Are You Using Dex Media for Some of Your Online Marketing?
If so, you should continue reading this.
Let me ask you a few questions.
- How has the customer service been? Have they met or exceeded your expectations? When you call them, do you get straight answers in a timely manner?
- Do you know exactly what kind of marketing they do for you?
- Do you know if they are running PPC campaigns with AdWords or Bing Ads?
- Do they send you timely reports about what they are spending your money on?
- Do you get a monthly report showing you exactly what they have done and how it has improved your organic traffic?
- Have you tried to stop your contract with them only to find that they continue to bill you and give you the “run around” when you call them?
- Have you just been paying them money on a monthly basis for “online marketing services” without receiving verifiable results of their efforts?
If you answered no to most of those questions and yes to that last question, then you are just like a growing number of Dex Media clients (both past and present) who are fed up with their horrible marketing services. Much of what is written below is gleaned from the vast amount of negative online reviews you can read for yourself.
Cat ‘n Mouse Games
In my experience, most of the people who signed up with Dex Media were sold a “bill of goods” and are not even aware of exactly what Dex does for them. This is by design. Many very reputable people in the online marketing company who specialize in areas like SEO, PPC and Display advertising think that Dex is a complete scam. At the very least, they are just an extremely large company that works in volume (not quality) and they put sales revenue above the care and service of their clients.
By volume I mean they are more of a large scale sales company that provides a low quality service. Put another way, they have become less of a marketing company and more of a glorified sales force that tends to “puke out” horrible marketing services to clients. Their strategy is to promise everything under the sun in their initial sales consultations, then work the upsell angle when you start catching on that they are not producing results.
This is really when the cat ‘n mouse game begins with them. You start asking them about work they have done and they begin to be evasive and sometimes tell you that you need to “upgrade to a better package to get those results. You eventually get fed up, try and cancel your service only to run into more issues. Sound familiar?
Their model is basically to increase clientele by any means necessary and lock them into contracts that are very difficult to get out of.
The Pay Per Click (PPC) Concern
Part of Dex’s marketing strategy is to use Pay Per Click on Google, Bing and Yahoo. There are various estimates about the markup of this program, but they range from 25% to 50% – that’s a lot!
One of the really “shady” tactics they do with these PPC ads is that they don’t send traffic directly to your website. They actually create a very “cookie cutter” webpage on their own site that is very poorly created.
Have you ever looked for your ad on Google and looked to see where it takes you when you click on it? There are a few problems with this.
These landing pages directly represent you and your business. People who visit a site for the first time will make a quick assessment of you as a business, based solely on the “feel” they get from your site. The fact that poorly crafted landing page Dex created for you will look highly similar to other businesses – including your competitors who use them – will have a negative impact on your business and the ability to generate quality leads from this.
The only area on these landing pages that allows people to go to your site is typically a small “visit website” button. The more clicks people have to make to get to the information they need, the less likely they will be to continue on in trying to find it.
Dex Controls Who Sees The Data
Since Dex drives these PPC ads to their own landing pages, you don’t get to see much of the data from these campaigns. You will be able to see any traffic you may get from this landing page (it will just show traffic coming from the Dex landing page in Google Analytic), but that is it.
With a typical PPC campaign that you run (and have complete control over), you would be able to have access to all of the data from your PPC campaign in both your PPC dashboard and Google Analytics.
All of the small business PPC clients we run campaigns for have the same access to information as we do. They can log into their own Google Ads account at anytime and see exactly what we are seeing. Heck, they can make changes if they want to. Also, if for some reason they want to part ways with us, they can easily remove our access to the account. This is how it works with most honest and client-focused marketing companies who do PPC. This is not what Dex does. Kind of makes you wonder why they are so keen on hiding this type of information from their clients.
Even More Dex Secrecy
One of the really deceitful tactics Dex employs is the fact that they don’t tell you how much is being spent on PPC advertising and how much is going in their “pockets”. This is not reported by them and it is in direct conflict with Google’s own policies for Google Ads advertisers. Here’s the policy
First, did you know if Dex is running a PPC campaign for you? Do you know what Google Ads is?
Second, do you have any idea how much is actually being spent to run this actual campaign?
Any reputable company that does Google Ads for clients shows them exactly how much is being spend on the campaign (the dollars that go to run the ads) and how much goes to management fees. This is how we do business with our clients. Complete transparency.
