Yellow pages bill goes unpaid ?

[Houseofcards]

I have been wondering this. When a business owner (sole prop) files for personal BK - what happens to the yellow page bill ?

The yellow page advertising is like a contract you enter into - and you pay a monthly percentage of the total price of the ads.

If you don't pay that bill - can they take your business phone number away ?

It would be hard to operate if your customers couldn't reach you on the number you have on your business cards and such - the number they have saved in their phones - the number in all of your other advertising.

Does anyone know or have any experience with this ?

Thanks in advance for any input.

[frogger]

The bill for your yellow page listing is normally on your phone bill. If you don't pay, they can disconnect you for non-payment.

[goingcrzy]

can you port the number to a VOIP service? That should get rid of the phone company. And they are cheaper if you have a good internet connection.

[Houseofcards]

The Yellow Page bill is seperate

The yellow page bill is seperate - not included in the monthly phone bill. Initially when the business was established there was one "book" that the phone company refered me to when I asked about yellow page ads. The company that provided the service initially has changed with buy-outs and mergers.

I recently was looking into changing my DSL service over to a supposedly faster "wireless" service for internet. This new company recommended changing over to VOIP telephone service - I have put some thought into a change.

The reason i am asking this question is this: We are filing our BK very soon - the whole process of getting our ducks in a row to file has made me re-evaluate our budget.

My business telephone service needs to get cheaper - my advertising dollars need to be better spent. I want to run much "leaner" than I have in the past.

I have told DEX that we want to completely cancel any and all phone book advertising - just leave us the "free" initial listing that all phone books have us in. They tell me that the monthly billing will decrease as the auto-renewal of the ads run out. As the new issues of the phone book come out (annually) - our bill will progressively become less monthly. I can attribute 1 (only one) new customer - in 5 years time - that actually found me in the phone book. I know that people will grab the book to look up my number - but they already know they are looking for me - so I only need my name and number listed - no ads needed. I know that 40 % of my new business comes comes from internet searches - my money is better spent there.

Doing GOOGLE searches regarding this subject I have found virtually nothing. I have found quite a few posts regarding "auto-renewals" and unhappy customers that are locked in for a year at a time and are unhappy about it. No where do I see any mention of getting your phone service shut off for not paying the yellow page bill. There are people that have been sent to collection for not paying though.

Since all debts get listed when you file I need to know if I will lose my phone number because of this - it will affect may income if people can't reach me.

One final note - I would rather just stop paying the yellow page bill than risk someone on their end "mistakenly" auto-renewing me after i told them not to.

[goingcrzy]

I believe if you are current -then you don't include the phone bill. We didn't. The only reason you may loose the number is if your yellow pages contract is tied to the phone. When we started our business (a long time ago) There was one phone service and one book. It was all tied together.

Today, none of our stuff is tied together. So we could cancel our yellow pages contract without it touching our phone service.

[Houseofcards]

Thanks for the input so far - I appreciate it.

I want to eliminate this bill for yellow page ads. I want to add DEX to the credit matrix so that I can eliminate the monthly bill.

As a business decision - to file BK - it makes sense to eliminate everything you can when you file.

I don't want to lose the number that is on my business cards - the number that is on my signs out front - the number that people have saved in their cell phone memory - the number that appears in all the internet advertising.

I will let you all know if i get any news regarding this circumstance.

[BigJohn]

The Yellow page bill is a contract that you can pay up front or make monthly payments. So to me, you can bankrupt the whole bill. Nothing they can do about the advertising because it has already been printed.

[Pizza]

My dad went through this whole ordeal about ten years ago. He owed a grand total of around $90k. To be honest, it's tough to get business out of a phone book anyway because unless you are listed in a small town there are just too many companies and the big ones are the ones that can afford all the space.

His phone number was totally unaffected by the bankruptcy and was never an issue.