Vivial (formerly The Berry Company) review: Deceptive Sales Practices 54

The Berry Company are full of idiots, how can they get the # in one book wrong and the smaller copanion with the correct # ?

The Berry Co. should be investigated. I received a call from them, asking if my acct. rep. had contacted me. Was promised in 2 days he would. Two days later, I called and talked to his mgr. 1 week later, the acct. rep. is still promising to fax paperwork proving my agreement to list as an ad in the Cincy Bell Yellow Pages, but the last contract was signed in Mar. 2010. I do not need the ad in the book. I also was lied to 3 years ago, and told my contract runs for 18 mo. Ever since they took over the printing/selling, it has gone to hell. Actually, I wish a group would get together and do a class action suit against them. It is ashame, that business owners have to deal with them, just to list in the yellow pages.

Cincinnati Business

I worked for The Berry Company as a Sales Associate in the telemarketing in the Dayton Ohio division for several months. The training process for selling Yellow Page advertising last 14 weeks and includes several weeks of academics on marketing and consumer purchasing psychology. Several weeks into training the "trainees" are placed on teams and are cut loose to start making calls. I think most of the new salespersons have the best of intentions when they hit the floor, but unfortunately, we find that most of our clients upon hearing, "Hi this is Lee with The Berry Company"... are met with anger and suspicion. Many times our customers will just hang up on us or simply not answer the phone during the renewal period. The law prohibits us from canceling their advertising so our managers require us to leave at least a 7 messages (all recorded) before we can automatically renew the account. The compensation we receive for this job comes out to about $10 per hour. Additional compensation comes from increased ad sales. If a client pulls their advertising, it directly impacts my wallet. In short, this job sucks and all of our best intentions are sucked out by management and "brilliant" advertisers/customers.

I am an attorney investigating unfair and deceptive trade practices by Berry Company and Windstream in Ohio. If you want to discuss an issue that you feel may qualify as an unfair or deceptive trade practice by these companies in Ohio feel free to e-mail me bob@rcbiales.com.

I have a plumbing company and I have been trying to cancel my advertising with The Berry Company for months now and all they do is transfer me to different people on the phone and also have me e-mail different people and still 6 months later I'm still in the same position. The initial sales guy Dan Houglan lied to get the sale. This company is all around 'horrible' please stay completely away from this company.

I too was contacted by a rep from The Berry company out of Dayton. I have a new business and his ideas about giving us a web presence and driving phone calls to us sounded ok. He said it would cost $599, so I thought I would give it a try. He then had the call recorded, asked if I could authorize the deal, made no mention of the cost, then sent me over to another rep who was suppose to "manage" my account. she then sent me an email explaining the service and the cost. Except in her email, the cost was to be $599 A MONTH!. I immediately sent an email back stating to cancel and then also talked to her stating I did not want this. Spoke to the original rep as well and told him the same thing. Two weeks later they call stating the website was up and wanted me to look at it and let them know of any corrections before it goes live. this was in the beginnig of August. Again, I sent an email to both reps stating I did not want their service. Never heard anything back and later when I checked the website, it said it was under construction and didn't look to be live. I thought that was the end of it. Now here it is the middle of October and my son was working on creating our own website when he discovered "our" website was already out there! Not the same site that we had been given a link to but when I did a look up as to who owns the site, it was the Berry company. And the original site they wanted me to look at? It is magically back up and on line. Who administers that one? Yodle.com. In fact if you look at Yodle.com it is almost identical to The Berry companies website. Different corporate addresses though but it makes you wonder. Anyway, I just know I will be receiving a bill from these rip offs shortly, as this "new" website was just put up Sept. 26th. Hoping the jokes on them though. We have no real company phone number, the one that does ring is a prepaid cell phone (have to cut corners when you are starting out) and they have no credit card number or bank account number or SSN number to attach to. I already forwarded the email chain to my attorney though, just in case. Next step is the State Attorney General.

This Berry Company is a monster and getting totally out of control! OMG I can't begin to tell you the stupid nightmares! just run away fast! What a bunch of clowns! I'm near bankruptcy because of their lousy service. Stay far away from them and if possible their hosts! They give you extras that if you check are already free on the web! Lies.

I just got off the phone with the billing and sales department in Lexington KY [protected]. These people have to be nice as this is all they have. I could not believe how dumb these people are. I had to ask the same question 6 times. The question required a yes or no answer. They all seemed real nice, but dumb. I really hate working with dumb people. Save nice for parties and church.

I felt the service Berry reps provided me was poor, and I contested Berry's charges to me. The reps expressed concerns with my billing, but did not divulge what they were. Reps contradicted what each other claimed in reference to me account, and my emails and phone calls to them were largely unreturned. I attempted to get a "grasp" on my entire set of services from them, but months and months went by before I found someone willing to answer my questions. I feel Berry breached my verbal contract with them. Their communication to me was terrible, everything always felt confusing and sluggish, and they inadvertently dropped my calls on a number of occassions. Further, professional third-party assessments on the quality of their SEO efforts proved a poor effort on Berry's part. So, I placed my request for cancellation of all my services with them, and sent this request in before the cancellation request deadline dates for each service as provided me by customer service. Berry has now ignored this request for cancellation and continued to bill me more than $1200 each month.

Berry sales lie. No mater what they will sign you up for what you tell them you don't want. Advertise you out of your area.. Tell you anything you get you to sign up.

NEVER use Berry Company ! They'll make your phone ring, just not what your selling., ie Say you own a Steak and sea food restaurant you'll get calls about "free tacos " or " how much if I bring my own steak and you cook it" .. And ALL calls, NEVER a potential real customer ! They do absolutely NOTHING to fix it ! We are also filing complaint with Atty Generals office..

make it simply for you DON'T USE BERRY READ ALL OF ABOVE

*WARNING*BEWARE* Our experience with The Berry Company: Highly deceptive business practices, multiple billing irregularities including overcharges, failure to provide easily accessible customer service in order to avoid responding to problems, extended web server interruptions without recourse for the customer. Our advice, STAY AWAY from The Berry Company located at 301 W Northern Lights Blvd #403, Anchorage, AK.

We are dealing with exact same thing. A salesman contacted my husband went over everything with him and what ad would say. He immediately told them he needed to call his wife to discuss it when they told him $264 a month. Salesman stated he would email us info to read over and gave him number to call back. We never received email and tried calling back several times. After not being able to reach them I contacted Windstream and they stated they had no idea what I was talking about or who was trying to advertise for them that it must be a scam. Today I open the mail box and there is a phonebook with our business ad on front cover and in yellow pages with a bill due immediately. I called them, and man says they have my husband on recording agreeing to terms and would email it to me. I have yet to receive it. I called back to verify they have to right email which they didn't they had left the numbers out of email address. I verbally gave them the email address again and still have yet to receive the recorded conversation. THEY ARE A SCAM. He also stated they would email a cancellation request and I have not received it either. at time of original sales call they even told my husband to call me discuss it we have plenty of time to decide and for us to email them our logo or upload a picture we may want on the advertisment. again WE NEVER RECEIVED THE INFO OR EMAILS. the ad is there plain as day and i understand they are providing the advertisement BUT WE DID NOT CONSENT. I am willing to pay maybe $50 a month or so but i am not paying $265 a month... so in meantime they can turn it over to collection agency, they can sue us... quiet frankly I couldnt careless. they are a rip off and surely something could be done with all the complaints i have read so far.