The fact that Dex does not do this should raise more red flags for you.
Are You Fed Up With Dex?
If you are and you are still in a contract with them, you may have some options. Here’s a few tips on how you can try and save the rest of your money and cut ties with Dex.
- First, find your contract and read it. Get familiar with what it says and what Dex’s obligation are.
- Give them a call and see if you can be let out of your contract. Tell them you do not feel like you are getting what was promised to you. Escalate the phone call up to the chain and try to talk to as many people as you can.
- If this doesn’t work, then point out Google’s requirement for Google Ads resellers to show the actual Google Ads cost to clients (the amount that is actually paid to Google).
- Another option for those who continue to get money deducted from their credit cards is to have the bank remove the authorization for Dex Media. This could potentially lead to collection issues down the road so keep in mind that this is done at your own risk.
- Another thing you can do is go to various websites like this one and leave a complaint. There are many highly dissatisfied Dex customers who have left complaints here that may be getting some type of resolutions. You see, when you publicly display your displeasure with companies on the Internet for everyone to see, these businesses tend to find some extra motivation to get the issue resolved. Go figure.
Read Some Dex Media Reviews And Complaints
Sooo, Do You See A Pattern?
If you are having a bad experience with Dex Media, then I encourage you to stop doing business with them. If you are thinking about doing business with them, then stop!
There are much better alternatives. Yes, we do marketing for local businesses and would be happy to speak with you about helping your business grow through online marketing.
- We don’t do contracts of any kind. You can cancel at anytime for any reason.
- You’ll have control over your own accounts….as it should be. You simply give us permission to access them and you can remove at anytime.
- You would have complete transparency and have ability to see the exact same data as we do.
- We offer a free Google Ads audit of your existing account
With that said, there are plenty of other really good companies out there that actually care about getting you results and not about getting as much money from you as possible.
Dex Media is a small business night mare I signed a contract for a year big mistake i think i might have a ulcer they are the worst co. you cant imagine the bad service and the unqualified people they have working there . DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING WITH DEX MEDIA we are into the 7th month of our contract and still no descent website the mobile device is a joke the conversion rate is less than 1% and we are a 5 star Co. and cant wait to cancel the contract FFFF rating trust me this is a real complaint .
I never signed a contract mine was a voice recording which I cannot get a copy of. My “contract” was cancelled but they are still sending me bills saying I owe for a year! I’m with a new company which I am very happy with but getting headaches with Dex!
We have tried to cancel our services with Dex media since March. We received a letter of cancelation and continue to receive bills and harassing phone calls from a collection agency. We call write letters, fax can’t seem to get a person in management to talk to us we’re on the verge of getting our lawyers involved.
Same with me! I got a lawyer today and also filed a complaint with the Attorney General! I am having the same problem. Dex Media is holdi g me hostage for a non-existent account (they even admit there is no account).
I did that also. I called the Texas Attorney General for this link:
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/cpd/file-a-consumer-complaint
Yes I filed a formal complaint!
