Dex Media review: fraudulent contracts! 55

They auto renewed me even after I talked to a sales rep to not renew. Then again they auto renewed me so I called them up and they acted as if they never got the message. It has been so long ago like 4 years when I signed up that I dont remember even signing the auto renew. So I just didn't pay the bill after the end of the year. I just kept getting bill after bill but at least they didn't renew it again lol. So to for sure to get them not to renew is to not pay for 4 months. Now I got collections bugging me but what the hey. My credit is already messed up I told them. The part that upsets me the most is that I canceled this service over the phone twice and they said they would but now I am hearing that they need a letter. So if you do cancel of have any conversation with one of theses sails persons, get a tape recorder and tell them that this is being recorded .

Our Dex package worked fine with our first rep. He was very responsive and we got what we were promised. His name is Keegan (Colorado rep) and got promoted because he was actually good at his job.

THAT ALL CHANGED WHEN WE MOVED AND WERE FORCED TO GO TO ANOTHER REP. From then on our online advertising was constantly down - we even have emails stating that there was a problem. Supposedly it was fixed, but we were still constantly at the bottom of the list, getting 90% solicitations and immediate hangups when we answered the phone, even though we had doubled our advertising. They are now trying to charge us over $9K in 2012 for calls that we are not getting. We had our lawyers contact them to dispute their charges and was told by their lawyers that their only obligation to us is to put us on the internet. They have no guarantee for the number of calls or what their reps promise you - even though their reps will show you pages of advertising saying that people in our industry get "X" number of calls every month. THEY ARE A TOTAL SCAM. Please be forewarned small business owners...anyone paying more than you will automatically get on the top of the list everytime. Dex won't work with you, you will get transferred a dozen times trying to resolve your issues, and even after you get a supposed "resolution" to your problem (we were promised a 1.5 month refund of our advertising dollars) it will not happen. Their lawyers will also tell you that you don't have a leg to stand on, and that they are appalled by your claims. PLEASE, PLEASE, save yourself the grief and anxiety and find a more reputable company. There are many out there. I suggest getting a reference from someone who uses another advertising medium that actually produces results. On a more positive note, any reviews customers submit to Dex about your business are still online, so you get the organic advertising, even if you are not paying them. Thankfully, I have not been subject to their auto-renewal policy, and I did not sign up for automatic withdrawls from our bank account. Good Luck!

I work for an online marketing firm and I'm amazed at the amount of businesses who still pay Dex for their lies/inferior product.

If a business wants to be in the phone book, thats completely fine. Just make sure you don't get their bogus online program bundled in. They float your money between DexKnows.com and Google/Yahoo/Bing. Their agenda is to put your budget towards DexKnows.com because it's their own website and they make 100% profit from it. What they don't mention is that according to Google Trends (which is non-biased and accurate), DexKnows.com has received the LEAST amount of traffic is has ever received in 4 years! No one goes to DexKnows.com anymore! Everyone goes to Google!

I've met with hundreds of business owners who would rather work with me for their online marketing but get a line of BS from their Dex rep when they try to opt out of their digital portion. Dex threatens to keep businesses out of the book or charge them more if they don't also use their online product. Seriously? And for some reason, a lot of business owners comply...it's sad.

We are web developers for more than 10 years. In our opinion DEX Media is a predatory company that targets new business owners who are inexperienced in the digital arena. We recently were contracted to create and SEO a new website for a client that had signed up with them to have his website created more than 2 years ago and was very unhappy with the quality of work they provided and his anemic search engine rankings. After we had developed him a new professional site we contacted them to obtain his URL (www web Address) information so we could redirect to the new and much improved site. It turned out that though they claim they "Manage" the URL for you they actually register the URL in their name, making them the "Owner" of the domain name. This is a very unethical way to register URL names and shunned upon in this industry. The domain name should always be registered in the clients name with the web development/web hosting company listed as an 'Administrator" . By conducting business this way they make it very difficult to leave. They refuse to release the name and offer no buyout option! A domain name is typically less than $20 annually so it seems the sole purpose for setting it up this way is to hold you hostage for the duration of your contract . From what I have read it is extremely difficult to cancel with them. In essence they are holding your business domain name hostage and in order to get a new website you would need to purchase a completely new Domain name which can have some significant costs to business owners...New business cards, brochures, flyers, billboards, and any marketing material and advertisements would have inaccurate web address information and it could be costly to replace everything! Not to mention the loss of business you can suffer. There websites are below industry standards and in my opinion I would stay away from having them handle your website or digital needs. Our client now needs a new Facebook URL address and page, to set up a new Google Plus account, etc...they maintain control over everything and are unwilling to even offer a buyout option! Not worth the headache for a website that does not represent your business in a professional manner and does not drive any web traffic to your business! Any serious business owner that is interested in growing their business should stay far away...You pay for what you get!

