YEXT is anyone using them or heard of them for service calls

[copyhere]

I was contacted by this company which offers to give you service calls in your area for $25 per call they state that you only pay the first time then if they like you they become your customer and call you directly.
It sounds good being there is no contract or anything. I see the only problem being if people call you shopping around and you dont get a call out of a phone call you still have to pay the 25. Also ho do you know if they need money they just get someone to give you fake calls.

[Ducttape n Glue]

I just signed up last week for Yext and the next day I had a call. I was aliitle surprised how quick it was and thought maybe they had held this call till I signed up. Regardless, I asked the new customer how they found us and she said via the internet. The big reason I signed up, after looking all over the internet for as much info as I could find on them, was I know Ronelle Ingram and trusted the name. I haven't had any calls since but i still made money on the first call. I will give it 3 months, it will cost me $20.00, $10.00 a month service charge, 1st month free and if I get any calls another $25.00 each. As for the wasted calls , they record the initial call , so if its a waste of time , you and they can review that. Also, I put alot of info on the initial page on Yext , including my prices, so a customer can see I'm not the cheapest, so don't waste my time for nothing. I'll keep this forum topic line posted for any new calls and or end of month review.

[cobiray]

I haven't heard of this before, but it sounds interesting. I'd like to hear about anyone else who's used them.

[gitana1983]

We currently have the service and I think it has been a good investment so far. On the first week we got like 4 or 5 calls and we have made some money out of it. The only problem that we have find is the calls for little inkjet machines, which usually are not worth to fix, then you might loose the $25.00 but we try then to keep inkjet machines in stock as well for this ocassions.
In general I think is not such a bad idea, we keep receiving calls at least 2 per week....

[Ducttape n Glue]

I too am finding the little store bought inkjets are the most popular call and this week I recieved 5 calls on them and not one turned into a billable service call or a sold new unit. I emailed Yext on one call that was basically the guy brought his unit in and it was in pieces so we just threw it in the dumpster, no billable call, no sale. I told them I didn't feel this was a legitimate quality call and it did not generate any billing. So basically I will be billed for the 5 calls at $25.00 a call = $125.00, for nothing but advertising. Don't know if I will continue the service, my Yellow Pages online advertising is cheaper. Here is a copy of their response:
We do not bill strictly for calls that turn into booked jobs. We are an advertising service and we bill for any legitimate leads that we generate for your business. You have premium listings on 25 websites including yellowpages, citysearch, and superpages and you only pay when we can get a potential new customer to call your business directly. Our CallRelevance technology that ensures that you receive only the most relevant phone calls, automatically weeds out low quality calls, and transcribes each call, picking out the most critical keywords. This allows us to send you more, higher quality calls, and secondly, to reduce the time you have to spend going through and listening to each one individually. On average, businesses will receive about 40% highly relevant calls; these calls will automatically be placed in your inbox, while junk calls will be placed in your "junk calls" folder. While we cannot guarantee that all billed calls will result in new business for you, nearly all of them will be from prospective new customers looking for your type of business. For this reason, we are unable to issue refunds for individual calls, except in the case of telephone issues (such as wrong numbers) - if you feel that this is the case with one of your calls, please let us know.We appreciate your business and hope to send you many high quality calls over the coming months and years with increasingly fewer low quality calls. Yext is committed to providing you with superior local advertising service. As always, please feel free to call 800-xxx-xxxx or e-mail xxxxxxxxxxx with questions about our advertising service.Thank you for Connecting to Yext Calls!

[copyhere]

Thanks ducttape for your feedback. That is why I did not want to sign up with them the salesman gives all the good points and you dont find out the bad until you try it. Thats probably why they wont let you try the first month free.

[Ducttape n Glue]

Here's another issue I have.
One person calls to find out if we repair xxx copier, we say yes, they say OK thanks. Then I get another call from the person with the copier and they tell me whats wrong etc. Still no service call placed, so no billing. BUT, I get billed by Yext for those 2 calls as different calls at $25 each. What they do is assign a specific telephone number for your account that pops up on the search the customer does on-line and then that call rolls over to your regular telephone line. This way they can track who is using their ad on the web to locate you.
I think in order to avoid the referral call back as another billable is to give the first caller your real telephone number, so they can call you direct.

[repair]

i was wit this company for a few months but they started to smell fishy if u no wat i mean.........

well i started wit them for the first month and they charged me $20 per click....and yes alot of people did call my business but 80% of them was people asking questions about ther appliances and if they said the key words like " appointment"..."repair"...."call me" or watever it is.
They will charge u for that call.....but the thing is everyone that calls me say these main words for some reason but it does not mean i actually got the call........the first month i paid $120 and then 2nd month i paid $240, then the third month i paid $320.....it just seem like i pay more every month but out of the 16 people that called me, only like 3 people i made money out of.....cuz they wer people who didnt ask only question but really wanted their appliance fixed.

but i started feeling wierd about them is when i asked one lady, how she heard about us and she said i saw u in the yellow pages book.......it surely got nothing to do with the internet......
and another times when i have calls from my old customers...i see them on the recorded voices, which they charged me of course.......but my old customers has my real number

i think they also use our real number to link it to ther call center too or sumthing.....i dont no, ther is just sumthing wierd about them......

wen i call to cancel.....they said to go on this 30 buck monthly bases and no matter how many people call u it'l just b that 30 dollers........sounded good so i tried it.......not 1 call from them hahahhahhah........people who is calling me now is all from the yellowpages
so im gona call to cancel wit them period........

does this smell sticky to anyone else?

[Ducttape n Glue]

OK, I stopped my Yext account. I was up to $25.00 a call plus $10 maintenance fee and the last monthly invoice for the calls through them was $435.00 . Thats 17 calls thru their service, of which 3 turned into billable calls. The finally call and the reason I stopped them was I got a call from someone who did not speak English, so my secretary gives it to me, sounded Portuguese to me, and I speak fluent Spanish, so my ear is kinda tuned to it, but it was so garbled that I could not understand him at all, he puts on a lady who speaks broken English and basically , he was looking for a job as an auto mechanic!!! They effen billed me for it!!!

Now there is another company who says they will do what Yext does but at a flat fee of I believe it was $150.00 per month, they called themselves "Outrank", but the sales guy was so freaking pushy and obnoxious that I was totally turned off by them.

[Ducttape n Glue]

Yext announced that they are raising their price to $35.00 per call. They claim to have improved their software recognition program to weed out poor quality calls. I will agree on one thing, they definitely needed to improve. They are also changing their name to CopierRepairMan.com