been no acknowledgment by Yell of failure in the distribution and they continue to maintain that they fulfilled the minimum circulation figure of 17600. None of the advertisers located fully within the 5 designated post codes appear to have received a directory in the contracted door to door distribution – unless they had complained to Yell and were then sent one by post.

We’ve added a new page to our site detailing a problem that many advertisers have found when advertising in the ‘Your Town’ Directory by Yell.

You can find more information here.

I was contacted recently by a Yell representative who stated this:

Finally, our legal department has asked me to discuss your website (http://yellscam.org/) with you, which falsely describes Yell’s actions as a scam.  I hope that this letter has resolved your concerns and that you will now remove the website.  However, I am happy to discuss this with you if you would prefer.

Definition of Scam:

• victimize: deprive of by deceit;
• a fraudulent business scheme
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

My belief is that Yell has fundamentally changed the way their adverts are displayed, they have changed the system. I believe that they are now charging more for a service which advertisers were previously entitled to.

In short, I believe I was sold something, part of which is no longer being provided but I can pay more to get it back.

Does that sound like a scam to you?

As you may already be aware from checking out my communication history with Yell I emailed them on the 22nd June 2009 asking some specific questions  relating to my ongoing dispute.

Well, as of 16th June (today), I’ve still not had a reply! You can see a summary of my email conversation with them here.

I’m not sure why the subject of their emails changed to ‘Unregistered Advert’! Perhaps they’re getting me mixed up with someone else (data protection!) or perhaps they have classed my advert as unregistered.

I’m also not sure why I have been contacted by 3 separate people – it seems that there is no single person dealing with this issue, rather it is being dealt with by a group of people.

Either way, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to cheekily ask them about their response times since I’ve been waiting 4 weeks already!

John Condron, Yell’s CEO earns nearly £1 million per year according to Business Week. He also has a large stock portfolio which gives him a gross compensation of over £1 million!

It’s a pity that as CEO of Yell Group PLC, that he isn’t taking a more direct approach at resolving some of the issues facing the company.

I read a post today about another customer having problems with Yell, you can read more about it here. This customer was told they were getting an 8 week free trial, then sent a bill for nearly £300! Not exactly ethical business Mr Condron!

If you feel that the recent change to the way that Yell displays search results, make your voice heard by writing to Yell CEO John Condron here.

Find out more about this issue by checking out this page: Yell.com Heavyweight Search Results.

As you may be aware from reading this site, Yell.com significantly changed the way their search service displays results on the 1st April 2009.

I believe this change has a significant negative impact on existing users, and think that Yell should have contacted those users to allow them to choose whether they endorse that change or not.

Read more about the specifics here: Yell Heavyweight Search Results.

I’ve just added a few new pages to the site, including a full communication history between myself and Yell representatives.

You can check it out here.

This site was created on 19th June, and i’m pleased to see that Google have already crawled it and it’s appearing first for various search terms, particularly ‘yellscam‘ and ‘yell scam‘.

Welcome to the new blog.

Just finished a call with a friendly yell.com sales executive who confirmed some facts about the advertising program. He was rather keen to take my personal details, but did give some anonymous information in the end.