I signed a "tier 2" advertising contract with an Idearc salesman. It began with a trial subscription so that I could make sure it was productive. He promised that the sponsored listing would be up in a few days. He also promised that the ad would appear on the first page of results for the search terms associated with it.
The ad never appeared, so I sent them written, faxed, and e-mail communications to withdraw from the advertising. I communicated the same by phone. The contract stated that they had no obligation to publish the ad, in which case they would not charge me, so my ground was that their was no contractual obligation between us until after the ad was published, by which time I had terminated the contract by the above methods.
On the phone that day, the representative said "they had not yet built my ad." She switched me to my salesman, who said that he'd have to check with his supervisor on cancelling. I stated that I was unilaterally cancelling. He told me he needed to have his supervisor call me back. The supervisor never called me.
The next morning, I found an email in my box sent at 4 A.M. Stating that my "superpages account is now up and running, " AFTER my mail, email, fax, and voice communications cancelling my order because of failure to perform.
I called back and re-iterated that any contract was null and void. My salesman again claimed that "it was up to his supervisor." I tried again to speak with him, and finally got to him by dialing in as a new customer. He claimed to not be the supervisor when I got him on the phone, that he had only been the salesman's supervisor temporarily during the week in which the ad had originally been discussed. I have since confirmed that he was always the supervisor of the salesman. I got a lawyer to send a cease and desist letter, and I thought the matter closed.
Then I received a bundle of mail from the physical address of my company (not my mailing address), with a bill for several months of advertising at nearly $500 per month, and another letter from a collection agency regarding the same. I had a separate arrangement with pay per call with the company, and have received no more than about 3 calls per month, so any advertising done through them was wholly ineffective. Hang up immediately when verizon/idearc calls.
Anyone else with a similar experience please contact me, as I would like to explore a class action lawsuit.
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