Island Yellow Pages, owned by David Phillips, solicited us to "renew" our contract with them in fall 2011. Having recently purchased the shop, my boss figured the previous owner had done business with them, and agreed to go through the process of renewing the contract.
We're a small locally owned business, and my boss was very busy making arrangements and ordering more supplies, so she had me deal with providing info for the site, because Mike at Island Yellow Pages said he needed to talk with someone sitting in front of the computer.
After talking with him about changing the pic to our logo and what information would be available on the "site", I gave the phone back to my boss. The "site" he showed me wasn't a website dedicated to our business, as he said it would be at the begininning of this solicitation; it was just a profile-like page. We were promised that our "site" would show up on the first page of google and other search engine results. When I searched businesses already signed up to Island Yellow Pages, their Island Yellow Pages listing did not show up on the first page of any search engine. Also, the actual Island Yellow Pages website wasn't easy to navigate.
When my boss got off the phone with Mike, I told her my concerns about what we would be getting for the price of around $40 a month. It was waaay too much to pay for a glorified profile on a website where the entries don't even show up on search engines. My boss had her own reservations about using them, because she felt like she was being read a script, and because of how the pricing agreement changed and how fast Mike was talking to her. He changed the price from around $40 a month to over $900 in one lump sum. She told me to go ahead and email Mike to let him know that we were not interested in using their service. We let him know that we could not afford that, and didn't want to use the site, within 24 hours of his soliciting us.
Since then, we have been sporadically getting calls from a collection agency telling us that we owe Island Yellow Pages for their services, even though we canceled in a timely fashion. That's right, the notorious Stone Thomas and Goldberg. At some point they told us that we could give them $700 and they'd stop calling us. Very recently (earlier this week) we spoke to a Tammy and a Brandie from there, as well as others whose names we don't know. Tammy asked my boss to fax her proof that we canceled by email, which my boss did the next morning. Later Brandie called and accused my boss of lying when my boss told her that the fax had been sent. She also got very rude and rough with my boss, who is the very LAST person you'd want to treat with anything less than respect.
My boss felt something was fishy (why was this Brandie person getting so heated? She works for the collection agency, not Island Yellow Pages), and had me do some research on them. All I had to do was type "Island Yellow" into the search box before google suggested "Island Yellow Pages scam" and "Island Yellow Pages complaints", which led me to this site.
If David Phillips or anyone from Island Yellow Pages, Island Media Advertising, or Stone Thomas and Goldberg reads this, I would like to say: Try doing some actual hard work instead of scamming hard-working people: D You'll make more money, sleep better at night, and actually contribute to society!
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