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Success Stories-Cool Businesses-Renegades -
Florists
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I just got off the phone with a florist in San Diego who refused to silently watch her page on AT&T’s YellowPages.com be parceled off to competing online flower sites. Thanks to her tenacity and a couple of calls from a reporter, AT&T says it’s “working as quickly as possible,” to remove the ads and end the practice of selling space on the directory pages of advertisers.
Here’s how it all went down (and why those ads will be coming down).
Earlier this week, Teri Egenberger of Molly Malloy’s Floral Company noticed two brightly colored ads for flowers on her shop’s YellowPages.com listing. Now, it wasn’t the first time she’d seen the ads, Flower.com and Dial a Flower advertiser on the main page that pops up when users search for florists and San Diego. But this was the Molly Malloy page, the one she pays $338 a month for.
She did a search for other florists, who also had paid listings, and was slack-jawed to discover online flower ads on every page. She immediately called her sales representative, who at first was incredulous that such a thing could even happen but after talking to her supervisor, offered to let Egenberger out of her contract.
No deal. The florist didn’t want to just pack up and move because AT&T had sold off some precious real estate on her online property to competitors. She wanted AT&T to get those ads off her site.
She called other local florists to alert them to the situation and then e-mailed SAF on Tuesday, hoping to mobilize enough florists at the local level to convince AT&T to remove the ads.
Egenberger and I traded e-mails and details about her contract and her frustration. “I don't have a problem with them having as many ads as they want on their listing page,” she wrote. “My problem is that once a customer has chosen MY shop and wants more information on ME, I expect that MY shop info will open without diversions to my competition.”
I e-mailed Jodi Bart, AT&T PR contact for the YellowPages.com on Wednesday afternoon and heard back almost immediately. Bart promised to investigate the matter further. I’ve heard this promise before and was skeptical. I was certain this was going to be just another Wild West of the Internet story, where pop-up advertising rules, real estate is divided up into smaller plots and the highest bidder can plop down right in its competitor’s front yard.
I was wrong.
Today at 11:26 a.m., Bart called to tell me that “customers had brought this to the attention of AT&T” and the company was working to remove the ads on paid listings, like that of Molly Malloy.
She couldn’t confirm the time frame, but promised they’d be removed as soon as soon as possible.
This time I believed her.
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