Saint Financial Group is a business that takes the extra step with customer care. We work with small businesses across the UK and help them achieve success and strive for their goals. Controversy is something that we stay clear of, however, we are trying to raise awareness of an issue that is affecting thousands of businesses across the UK.

We are in no way discrediting or stating false information about the company Yell Limited, but only repurposing information and evidence provided by other action groups.

We have had many customers (primarily those within the construction industry) who have had an unfortunate experience with Yell, being fed false information with aggressive sales techniques.

We hope to raise awareness and provide a solution to any other small business owner who has been affected.

What is Yell.com doing to small construction businesses?

The content I will provide is a brief summary of the information provided by Yell Action Group.

Point #1 - Mis-selling Customers

Yell is known to mis-sell products purposely, knowingly that the outcome desired by the customer would never be met, regardless of what the product/service capability is, Yell would overpromise and underdeliver in order to close a deal.

“These staff members further admit that this misselling was carried out with the full knowledge of their managers and that this is how they were trained to sell Yell’s products. They are also willing to testify to this in court.”

“We have also obtained a recording of a senior Yell manager, admitting the customers were being lied to and mis-sold contracts. In addition, we have recently been made aware of a court judgment made last year in which it was ruled that Yell’s contract was invalid.”

From websites to Search Engine optimisation, Yell has shown time and time again that it's all about the sale. They have a sales team in place that clearly has no connection to the end product so will advise small business owners anything to make them cross that line between lead and paying customer.

Point #2 - Faking website statistics

There is evidence showing a business going to Yell for advertising and other digital marketing services, it became apparent that after months of being with yell ALL traffic to the site is coming from Yell, this sparked curiosity with the business owner, so he contacted a digital media agency who discovered that yell referred many (if not all) methods of traffic generation as if it came from Yell.com

An example of this is a Google My Business profile, which would be organic traffic from people manually searching up your site. Yell has altered the website button to state that any traffic from that source has come from Yell. Therefore boosting “their advertising efforts”.

Yell should not have claimed this source to have been their own and therefore are misleading customers with false statistics.

Point # 3 - Sales agent claims

When you submit a listing to Yell.com to appear on their directory, within hours you will be contacted by a sales agent. “You will be told that the reason for the call is for you to get the most out of your online listing.” “This is one of the many false statements that the agent will make”

You can listen to a call made between a Yell Agent and Yell Action Group here.

Can you trust Yells.com reviews?

Firstly if we state the facts of looking at their Trustpilot with a rating of 3.8 (at time of writing) and another review platform Reviews.io with a rating of 1 star (at time of writing). You can see the difference in reviews and even to the untrained eye, the Trustpilot reviews look falsified while the reviews on reviews.io look like they would rate less than 1 star if possible.

Yell is shown to selectively invite reviews on Trustpilot and offer an incentive (£10 per 5 start review)  to staff for gaining high star reviews however the company instructs them not to ask customers “if there’s any risk they may leave a negative review”.

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This is an illegal and fraudulent practice known as “Review Gating”. Over 80% of all Yell reviews on Trustpilot have invited reviews. All of the reviews left for Yell on Reviews.io are organic reviews and were not invited.

To read more about trusting Yells reviews please see this article provided by Yell Action Group as I do not wish to plagiarise their content.

They go on to explain:

• Yell flagging 97% of negative Trustpilot reviews for removal
• Yell requests reviews before customers have even used its products.
• Other issues regarding Yell

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What are people saying? - Yell.com reviews

We asked a range of people across Facebook asking for their opinion and experience of dealing with Yell. Here is what they have to say:

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"Me, I have wasted a full years money £62.50 a month for nothing, wish I could get my money back, they promise you this that. What a waste"

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"Yell.com.. What a total waste of time advertising with this lot. Spent circa £500 (many months at half price) before I realised I was throwing money down the drain, I run a business and got bugger all from Yell."

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"£125 a month for one job, a broken gutter bracket. Never again. you live and learn!"

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I advertise with them paying over £900 Told me it was a six month contract once I signed it they said it’s for 12 months did not get my money back at all Promise you everything give you nothing

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"I spent a few grand with this so called company for them to tell me my web has been down for months so how could they advertise if my web is down but still had to pay"

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"Lies, lies and more lies. That sums them up. Mis-selling practices, use phrases that lead you to believe you are getting one thing when in reality its far different. I gave them chance after chance to redeem themselves. They are incapable of listening."

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"Yell are a company that sell empty promises and disappointment with a smile, just terrible walk away with the confidence that you're not missing out."

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"I have my website build by them they never told me they will own the website or the copyrights trying to change suppliers I can't as they have control over it call them and text them numerous times no help promised I will be found on Google as they are partner with them they will handle social media shop Facebook Instagram Etsy etc just lies none of this happen"

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Yell Action Group

Yell Action Group (YAG) is a non-profit association consisting of ex-Yell customers who have been mis-sold products and services by Yell. YAG are doing an amazing job at providing evidence to support Yell.com wrongdoings while assisting anyone who is eligible to join the claim

You can see everything about their background and organiser Danny Richman here

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How we are helping

As we have customers who have had a past experience with Yell, we can see how hard it is to trust another company with an offering that is somewhat similar (web design, advertising, marketing, etc). We (Saint Financial Group) are a complete solution for construction businesses within the UK, we provide complete business support giving you peace of mind and control.

We not only provide the service in which we promise, but we also go the extra step to identify why we are delivering it and helping you reach the goals in which you want to achieve. We also have a loyalty club for all Saint customers who receive analytics and premium support (free of charge). We are also offering a discount for anybody who has had past dealing with Yell for a limited time across our marketing services, we hope we can help some people.

Even if you don’t wish to jump straight into our services, feel free to book a call with us just to tell us your story and maybe we can offer some free advice on what's the best way to turn things around!

We are looking forward to hearing from you!

💙 From the Saint Team

Get in touch today

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