Yellow pages scam?
 

My parents own a small business, and yesterday they got a bill from Yellow-page-canada.com for $1500 for business listing on their site. A quick search online shows that it's a potential scam. From what I understand, a few months ago, they got a fax from them asking them to update their address and contact info. Of course, they thought it was from the real yellow pages and filled out the info. Anyways, just wondering if anybody else has been targeted by this and what success they had in dealing with it? I've told my parents to call the anti-fraud centre as suggested online.


link here to the scam: http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/e...eng/03439.html

"By using symbols that closely resemble the well-known trademark of the Yellow Pages Group, the companies and individuals deceived consumers into believing that they were merely updating contact information for an online business directory listing. In fact, buried in the fine print was a stipulation that, by returning the form, victims were committing to a new two-year contract for a listing at an annual cost of $1,428 with companies that have no relation to the Yellow Pages Group"

Dirty bitches.

I really have no respect for this shit.

First..too much paper trail. Second..they are being greedy and third they are just begging to be shut down on trademark infringement and multiple other issues.

wow that's uber shady.
hope your parents can go :fuckthatshit: to that bill
greasy as fuck
doesn't entering in to a contract require a signature of sorts?

+1
they did the same thing to my parents business as well

Yeah I get these as well. Be careful of the ones with BS licenses. It can be a real low amount so most business' will just pay it, no questions.

wow, sucks to see soo much scammers rising in Vancouver....

Hope your parents can tell those fuckers to :gtfo:

hrm.. never realized there was another company pretending to be YPG. was just browsing thru the real ypg site and found a warning.

http://360.yellowpages.ca/files/Bogu...ete_19Mars.pdf

Good to know. Never heard of this scam.

And like Pooface said, at such low costs, most companies will not even think about it and just blindly throw their money away.

Quick update, if anybody gets hits with the same scam. Call up Competition Bureau to set up a case #. They've advised us to just ignore the bill. They've already been prosecuted and fined once, but they're still doing it.

what they do is send a fax that looks like you are just updating your current business listing on yellow pages. someone signs it sends it back and next thing you know you have a bill in the mail.

too many scams from this ive heard of. I do SEO marketing and full website services for many companies locally and unfortunately some have had super bad experiences with YP and some other big name agencies.

Hit me up if you need someone to look after marketing or updating your website- i charge A LOT LESS than YP lol their rates are ridiculous in most cases.

From what I understand if your parents didn't sign any bill twice, they have every legal right to not pay it.

Also if they never provided their social insurance number then they can't send their bill to collection. Right?

Yellow-Pages-Canada.com is based out of Russia. LoL

On our bill, their head office is in Dubai lol

YPG just won the court case against them in early march.

Winning the Fight Against Fraud: Court Ruling Condemns a Fraudulent Company | Life In Yellow

"We are quite pleased by the fact that the Court ordered Yellow-Page-Canada.com to return money to the victims and that some punitive damages were also imposed, From now on, any “contract” signed with this fraudulent “Yellow-Page-Canada” company will be considered null and void."

This has been going on for years and years. When I worked in our family business I'd mess with them so hard. It almost always starts out as, "I'm so and so calling from bullshit business. I'm just calling to make sure we have your up to date address and phone number for our latest issue, phone book, advertisement or whatever other bullshit we feel like making up today."

It's honestly pretty obvious what there up to when you hear them call often enough. It used to be a bright spot in my day seeing how long I could fuck with them before they'd hang up on me or I'd tell them the jigs up go fuck yourself.

I answered a phone call and they asked me if the imformation was still up to date and they read it out and it was all correct and i said yes. They said it was from a 3 digit company 3 something something, didnt hear clearly and before i could ask again they hung up. I was wonder if i can still get billed if i didnt sign any form. I only said yes and thats it.

"No Engrish" usually ends the call.

This has happened to our business as well. They basically use the same logo, but removed the border so when you look at it, you don't suspect anything fishy...