Sal M.

I too had a free listing, and then was called by one of their reps who offered a premium listing for €67, with a load of statistics of the number of searches that qype users were supposedly using, and that I would be exposed to all of these visitors. He promised that he would really work hard to keep my business, and a lot of other promises that were little more than a story to get my credit card details. Well, after a couple of weeks, I looked at the stats, and was surprised to see zero clicks, and very few views of my "premium" listing. I asked for help, via the online support form, and also tried calling - a black hole of one way communication. Then I was billed another €67 a month later. I logged in to the account to see that the stats had not changed at all, and there was no way to cancel the account online. I then called and hung on for ages before I was informed that it was "in my contract" that I had to pay for a "minimum of 6 months". Sure enough, it was there n the terms and conditions, but I was not pleased. In order to cancel the contract, you have to send it in writing, signed (I was able to send a scan of the cancellation letter via email). Strange how this was not required to sign up - all I needed to do the was click on a link to agree to the (very one sided) terms and conditions. I'd strongly advise any small business not to advertise with Qype. They do not deliver anything at all that they promise. In order to get anything of value from them, you need to recruit your customers to post positive reviews of your business on Qype. Why bother advertising then? Doing this with a free listing would work just as well. But I'll get my customers to post positive reviews on my own website, thanks very much. Or Google Places, or somewhere else that gets web traffic, and is ranked in the search engines. If you are a consumer looking for an honest review of a local business, be very wary of trusting anything you read on Qype. They started by paying people to post reviews (they got 11M in start up funding) so you can ask yourself how trustworthy the reviews are. Stay away from Qype.