Yahoo sucks!

Off Topic
#1

A couple of months ago, I began getting calls on my cell phone from people asking me to remove raccoons from their chimneys. One guy left an urgent message, so I called him back, and got yelled at when I said I had nothing to do with the rodents in his kitchen. None of these people could seem to answer my questions about why they called me. Instead, they’d just insist that I help them.

After about a week of these weird calls, I set my phone to not ring when unknown numbers called. The people would still leave weird voice messages wanting me to call them back about feral cats and rabid dog sightings.

I finally did a reverse lookup on my phone number and it turned out Yahoo has my number listed as a wildlife pest control service. I could find nothing on Yahoo’s website about how to fix this problem other than a note about them not being responsible for wrong information.

A little more digging turned up news that Yahoo contracts out these sorts of search engine listing to another company called Yext. Yext’s website listed a big, long set of procedures for getting wrong information corrected. I filled out all the paperwork, sent it in and heard nothing back from them for about a month.

Finally, a guy from Yext called and said they’d remove my phone number from the pest control service category, but they wanted money from me to do it. Then the guy told me that they supply their listing to various online search engines and that if I didn’t pay the fee, they’d have no choice but to distribute my phone number to all their clients.

I hung up on the guy, and since then, sure enough, my cell phone number is listed on about 20 search engines as belonging to a wildlife pest control service. I’m getting about a dozen voicemails a day now about snakes, hornets, coyotes and marauding beavers.

I’m half tempted to quit my job and start trapping muskrats. It seems I’ve already got the makings of a viable business. I’m probably just going to change my number, though.

Who are these people who still use Yahoo, DuckDuck Go and AOL as their search engines of choice? Judging from the calls I’ve gotten, they’d all score about 30 points below the norm on an IQ test.

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#2

MANY people use them … they are mostly older folks who started out with them as being one of the first methods to access the net. They never progressed as the net did. A common … “don’t like change and this works just fine approach”

My sister in law still has an aol email. I said are you kidding me? I set her up with new stuff and she refuses to use it. There is nothing on there of any importance … just family emails that could easily be changed … nope … aol is wonderful. Well alrighty then. lol :smiley:

I don’t see any solution for you other than changing your number … however I would also let the Better Business Bureau or your states Attorney General know of the extortion tactics this company is pulling off. Also I would have voicemal msg set up saying I’m sorry this number is no longer in service … our new number is … give them Yexts number to call. :smiley:

2 Likes
#3

I would change my voicemail to say that your business has changed phone numbers and provide them with yext’s phone number for immediate help.

Or if you could find a way to forward unknown calls to yext’s number that would be better.

#4

GMTA lol :smiley:

#5

Sell them as leads. Call a few businesses who do that in the area and tell them.

#6

I like Kem’s idea. It might not do anything, but you could try filing a complaint with the FTC or your state’s attorney general. I’m not sure if either of those will help.

I suppose, if worse comes to worse you could change your phone number, but I know that is equally obnoxious.

#7

All good ideas. Thanks! :smile:

I thought about recording a message for callers explaining the situation, but I can think of no good way to phrase it that wouldn’t seem weird to people actually meaning to call me.

“Hello, this is _____. I do not run a wildlife pest removal service. If you want to leave a message about anything else, please do so after the tone.”

There’s just no smooth and seamless way to work that pest removal note into the message.

#8

I did a little digging B (or @Mr-B).

This sounds as if you may be able to edit the yahoo listing for free (it’s a long article).

This link has some additional info, perhaps

#9

That’s exactly what I tried about two months ago, but it didn’t work. When Yext finally got around to calling me back after three or four weeks, the guy was pressuring me into purchasing one of their business listing accounts, and he wouldn’t give up on it. When I finally hung up on him, he actually called me back and started in on it a second time. I ended up blocking his number.

The whole Yext thing seems to be a scam. Just speculation, but I suspect their telephone people are all on commission and, depending on who calls back, won’t follow through on anything that doesn’t involved an exchange of cash.

I’d try it again and hope for a more honest person to call me this time, but it literally took me a month just to get hold of the weasel I did talk to.

#10

Bummer. That sucks B.