May 18 2008
Questionable marketing
You want to carefully look at your bills before paying them…they may not be what they seem to be. What we thought was a bill, was really a marketing solicitation.
We received what appeared to be a bill for advertising in “The Yellow Pages” for $294.00. I was perplexed thinking I had just renewed it. But as we looked more closely, there at the bottom of the “bill” , in very small print, was a statement saying “Please do not staple you check to this form should you choose to accept this offer”.
Looking into this further, I found there were a lot of companies that use the term “yellow pages” in their names…and they are not the same company. This particular one did not even have directories in our area.
A lesson: read your bills carefully before you pay!
Tags: Business Basics, Marketing
So true. You also need to watch out for scams. There’s a company that sends me invoices several times a year trying to get me to pay for their ridiculous search engine submission service. Basically they get your postal address from the domain name registration information.
Unfortunately they also scammed my church out of $170 because the church secretary thought it was legitimate.
If you receive an unsolicited invoice, throw it out. And make sure anyone who you delegate financial tasks to always reviews invoices with you before paying them.
Yikes! Thanks for all the great information on your site! I always read the fine print of everything before I sign or send in money. My husband has been an inspiration and a good teacher regarding scams.
I’m so relieved to hear I wasn’t the only one who was mis-guided by the very same solicitation. I became very fed up with all the phone calls from ‘yellow this or that’ too!
My limited advertising/marketing resources are better spent elsewhere!