The Dex company did the same to my business, I have a cancel confirmation number, the names of the people I spoke with on the telephone along with dates and times, I have a letter written to the company stating the "John H "is a terrible employee. Do NOT renew my ad
I have now found they are pursing collection on us.
Since all of this the DEX company no longer list our business in the WHITE PAGES...
Sunnyside Wa

I got a call about a year ago from Dex Media. The man talked up his company and it sounded good. He was one heck of a salesman! However, I just run the office so I told him I would have to run it by the boss and get back to him with for sure yes or no. I called back a few days later and told them the boss had said no and wee were not interested. That should have been it ! About 2 months later I receive a bill from them. I call them again and tell them, I did not agree to anything, I called and told y'all no, We Are Not Interested but thank you for the opportunity. They then tell me it had been cancelled. I received other bills and called to make sure it had been cancelled and they told me to disregard them, so I did. Now a year has past and I got a letter from a collection agency for over $200.00! So, I called them again...this time they tell me that they cancelled my automatic renewal?! I am so livid! I will not be paying someone for a service that was never rendered much less put to use. How can they get away with this?

Same thing is happening here. I was told several times they would give me proof of the voice recording and send me an invoice/contract as proof - NOTHING - this has been going on for approximately a year with different people calling every now and then. Today I received a call from the "Collections Department" he said he would fax me over a copy of everything and get back with me in 5 or 10 minutes to make sure I received it...NOTHING - it has now been 1 hour. I shall see if anything does ever show up - but he is saying that we are "RED FLAGGED" and he needs to know how we will pay - and that the original invoice was $750 and now over $1, 000.00 due to not paying it...well I keep asking for proof and receive NOTHING. SCAM

This place is a complete rip off. They do not respond to your emails. They over bill...meaning, they say they are doing 15 hours worth of work on your site but they actually only do about 2. They have a ridiculous contract. I just fired them and will file a dispute with my credit card company. DO NOT HIRE THESE PEOPLE!

Even with tracked written certified cancellation, auto renew keeps charging credit card. They refuse to stop and had to file complaints with Chase. Still pending

You CAN cancel your Dex Media contract, but you'll have to do some legwork and take some protective measures BEFORE you talk to them...

As a web designer and SEO company, I work with mostly small businesses, particularly contractors, landscapers, etc. Many small business owners I talk to have tried Dex Media at some point. Not one person has had anything good to say about Dex. It's the same complaints every time: Lack of communication, billing errors, website errors, and basically paying through the nose for "services" that simply aren't working. And don't get me started on the underhanded "good cop, bad cop" sales tactics that their commissioned salespeople play. Some of the things that these guys promise are ludicrous, just to get a signature so they get their commission. For the most part, Dex websites are not search engine friendly due to all the "junk code" behind the website. Many times the sites are lacking SEO, or if there's any, it's incorrect or set up improperly. Worse, some of the SEO methods they use on their sites (out of sheer ignorance, not on purpose) can get the site penalized by search engines. And don't even get me started on their "pay-per-click" program; that itself takes a few pages.

So what is a business owner to do if they're stuck in a Dex Media contract? Well, from all the small business owners I've talked to in the past few years, you actually CAN get out of your contract. You'll have to do a bit of legwork though, and prove that you didn't get what you paid for. That means keeping track of who called through their special phone numbers, and analyzing your Google Analytics reports. You can see where those visits to your website from your PPC ad are really coming from, and you may be shocked. I've spoken to quite a few small business owners who successfully cancelled their contracts and got most or at least some of their money refunded.