Dex Media is a joke, I signed up with them to further our company along and to get more revenue coming in. That what I thought would happen. What happens is the complete opposite of that. Dex reached out to me saying I could get a professional designed website that would rank better then my current site and with a good SEM package, they could really increase my leads and call flow. I trusted them, big name company. I thought hey this could work. I let them do their thing for about a month and a half. Web design team came back with what they said was a professional designed site. It looked a 1st grader got control of a pumpkin orange crayon and went to town. I reminded them I don’t have orange in our company colors and they came back with a very burnt yellow. Wow. I’m not pleased at all. I’ve very knowledgeable in word press and I created my original site, and I don’t do it for a living. Very poor quality. Very poor. Called my sales rep. After three months of fighting to get this corrected he finally cancelled it. Yeah!!! Now comes the real problems. I asked them why I was paying $2100 a month and haven’t seen a lead in over two months. They said it’s your slow season, you should expect that. (All my other online advertising is still bringing in calls) I reached out to my sales rep and he said that I needed increase my budget and buy these tile placements on a page that they don’t even own. It’s their competition that own is. So I spent MORE money with them, now I’m into this bull crap 5 months, have paid them over $7000 in the last two months and have got less then 10 phone calls and 2 solid leads that actually generated revenue. I called them up to cancel, and magically I’m under contract with them. I save every contract and everything I sign, so I have reviewed the contract, there is not term commitment anywhere and they are not letting me out of my supposed contract. They are saying it on page 2-4 of your contract when they only sent me page one. SHADY. Page one also say “0” on term commitment. So I’ve been trying to resolve this with my account manager and. It’s taken well over a month to get nowhere. They keep saying I will have an update tomorrow morning which actually means next week. I’ve had two different account managers (finally got one that cares but her hands are tied.) I’m currently talking with a supervisor who doesn’t seem to get it. He sent me an email this morning saying we’ve got good news for you!!! I’m thinking great we’re getting somewhere, nope, they assigned me a new sales rep, WTF!!! Do they not get im not spending another dime with them. How is this good news? Their minds are going, let’s try and really piss him off and get more money out of himto keep us from filing bankruptcy again, and again. Don’t believe me, Google Dex Media bankruptcy, google doesn’t have enough pages to keep all of dex media’s bankruptcies. *PLEASE DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY WITH DEX MEDIA* they are a scam and only out to take your money. They promise the world, and when you really actually need any thing. It won’t happen or they will make you think you can achieve it if you pay more. Stay away. Complete and utterly a joke.
Stay AWAY!! You can’t cancel once you sign up. They will just keep sending you bills one after another. I called and cancelled our account in October of 2016 because we weren’t getting any leads from it. I was told we were under contract until February 2017 and would have to pay until then. Fine, no problem I get it. So I have and when I received my bill in February I called again to confirm that the account was cancelled. He said yes it was cancelled and and we would have no charges going further. WRONG- March 5th I got another bill. I called them and they said “Oh, the print charges account was closed but not the online digital account. That one automatically renewed…” Such a horrible way to do business.
I’m so glad I stumbled on this.
Unfortunately a previous employee signed up with Dex. After discovering this we realized that they did absolutely nothing for our company! So frustrating to not be able to get answers from anyone. They have us excuses instead of solutions when we weren’t getting results that were promised. When we were finally able to end the contract we were sent a final bill with a balance of several thousand dollars. Now we’re needing an attorney. The value of service=0.
My question is can an employee sign a contract without the owner’s authorization?
Worst company i have ever dealt with.
Dex Media is a complete joke. I was a new business and this amazing wonderful, happy to help out guy walks in to sell me a web page and monitor my Facebook etc pages. I pay monthly for something I am
Doing myself anyways. They constantly post things that I don’t even sell in my shop. It’s apparent they didn’t listen to a word o said. They have don’t
Nothing for me in two years. I am
Getting ready to attempt to cancel woth them
But by the sound of it I may have my hands full. How can they still be in business woth all this bad stuff about them. Horrible
THEY SCAMMED US! We were told there was just a one time fee and no monthly fee.m afterwards. A month after of little to no communicate from them we also never receiving a retailed monthly report of the work they have done for our company. (Which they said was part the job they would be doing for us) we never had our website designed AND THEN WAS CHARGED ANOTHER $225 which was their monthly fee 😕 We called to cancel and was told we could not cancel ☹️ This company is not for us and we just want our!
I have dex,and yellow book. Terrible results. Were should i go to advertise on line. Goggle add words?bing?
Try yelp
I was with Dex Media for 16 years. Starting with a yellow page ad in the day. Then of course over the past 3-4 years everything came about being on line and getting your name out there. So I did the “click” program. I can not believe what a scam it is. It is amazing how you are billed from your clicks up to a point. Funny but I always had the highest amount of clicks you could possibly get. And no information about who or where it reached. I think there should be a class action lawsuit formed against them for all over billing. I do not think they are honest with that and when you ask a rep. to explain it to you they can not. The last go around came when I had a website and yellow pages ad. Each summer I have a Rep come in and go over the account and sign up for the following year once the other one ends. So that is what I thought he was going to do. He promised me the world. Videos of patients on my website and all kinds of things. I got nothing but a bill that started before the website even was up and running. AND the old accounts were still going. So now I had old website/online I was paying for and yellow pages, and the new one that was suppose to be magical and get me lots of new business. So I had a battle about the slick Rep who came in and was very deceiving. I had been with this company for 16 years. I have never had a REP act like this and every summer was setting up for the next years contract. So to say the least. We had multiple meetings about everything that went on and what I was going to pay for being so deceived. We settled on amount. I paid the amount. And now I am fighting with the collection agency about how much I still owe. I can’t tell you how frustrating this whole situation has been. I can’t believe a company can do such things. I need to get a lawyer to battle with the collection agency. It can be so disheartening that there are companies out there like this. So that is my story.
