On Monday, November 2, 2009, at around 9:15AM, I received a phone call from a man identifying himself as Ray Patel with Regional Yellow Pages. He was calling on a past due invoice that was going to be sent to collections unless we paid immediately. I told him that I knew nothing about any past due invoices, but that, if he would fax it over to me, I would make sure to give it to the owner when he came back into town.

At this point, Ray asked if he was speaking with Julie Gaul. I said yes. He said, “you don’t remember signing up for online advertisement with the Regional Yellow Pages on August 11?” I said that I did not recollect talking to anyone about online advertising in August. At this point, he played a recording of me answering “yes” to a long list of questions…

Is this the Benicia Cat Clinic? Yes.
Are you the Office Manager? Yes.
Is your name Julie Gaul? Yes.
Are you the person in charge of placing advertisement? Yes.
You agree to place a 1 year ad with the Regional Online Yellow Pages? Yes.
You agree to pay the invoice in the amount of $479.95? Yes.

I told him, “well, that sounds like my voice, but I do not have the authority to authorize advertising or invoices and I would never do that”. He told me that we could pay the invoice immediately with a credit card. I told him that I didn’t have a company credit card, or the authority to pay bills. All Accounts Payable is done by the Practice Owner.

Now, I cannot guarantee that these were this was the exacting wording of the questions, but all of those “yeses” were spoken in my voice!

The thing of this that is so completely frustrating is that I am the Office Manager, but I do not have anything to do with any of the advertising for the Clinic. All of that is handled by the owner! I would never, ever have had this conversation with a Telemarketer or have agreed to pay out the Clinic’s money for advertising!

Meanwhile, I have found out that this company is running a scam. These “taped conversations” are cleverly cobbled together to make it sound like these conversations took place. The company must rely on the fact that a lot of Sales Staff never talk to their Accounts Payable people and these crooks make millions preying upon businesses. A similar scheme was going on in Canada and the Canadian Attorney General shut them down. The Attorney General for Idaho shut down their operations in his state and Florida’s Attorney General has issued a warning about this company … I have reported them to the Better Business Bureau and I'm going to be reporting them to the California Attorney General, the FTC and anyone else I can think of!