An electrician in Birmingham? Not in this directory...
R.H. writes: My wife and I run a small bed-and-breakfast in Devon, and we were contacted by UK Business Profiles to list our website in its online database so searchers would find us. As far as we were aware, this was an annual contract, though we have never received contract details. We were always contacted by phone to renew, and we have been trying to cancel this. The company phones after already charging our card. We paid last September, yet it charged us again in March and took another £479 in May.
IT IS easy for small businesses to be taken in by directory firms. When you looked at the website at ukbusinessprofiles.com, you saw listings for big outfits including Royal Mail, the Post Office and Costa Coffee, but the signs are that these were bait aimed at luring you into taking a listing yourself. The Post Office told you it was not a customer of the firm, and when you checked again all three big names had vanished from the website.
I asked UK Business Profiles to comment on what you told me, and within days the company itself called you to say there had been ‘confusion’. You previously had a different address and this may have led to you being charged for both. A refund has now been made to your card.
But there are bigger questions here than just a clerical error. The real name of the company behind the website is BHP Global Limited. It uses two addresses, one in Wimbledon in South West London and the other in Blackburn in Lancashire. Both belong to firms that take in mail for anyone who pays.
There was no real sign of the website and its bosses in London, but I traced director Daniel Heald to Blackburn where he lives, and his colleague Paul Brown is not far
away in Clitheroe. I also traced records of a couple of County Court Judgments against Heald, including one last year for £2,334.
I asked both men to comment, and in a statement from their company they told me: ‘We had some initial difficulties in contacting Mr H after receiving a letter from him’ – not much of an advertisement for their own directory service.
But this does raise the very basic question of what use their directory service might be to anyone. It could only ever be any use if the directory itself was widely advertised to the public, but when I asked this question, Heald and Brown failed to give any answer. So, I gave their website
a test drive. I searched for an electrician in Birmingham, Glasgow, Dundee, or Cardiff. Back came the answer: ‘There are no results for your search.’
How about plumbers in Cardiff, Newcastle, Exeter, or Birmingham? Again, Heald and Brown have none. I even tried for a shoe repairer in Manchester, Liverpool, Swansea, or Edinburgh. Again, none.
Why should anyone be expected to pay hundreds of pounds for a listing in a directory which fails to tell the public it exists, and which is so poor that it has no record of basic services in big cities? The answer, of course, is that nobody should pay.