I’d also like to mention that Dex Website services seems to be in the business of stealing images from other sites. We just found a Dex created website using a custom created 3D rendering of a rain gutter system that we did for a specific client about 10 years ago. The worst part is that the small business owner of this other site has no idea.
Cancelling is very difficult to impossible. I had to stop payment to cancel.
Fear they may report me to credit bureau but i see no choice.
Same here I had to report my c/c lost to stop charges! I’ve even done a fraudulent charge on the one charge they got me for!
I was contacted and decided to purchase Dex media yp and thrive. Within days and most of the first week 12-1-2017 I spent countless hours on the phone with DEX reviewing what I had purchased rather than setting up what I had purchased. Was given passwords multiple times and still could not access phone app or web. was charged $179.00 on 12-1-2017 then was charged another &179.00 on 12-6-2017 for a total of $358.00 for a product I was told I purchased but still unable to use or access.
Now more countless hours after canceling and asking for a refund days after purchasing I did get the 2nd $179.00 charge credited to my account on 12-8-2017. So now more countless hours throughout December waiting and trying to get the first charge refunded and was told it was prorated and would only be getting back $129.84 for a product I was never able to use or access..
So now it is 1-16-2018 and still have not even received that “pro rated” amount of $129.84 credited back to my account.
To top it off now I have been charged another $82.62 on 1-2-2018 for God only knows for what??????
So more countless hours on the phone with DEX trying to get the original $179.00 ($129.84 pro rated) plus the new charge of $82.62 for a total of $261.62 for a product I never received, used, accessed, nothing but countless hours on the phone
I am very unhappy. I have had the same issues as mentioned in so many of these comments. With many, many years of paying with no results. Can’t get out of the contract. Can’t get through to anyone. Can’t get any satisfaction. Can’t understand why I should be obligated to pay another dime.
They are A SCAM. DO NOT DEAL WITH DEX MEDIA !!!
STAY AWAY AT ALL COST. I would like to know what type of sleeping medication that any of there employees take to sleep at night, because I know they are not sleeping easy working for these scammers.
We called back in fall 2016 to cancel any services dex media had to offer us. We got the run around that we had to “mail in a written letter” in order to cancel the contract and any further business with them. Fine, we did that, signed it and everything. Fast forward next month, bill comes in the mail. We call them up and finally talk to someone who had an idea of what was going on. Person on the phone claims we had to send a separate letter for one bill and then another for the cancellation. At this point, I knew we were dealing with ****heads. Fine, mailed in a letter for what they wanted.
*Meanwhile, we absolutely had no services coming from them. Anything they claimed we had with them we could not find. So how in the f*** are any of our customers supposed to find us through their services.
Fast forward next month. We receive another bill…..and then at that point we start doing research on this company only to find out that HUNDREDS of other small business companies were complaining about the same thing we were.
Seeming that this is a trend, we were not obligated to do anything else besides ignore them.
Fast forward to February 2018, still getting calls from incognito debt collectors trying to get us to pay up for something we cancelled and received no services after 2016.
I highly advise anyone to whom has dealt with these issues to NOT feed into their scam. IF THEY EVER WERE TO TRY AND TAKE YOU TO COURT FOR UNPAID BILLS/CONTRACT BS, THEY WOULD NOT PREVAIL SEEMING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL HAS ALREADY SEEN HOW THIS BULL**** COMPANY WORKS AND TRIES TO SCAM PEOPLE.
If you feel like you need to , I do suggest getting a lawyer and letting them know the deal. I am sure they have heard of this terrible excuse of a company before and will know how to deal with them.
At this point, I am pretty sure they are in business NOT for marketing, but for scamming people. I have multiple business degrees and have helped run a small business for many years and after what I have been through, I am baffled to how a company like Dex Media still exists.
