Your Yellow Pages, Inc.
Also known as: EBS Collections, Rapid Pages Inc., Rapid Yellow Pages, City Pages Inc., City Yellow Pages.
The FTC and Florida alleged that Your Yellow Pages cold-called small businesses and nonprofits claiming they owed $400 to more than $1,800 for a second year of directory listings they never ordered, then posed as a debt collector.
Documented. Subject of a regulatory action, lawsuit, or other official proceeding on the public record.
Identity
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- Registrations
- FTC and State of Florida v. Your Yellow Pages Inc., et al. (FTC case 142-3047, S.D. Fla., 2014)
- Jurisdictions
- United States (federal) · Florida
The second year of a contract that never existed
Your Yellow Pages cold-called small businesses and nonprofits and told them they owed money for the second year of a two-year contract for directory listings they had never ordered. The amounts claimed ran from $400 to more than $1,800.
Posing as the debt collector
The same operators also presented themselves as a Florida debt collection company, EBS Collections, which was one of their own trading names. They persuaded some organizations to pay by promising to stop contacting them, and then kept billing them anyway.
Where recipients disputed an invoice, the operators in this group of cases used collection tactics including playing audio recordings said to prove that an employee had authorized the listing. Businesses reported the recordings sounded doctored, or merely captured an employee confirming the organization’s contact details in an earlier call without agreeing to buy anything.
Many paid only to avoid damaging collection action and to end the harassment.
Where the case stood
At the FTC’s and Florida’s request, a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida temporarily halted the operation and froze its assets. The agencies sought to stop the practices permanently and make the defendants return the money.
What is not established
The only supplied document announces the complaint and the temporary halt. It reports no judgment, settlement or monetary relief against this operation, so none is recorded. A complaint is not a finding that anyone violated the law.
Sources
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- Enforcement action July 17, 2014
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First recorded July 17, 2014 · Last updated July 17, 2014