But if Dex Media does allow you to cancel your contract, then what? Now you have no website, much of your online marketing goes bye-bye, and they may still own your domain name, Google Places listing, and company Facebook page. Once Dex Media gets their hooks in, it's difficult to get out! So now what? Well, before you request your cancellation and refund, you need to take some protective measures. You may need to hire a new web designer/online marketing person to help you with this. First, copy all the content from your Dex Media website, including text, photos, and videos (select all text, copy, and paste into a Notepad or Microsoft Word doc, and right-click on each photo and save it). Then get the domain name back from Dex Media. They can continue to host your website, but you should always be the legal registrant and admin contact for your domain name. Then request that they transfer ownership of your Google Places listing to you; your Google Places listing is VERY important, and if you don't own it, you can't ever update it, and chances of getting it back later are almost zero. Then have them make you an admin of your company Facebook page; again, this is important, as you'll never get it back later and will have to start from scratch. Once you've successfully taken these protective measures, then it's time to get a new website built, ideally by a smaller company where you can actually talk to the same person every time you call. When the new website is published using the old Dex Media domain name, that will effectively replace the Dex site, so the transition will be seamless and you won't be left without a website. NOW you can start your cancellation and refund discussions with Dex Media, since they will no longer have anything left to hold over your head.

I hope this information has been helpful! Thanks, Teri Brooks, T. Brooks Web Design LLC. Please contact me if you have any questions; I can't post my phone or website address here, so just Google me!

I own a handyman business and was quoted from the sales rep I had 3 month a agreement to give them time to get me on the front page of Google. I called back after 3 months now they said It was on recording that I had to cancel within the 3 months not after. First I remember specifically asking the sales rep if it was during or after 3 months, . he said it takes time to get me on the front page so 90 days would be the time frame he needed to do his work. sure enough nothing happened never on the front page. So I call to cancel and now they are switching the game on me saying that I had to cancel within the 3 months and now that I didnt im locked in for another 9 months. I am Going to BBB next, complaintsboard, yelp, scam report etc. I will not pay this scamming company my money.

100% agree with the above, no letter sent to me to renew contract, no call from anyone, no nothing i called into dispute center today, there was 85 calls ahead of me, after 5 minutes waiting on the phone the system refreshed and told me there was 85 calls ahead of me. Now lets do the math here, if i have been waiting 5 minutes and there are still 85 calls ahead of me that means that most likely each calls going to take at least 5 minutes. 85 x 5 minutes per call (minimum) would be 7 hour wait. They are only open 8 hours and 45 minutes out of the day monday - friday. But they are open 24/7 to open new accounts or to do more adds for you. How is this type of business even allowed? They make it so hard to dispute anything and waste so much of peoples time that i bet most just say forget it, and pay up. Well I am not, we can go to court over this before i pay them anymore money, company is a ripoff posting over 300 million dollar profits from jan - q3 in 2015 and they can't hire more than 2 people to answer the phones at the dispute center? Does anyone else see a problem with this?

Bill went from 33.75 to over 60.00 without notice or new contract signed. Previous increases were .25 cents over the years. Tried unsuccessfully to reach Dex Media last month but message said high volume of calls received due to billing errors. Paid regular amount to avoid late fee and another bill came for more money. Went online and read horrible negative comments from others experiencing same situation. Please remedy quickly as this is very upsetting. Thank you kindly.
Dr. Rick Goldenson
[protected]

Dex Media is a complete SCAM. I cancelled over the phone and they still billed me invoices they claim that they do auto renewal my account.
NEW SMALL BUSINESS stay away from DEX SCAM.

We have had the same problem with Dex Media. They say we signed a contract on which we could not adjust the budget, something we had always been able to do in the past. The worst part is that we have had almost zero results in the past year so we're paying more for much poorer performance. We had no idea that we were signing a contract that would not allow us to adjust our budget. And we've never even seen the contract! I thought the sales rep was acting awfully evasive when I asked to have a copy of the contract sent to me. I am filing a complaint with our State Attorney General's office.
In addition when a new sales rep came to talk to us about this year's advertising I complained to him about this and asked what he could do for us as far as issuing a credit he was very rude and obnoxious and blamed me for the poor performance. We went around in circles about the issue until I told him I wasn't discussing any new advertising until the existing issue was resolved. At that point he abruptly jumped up and ran out of our house, almost letting our dog out, and then sped off down the street like a rocket. All Dex has done is say it's not like him to behave like that.