I do not have all day to spend on this. I have spent easily a hundred hours on dealing with DEX / YP already. Simply stated. They are thieves. They refuse to be candid regarding the most substantive issues of the SEO / PPC campaign we purchased from them. Most notably, they refuse to state what they are bidding per click, and what they have paid out. They charge me $1,600 a month. They guaranteed me a minimum of 27 calls per month. If nobody clicks on anything, DEX / YP doesn’t pay out anything to Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. Therefore they keep all the money in their pocket. When we try to correct the campaigns they do absolutely nothing. We provide them very specific instructions. They don’t do what we tell them to do. IT IS AS IF THEY POORLY DESIGN THE ADS ON PURPOSE TO PREVENT PEOPLE ON CLICKING ON THE ADS AND IN-TURN NO CLICKS MEANS THEY DON’T PAY ANYTHING OUT AND KEEP THE ENTIRE AD BUDGET IN THEIR POCKETS. I AM CONTACTING THE TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL TODAY. All of their contracts need to be invalidated by the authorities. Then DEX / YP officials need to be arrested. This is really bad.
REALLY wish I would have seen/researched this nightmare of a company before we did any business with them. I am writing this review to save one and hopefully everyone from doing any kind of business with these guys. What I have been reading in all the reviews and dealing with them personally is spot on!!! Do yourself a favor and search for another company that handles website and/or social media posting as there are plenty of other qualified and talented companies that will value your money like you do!!
I am a small business owner, I had difficulty with Dexyp in the past. My Dexyp representative came in and said they have new and improved services so she showed me Thryv, I was reluctant so she said we can do a 6 month trial, well the trial period was up so I was under the assumption we were on a month to month basis, in the mean time I found a company that could better suit our needs.
It took 2 weeks for her to contact us ( that was after we had to contact her boss) and she said I could not change our service because we were under contract! I said how is that possible I did not sign a renewal contract! She said me and my husband were busy so she had an employee sign it! I said no one had any authorization to sign a contract for me!
She said there is nothing I can do for you, you need to call customer service, so I called customer services, and they said I have a signed contract in front of me, I then said I did not tell anyone they could sign a contract on my behalf! They said anyone in my company can sign it ! !?!?! I said I don’t think so, then they said there is nothing we can do for you, you need to talk to your representative.
So they put us through to our representative boss. Who is on vacation and can not help us.
Needless to say I am not done with this yet!! They have very shady business practices
Horrible just horrible to deal with. Don’t waste your time and money. You are walking down a road where you can’t win and pain and torment are your constant companion. They are a bunch of crooks and liars
STAY AWAY FROM THEM!!!!!!!
I try to cancel back in April, and they said they would called back never did. I called again in June to find out that they put me under cronctact for a 13 month period. I guess I will be going on debt collection cause I have not gotten a lead from them and everything that they advertised is wrong.
Can someone tell me how and to whom I file a complaint with about DeX media they took me for over 5k and turned me into collections saying I still owe them over a 1000 and didn’t do anything for my business, I’m about to lose my home,land and business please any info will help
All the complaints above are true.
Dont waist a dime on these crocks
i would love to join a class action suit against this company.They are the worst.I dont know how I fell for their lies.Please let me know if there are a group of people who want to sue them I would love to join in.
DeX media has been the biggest mistake I’ve made in many years. I trusted and was left hanging out to dry. I am interested in joining a class action lawsuit against them. If others can help me in this matter please co tact me asap.
Yes I would gladly join a class action lawsuit against decks. I subscribed to their yellow page advertising for more than 20 years. It did nothing for me. Last October I contacted them by phone and again in November to cancel all future advertising starting in January. Guess what happened? I got a bill January 1 and have continued to get bills. I will not pay them and I will not be forced to pay advertising that I have canceled. By the way I haven’t signed a contract with them for about 15 years.
I too would join a class action law suit against dex. Every year i had to renew my contract with them until the year i told my sales rep i didnt want to renew. Now they tell me i am in an automatic renewal and my rep wont return my call. They separated my print and digital created me a new account in a second business name i have. After several phone calls and many hours on the phone and 8 months later the canceled the second and but are still billing me and my address they still have not chaneged my services offered are not correct. I have been paying 99 a month for advertising that is not correct alot of people thought we were out of business because we are no longer at the address they show. I cant get any results calling them. I even filed a complaint with the Ftc, they said they cant help me.