ERT Weekly: Open Mike

This week sees me in a grumbly mood based on a feeling that the bigger organisations just don't care any more. They have because of their size become their own law and policy maker.

The first example I give, and not for the first time, is Yell or as it was formerly known Yellow Pages. Originating from America, it arrived on these shores as the ultimate market and public service tool.

'Advertise in this, boy, and your business will become a corporation overnight" in the words of my first Yellow Pages sales rep.

"The public will use this as their Bible, when it comes to finding and selecting a business to deal with," he said. "If your business is in Yellow Pages that means you are in business in a meaningful way."

He eventually got around to telling me the price and I clearly recall it was a straight choice between me and my family having a week's holiday in Bournemouth.

I chickened out--I chose Bournemouth.

When things got really really tough, as they did over the years, I recalled this overweight, bow tied, brown pin-striped suited bloke with the damp handshake forecasting my demise and it was that mental image gave me the 'umph' to go the extra mile.

Both me and Yell are still in the frame, me under the same ownership still grinding away to make a bob.

They have moved on to become a multi-squillion operation and, like the bloke said, 'a reference Bible for householders'.

However, here is my beef, thank you for waiting.

It is my impression that most of the rogue-traders and such advertise in Yell and similar well trusted directories.

Hundreds of people, particularly the elderly and more vulnerable ones who have grown up in a Yellow Pages world, get conned by unscrupulous traders who advertise under the respectable front of a directory.

As a current YP directory advertiser, who has now developed a corporation, just below the chest and above the hips, I am beginning to get that feeling I am in the wrong company. Remember the old adage that it only takes one rotten apple to knacker the barrel?

My original YP rep had told me I would grow fast and I would be silly not to advertise.

THIS SEEMS TO be the name of the game in the TV programmes I have been watching lately, Watchdog and Rogue Traders in particular. More than a few of the dodgy traders it seems are pulled from the pages of directories such as YP, Thomsons and similar.

At no time since I have advertised in YP/Yell have I been asked to substantiate my claim of belonging to this or that organisation, trade association or even show evidence we were voted Small Business of the Year for Bedfordshire.

Neither have we been asked if we have ever been prosecuted by trading standards under our current or any associated trading name or have we ever had our credit licence revoked.

I am going to be paying attention to this misleading form of money-making advertising in the future. I will pester the ASA and Trading Standards until they are fed up with me.

Thirty or so years ago I tracked halfway across the country a one-day-sale bloke who called himself Stonewall Jackson and succeeded in getting him banged up for 18 months.

They are still about, the indirect descendants of Stonewall Jackson, still screwing the punters rotten.

Did you see Rogue Traders featuring electricians on BBC 1 on February 20?

It is thanks to these directories, who in my view put money before decency, that these rogue traders gain credibility by mixing their adverts in with the decent ads.

Two weeks ago we witnessed on BBC Rogue Traders a bloke from a well advertised aerial installation company perform his questionable art form.

Unfortunately for him and his company it was a sting operation and he was exposed for all to see.

The Consumers' Association and OFT are getting their knickers in a twist about extended warranties.

To ring the changes may I suggest they have a look at and investigate the standard of advertising that sits in everyone's home like a ticking time-bomb, waiting to be grabbed by a desperate householder who from that moment in time has roulette wheel odds of catching a bad'un!

So, where are your teeth ASA?