Be careful before signing up for a Quest Dex Phone book add, they will try to trick you into signing up for a lifetime agreement which is difficult to get out of. They will bill you, then not allow you to cancel your online add.
As owner of AAA Computer Repair, I am reporting that Quest Dex used trickery to enter our company into a lifetime agreement of charges. A Quest Dex Representative, Wallace, called us and talked us into having a phone book add in the Dex phone book. He came to our location and signed us up in a package deal for advertising in the 2008 Quest Dex phone book, claiming that we would get a lot better deal with the package, which included internet advertising. Quest Dex is no longer supplying a phone book for 2009 in Lincoln NE, yet a year later, we received another bill on 10/9/08 from Dex in the amount of $240.00 for internet advertising from 9/26/08 to 9/25/09.
We never signed up for any advertising with Dex for so I called them to remove the internet advertising of our company. I talked to Bernadine in the legal department, AND THEY REFUSED! They said that by having a signing phone book package deal, it entered our company into a lifetime agreement of online advertising that they would not cancel. They were then were nice enough to e-mail me their Terms of Agreement, full of small print legal work.
Why this is fraudulent in nature:
1) This is called black hat sales trick & Gotcha' fine print.
2) The contract signed clearly states, Contract start date: 9/20/07/Contract End Date: 9/19/08 under Internet Products. For the paperwork signed to say the contract ends will end at 9/19/08 and then for a separate terms of agreement to contradict that, makes the contract fraudulent.
3) Being that all we wanted was a phone book add, when it says, I have received a copy of and read the Dex Media, Inc terms of agreement, the signer is under the impression that the sheet of paper he is signing is the terms of agreement, not some other unknown document that was hidden from the signer.
4) The Dex salesman did not inform us that we were signing a lifetime contract, but to the contrary told us we were signing for a 1 year phone book add.
5) The Dex salesman did not give us, ask us to read, or even inform us that a separate terms of agreement document existed.
6) From my understanding, a legal document is only applicable if both parties sign it. The Dex salesman did NOT sign it, or date it.
7) Unlike a phone book add, our add in DexOnline can be removed at any time.By locking us in for a year, and not allowing us to cancel, shows their product to be a Gotcha tactic, instead of something that has value.
8) All legitimate service companies (AOL, Time Warner, Windstream,) allow cancellation over the phone. Quest Dex will bill me every year for the rest of my life unless I write up and mail them a legal document to some PO. Box in Illinois. They won't even cancel the online add for ect over the phone. They sent a representative here to talk us into their lifetime contract, they should send a representative back for cancellation.
9) Quest Dex has an F rating with Better Business Bureau. Web page (Denver office): http://denver. BBB.org/WWWRoot/Report. Aspx? Site=33&bbb=0885&firm=15159
If you have been caught by Dex's black hat sales trick, what can be done:
1) I have been told by others who have been caught in this that the Nebraska Attorney General is of help.
2) Since Lincoln is the capital and quite a few of us know legislatures, us business owners should be able to attempt to help pass legislation to get Quest Dex out of Nebraska. Being that our local telephone company (Windstream) has a satisfactory rating with BBB, and Quest Dex has an F, it appears that it would be in Nebraska's best interest to legislatively encourage Windstream to take over Omaha (by the way I am not endorsing Windstream, I actually don't care for Windstream much, but at least they are not attempting to get people to sign lifetime contracts without their knowledge).
Company involved in fraudulent activity:
Quest Dex
3190 S. Vaughn Wy. 6 South
Aurora, CO 80014
(800) 791-4955
Company reporting activity:
AAA Computer Repair
3720 Vine St.
Lincoln NE 68503
(402) 466-8158
Aaa computer repair
Lincoln, Nebraska
U.S.A.
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