Telephone Service - SNET Yellow pages advertising unfair price increases, poor account service

2001 Yellow Page rates

SNET

From: John Vitti Email User

Date: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 05:32 AM

_____________________ I just ran across what I consider an almost scam or least a rip-off by CT’s SNET Yellow Page Book. I own a small service business and have been in business for over 25 years. My advertising has been almost exclusively the SNET yellow pages. My existing monthly rate is $210.5 per month for what is called 1/8 page and the new 2001 rate will be more than $500.00 There is a new yellow page book called the Yellow book they are advertising a lot in New York as well as here in CT.

Last year they called on almost all SNET Customers and gave us 1-year free ad of equal size in their new book which came out last year. Now their book is different than SNET's in that it covered the whole Fairfield County instead of only in my case the Danbury area.

Now please understand for a business like myself which is the majority of advertisers we only need local area coverage not the entire county. (My reasoning example is a Pizza restaurant does not need to advertise 30 miles away only locally and the advertisement for the pizza restaurant is going to get lost with the additional amount of similar ads for Pizza restaurants for an entire county rather than a local city listing) So advertising in a book with so many more ads makes it harder to find.

Anyway the salesman for the new Yellow book called me late Dec. to inquire if I would like to purchase an ad in the upcoming Yellow Book and I flat out refused giving the reasons I just wrote about above.

He proceeded to tell me that my existing SNET Yellow page ad will more than double if not triple in price for the upcoming year and that I should call SNET and confirm. He told me he would get back to me in Mid Jan to see if I might want to change my mind. SNET usually calls me every Dec. to confirm our contract for the following year. I had not heard a word from them so the first week in Jan I called SNET and asked to speak to my account representative. I was informed that they had not assigned representatives as yet.

I asked to speak to anyone who could give me the rates for 2001 if I did not make any changes but stayed exactly as I had. She informed me she could not help me due to any account Reps assigned.

I got very upset and told her to have someone call me back ASAP as I was not going to renew my contract but going to go with the New Yellow Book.

It took only an hour before I received a call form my UNASSIGNED rep. who would not give me any figures after being on the phone for almost 15 min only to have him tell me we must get together and he has to show me how great their new book was gong to be.

To which I insisted that I wanted a new price for 2001 with my exact same ad and listing or I was not going to renew. He then quoted me a price of over $525 well over 100%increase. I was extremely upset with him and let him know it.

I did however make an appointment for him to visit in person before I signed with the new Yellow Book at less then 1/2 the price I was currently spending with SNET not to mention SNETS new price. Well he came last Tues and started to give me the old sales pitch as to why it was important to advertise in the Yellow pages and I cut him off explaining that if I did not know that already I would not have advertised for over 25 years.

I said let cut to the chase and asked what they were going to do about the price increase as I was not going to spend more than 5% more of what I was already paying (which has been their customary increase each year).

He said we could discuss a discount and how much more business I would be doing by the additional coverage to all of Fairfield county.

I explained that a book like that would decrease my business due to who wants to go through more than 5 times as many advertisers to find a local business ( my pizza restaurant example) and also that I was 3rd ad on the page due to the fact they place ads first by size than alphabetically and now I would be 10th if everyone placed their same size ad due to the combining of the local books.

He was willing to reduce the rate by 20% and I told him I wanted to speak to someone higher and that they had better come up with a much better price or I would not be renewing.

I also asked a few questions and wanted answers as to why they went this way (combining local books to 1 county book) he informed me that it was what the advertisers wanted and I quickly pointed out that the majority and I estimate that over 90%of the current advertisers would not agree they are small businesses and or local types who would not benefit but hurt due to the much larger nunber of ads and not to mention the double to triple cost.

He was adamant about me being wrong and I asked him to prove it with number as to how many liked this arrangement. The only people to benefit would be large items as Auto dealer’s restaurants and contractors.

Not even lawyers or doctors would benefit as I have more than 1/4 of my business is Doctors and everyone I talked to about this agreed with me.

I had an appointment with the Yellow Book last night and they know about my position and have come up with a solution for business which only benefit from local business and give it a special rate called community rate which in my case is less than 1/2 of what I am paying now with SNET. I am writing this to inform the public to what I consider to be a scam or ripe off. SNET deliberately waited or I should say is waiting to contact their existing customers to after the Yellow Book closes it ads hoping that the advertisers will just say no because its not the original Yellow Page then just go to them and they will either have to pay the much higher prices or they will not have any advertisements at all. (That could be deadly to some businesses).

You should inform all your listeners to call SNET and get a firm price now before its too late and complain like hell if its what I am describing.

By the way I told the SNET salesman that I was going on every internet consumer complaint board I could find as well as calling Tom Martino who he said he never heard of. I told him to listen to 77-am radio at 900 in the morning.

I really fell we are being ripped off by what was once a monopoly. This is not an ad or push for Yellow Book as they too are going county wide as well but their prices are much lower.