BBB issues warning to businesses regarding advertising scam

The Better Business Bureau is warning businesses to be wary of what appear to be invoices for ad space in the familiar, locally distributed, yellow pages directories.
Many businesses across the province and the country have received these invoices. The BBB warns that these invoices are actually solicitations for listings in alternative business directories that differ from the well-known yellow pages.
In fact, the BBB states, these alternative directories may not be that widely distributed, can be of little or no value to advertisers, or may never be published at all.
The faxes are from a company based in the United Kingdom called Yellow Publishing Ltd. They feature an upside-down walking fingers logo, their own take on the familiar yellow pages walking fingers logo, in the page header and the websiteYellowPage-Ontario.com and other provincial name variations.
This company has no affiliation with the Canadian-based Yellow Pages Group, who produces directories such as Super Pages, Talking Super pages, and www.superpages.ca.
The Yellow Publishing Ltd. ad states there is free submission to www.google.com, but in the fine print, the registrant who signs up is agreeing to be billed $119 monthly for a period of two years for the directory listing.
Other similar business directory solicitations may look like a legitimate invoice. It may feature the name yellow pages or include the familiar walking fingers logo and falsely state that the publisher is affiliated with the local telephone company or another bona fide yellow pages publisher.
The BBB is urging businesses to beware of this scam and encourages people to check the reliability of the company that is sending the solicitation.
For more information, please visit www.bbb.org/canada.