Dale Green had a simple request: He didn’t want his business listed in the yellow pages.
Other shops and entrepreneurs gripe about being left out of the phone book’s business listings or having their ads misspelled.
Green and his business, Quality Outboard Boring and Sleeving of Mukilteo, just wanted out of Verizon’s SuperPages directory.
The business, which Green is buying from his brother-in-law, puts cylinders and rotors on outboard motors back together. His business comes from referrals and word-of-mouth.
“Since I’ve worked there, I’ve never had someone say ‘I saw your yellow pages ad,’” Green said.
Which is why Green and his brother-in-law never realized the shop was listed in the yellow pages directory in the first place until about a year ago. That’s when Green noticed on the business’ phone bills, as he took over the paperwork from his brother-in-law, that he was being charged about $30 a month for a listing in the SuperPages.
“I should have noticed, I should have seen it before,” Green said.
When he called Verizon, he confirmed the business had been unknowingly paying the charge, tucked near the back of the phone bill, since 2000. Nevertheless, he chalked that up as a costly lesson learned and didn’t dispute the past charges.
He just asked then, in December 2005, to have the SuperPages listing canceled.
” ‘No’ was basically their answer,” Green said. He was told it was a week too late to cancel the business’ listing in the 2006 SuperPages. Irritated, he asked for proof that someone at the business authorized the listing in the first place.
He repeated that question often in the ensuing months as Verizon representatives transferred his calls from one office to another.
“I was basically being referred to a bunch of people who didn’t want to help me,” he said.
When Green asked each and every Verizon representative he talked to for a copy of the original authorization for the business’ yellow pages listing, he was stonewalled.
“I was told, on more than one occasion, I was not allowed to see it,” he said. “I also was told on more than one occasion that paperwork no longer existed, because it was too old.”
Andy Shane, a spokesman with SuperPages’ publisher Idearc Media, said there may have been confusion on whether Green could see the original authorization given by his brother-in-law. Typically, Shane said, only the person who gave his authorization is allowed to see it.
An inquiry by Green to the state’s Attorney General’s office yielded no help, though the agency did send Verizon a letter to find out more about the dispute.
Complaints about yellow pages ads and directories aren’t rare. Spokeswoman Kristin Alexander said the state Attorney General’s Office during the past few years received scores of complaints related to yellow page directories.
Within the past two months, the state has announced settlements with two different publishers.
Yellow Pages Inc. paid $525,000 to resolve allegations of deceptive marketing practices brought by Washington and 26 other states. The state sued Yellow Pages Inc. in 2005 after more than 75 Washington businesses and organizations complained about the company’s marketing practices.
Separately, YP Corp. and a subsidiary, Talc Billing Inc., were accused with deceptively marketing phone listings and advertisements on Internet yellow pages. That case was settled for $2 million.
The SuperPages, while not accused with the same actions as some other directory publishers, has nonetheless made more than its share of embarrassing mistakes in recent years. They include accidentally publishing as many as 12,000 Verizon telephone numbers that customers in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., had paid to keep unlisted. The previous year, Verizon had to publish supplemental directories after more than a dozen New York phone books were published with countless errors.
In Virginia, complaints about Verizon’s directories got bad enough that state regulators agreed to investigate.
Two years ago, two Everett businessmen told The Herald of their SuperPages ads that contained crucial mistakes. The men said they never got the chance to approve the ads before they were published.
Customers like Green who’ve tried to fix the problems say they had to wade through company bureaucracy, waiting on hold or unable to reach the right person.
Finally, last month, after writing to request that Verizon cancel the listing, Green got confirmation that this business listing was officially canceled.
But Green also discovered something that made him mad all over again. After asking repeatedly for a record of the listing’s authorization, he finally last month encountered a Verizon representative who didn’t object to faxing him a copy.
There, in the company’s own printed records, it showed Green’s brother-in-law apparently gave his OK for the listing in mid-1999. After Verizon called in October of that year to confirm the listing, however, he called back two days later to cancel it.
The listing had, it turned out, originally been canceled before it ever ran. Green said no one at Verizon has explained how it ended up then running in 2000, and for the five years after that.
Shane couldn’t explain that apparent discrepancy. He did say, however, some things have changed since Verizon spun off its directory business to Idearc last fall. For one thing, bills for directory listings aren’t hidden on the back pages of Verizon phone bills any more. Idearc sends its own separate bills.
“That will be easier for customers to see,” Shane said.
And, in Green’s case, Idearc attempted to right the wrong after being contacted by The Herald last week. Green said he got a call promising he will be credited more than $360 for the December 2005 to December 2006 period when he fought to have his listing canceled.
“Our customer care folks looked into this situation. We’re going to do what’s right,” Shane said.
Green said he was happy to receive news of the credit, but he’s not placated.
“I still don’t think it should have taken that long to get them to resolve this.”
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
