Verbal contract with Yellow Pages: $4,000 demanded for a year of services that she did not receive

The owner of a Quebec SME in turn denounces the practices of Pages Jaunes, a digital marketing specialist accustomed to headlines who is demanding $4,000 from her for a year of services that she did not receive.

• Also read: Class action authorized against Yellow Pages

“It’s theft, they did nothing,” accuses osteopath and massage therapist Danielle Jacques, of the O 5 Sens clinic, in the Ahuntsic district of Montreal.

With her husband, who takes care of the administration, they opened the clinic in 2022. A year later, wanting to make themselves known in the neighborhood, they hired Pages Jaunes to increase their online presence.

“We are not digital experts, we relied on the name we have known since our childhood, that of Pages Jaunes,” says the 60-year-old woman.

The contract was concluded over the telephone on October 6, 2023, between Danielle Jacques and a representative of the company. The verbal agreement includes web SEO as well as advertising on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft Bing and YP.ca.

A first payment of $191.44 was taken by Yellow Pages on October 6, then a second of $344.93 on October 16, and finally a third of $187.82 on November 3.

It was while discussing with his accountant that the osteopath discovered the unenviable reputation of Pages Jaunes, whose digital shift has been bumpy.

“I turned white,” says the woman who then begins to search and finds a number of unfavorable opinions on the company once synonymous with the telephone book.

Publicized setbacks

In 2017, the show The Invoice gave the floor to Quebec entrepreneurs who accused Pages Jaunes of not respecting its promises. They were asked for amounts for services which, according to them, had not been rendered.

Pages Jaunes is also the target of a class action authorized in Quebec in 2019 and which has still not been resolved. The company is accused of refusing to terminate its contracts and charging the full amount to customers who wish to terminate their services.

“This concerns hundreds of entrepreneurs,” indicates the lawyer in the file, Jean-Philippe Caron, of the firm CaLex.

Also in 2019, the Consumer Protection Office (OPC) indicated that it had received 52 complaints in two years about Pages Jaunes. Many merchants had complained, on 98.5 FM in Montreal, about the terms of the contracts offered by the company.

Pages Jaunes has been the target of 39 new complaints since 2019, the OPC told the JournalMonday.

4000$ for no service

The voice of Danielle Jacques is now added to the others. When the osteopath wanted to cancel his contract, in November 2023, the company told him that it was impossible.

The verbal contract bound her to the company for one year, the company replied in an email in shaky French that The Journal was able to consult.

Offended, she canceled the credit card on which the three payments totaling $724.19 had been billed. Its services were quickly interrupted.

As of October 4, 2024, Pages Jaunes is claiming $3,893 from him. However, no service was rendered to him.

Yellow Pages declined to speak with The Journal. The company told us via email that it “always acts in good faith” and that “the terms and conditions mutually agreed to in the contracts comply with all applicable laws, both for its written and verbal contracts.”

Yellow Pages in brief

The public company, whose head office is in Montreal, is listed on the TMX in Toronto. Its financial reports indicate that its customer base has been declining since 2017, when it counted 229,000 Canadian SMEs among its customers. This figure increased to 188,000 in 2018, 153,000 in 2019, 125,000 in 2020, 113,000 in 2021, 92,000 in 2022 and 81,000 in 2023. For the second quarter of 2024, Pages Jaunes has achieved a net profit of $7.6 million on revenues of $55.8 million.