On Jan 21, 2010 I received an advertising bill from AT&T advertising. In previous years, I had subscribed to the yellow pages. This year I decided not to advertise. No contact was made by me to AT&T nor did AT&T contact me. I am listed in the new book and Deidra, an AT&T rep, told me that they had mailed me a form to opt out of the book. I never received this form and told her that if it were that important, they should have sent it certified. Past years have required a signature to approve the ad, this year they claim just the opposite. I am refusing to pay the bill as I did not authorize.

In October 2007 we received a call from an AT&T salesman trying to sell us advertising for the following year. I told him I wasn’t interested. He called again and said he had this super deal on advertising at yellowpages.com, but to get this deal we had to advertise in the phone book. I told him that if they could do it for sixty a month then I could do it. It turned out to be sixty per month for the ad in the book plus six dollars per month for a smaller phone book ad for a total of sixty six per month for a year.

The advertising for yellowpages.com was a tenth position display banner ad on the first page on their site with a link to our website. It was a ninety day trial for ninety dollars per month. We would get a tracking phone number in the ad and 30 clicks/calls guaranteed per month with search engine solution (SES). He said he would call us within the ninety days to see if we wanted to continue after the ninety days and the rate per month would change to eighty dollars per month for the remainder of the year.

When he called to do the voice verified contract in Nov.07, he stated that he would call us within the ninety days, but apparently we agreed to SES for a year at ninety per month for ninety days then reducing to eighty dollars per month for the remainder of a year. We said, so this means we will be on the first page of the search engines like google, yahoo and the others and the salesman agreed. The ad didn’t actually start until April 08.

Well it turns out that the salesman never called again. After the ninety days was up AT&T just deleted our ad from their site it appeared as if we just suddenly went out of business. They have a free ad buried way back on their site with reviews from customers and that worthless tracking phone number for us which we have requested many times to put our phone number in.

AT&T does not offer first page placement on the search engines. That makes it a breach of contract. They have been billing us for ninety per month not the stated eighty per month on the contract after ninety days, when I pointed these things out to them they wanted to cancel the contract. When I pointed out that they have us on yahoo search engine on the 3rd to 10th page plus they are using our website address as a search term, placing their ad at the top of the search page which points to our website. That is not legitimate advertising for us. They claim clicks to our website as theirs.
We found a great company that advertises us on several first pages of google and some on yahoo. We have done very well without AT&T and NO LONGER advertise with them. But AT&T wants me to pay full price for several months they claim they delivered clicks, yah sure they did?
I told them I want a refund of what I’ve paid because they breached the contract. I sent them a certified letter requesting a copy or transcript of the voice verified contract. They ignored it and customer service told me I had to get a lawyer to get the contract. Since their Terms and Conditions state that we would have to sue them in St Louis, Mo. I think I will settle for small claims court here in Texas because I’m pretty sure this lawsuit falls under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practice Act here which wouldn’t really be applicable in another state. If I win I could collect treble damages to the max small claims court allows. I could just go on with the lies they’ve told me and arguments I’ve had with them, but I’ll save that for court.
Lastly I would like to say why would most people searching for a service or something go to all the hassle of first typing in yellowpages.com, then typing what they are searching for and the city and state, then to a page to click on the exact item you want then taken to page with a max of 20 to 25 advertisers. When all they have to do is type in their search terms in their browser with their favorite search engine, and Walla there they are with plenty to choose from immediately? By the way when they tell you they have a million search’s don’t ya think they are including every town in the US and probably every possible thing people could search for as a total.