Pros and cons of company eLocaL Listing?

A number of people I know have been called by eLocal Listing.

http://www.elocallisting.com

I'm not familiar with them except they seem to charge a monthly fee for maintaining someones Google and Yahoo local listing. I don't know why anyone would pay any firm a monthly fee for maintaining their listing. Anyone know this firm? Pros....cons?

When you type 'eLocal Listing scam' into google ya get lots of entries...

Yep.
I'm a part-time web developer/marketer and I created and optimised the website for the interior design company that is my day job.

These guys with elocal must have called my boss about a million times about their service. Today I overheard him talking to them and let him know I wanted to talk to them.

I will cut this long story short and just say I wouldn't wish these people on my worst enemy.

First of all they are only sales people with absolutely no technical knowledge whatsoever. They only know what is on their little scripts and the first guy that I talked to barely knew that so he had to get his manager.

Then they have little idea how their service works and from the little I could get out of them it seems to be some sort of backlink scam.

They promised top of the search engine listings!!!! NO REAL SEO COMPANY WILL EVER DO THIS. It is impossible to say how a site will rank. Among the reasons for that is that there is competition and if that competition is knowledgeable and doing their own SEO (like we are) they are probably going to do a better job than the idiots at elocal.


I already know from the google keyword tool, etc. which local relevant keywords get traffic monthly (and how much). And I know how to optimise our site. But most importantly I know that google local listings are FREE!

The manager rep asked me to google "movers oakdale ny" and showed me that they had created a youtube video (currently ranked #8 on the page) for the client and helped them get to the top of the local listings.

Anyone with a free youtube account can make a MUCH better video, one with the owner talking about his business for instance. Then label it with the local keyword terms (ex: movers oakdale ny) and have probably the same or better result.

Of course the worst part is that they do not do any research...
I wanted to tell this pushy obviously tech-oblivious telemarketer to find the shiny thing on his desk with the internet on it, go to google.com and type in interior design and the name of our city. WOW! Looky there! We are already number one!

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO STUPID?

What happened to honesty, integrity, get what you pay for?

I was looking to enhance my site in local maps and these guys called. 99.00 setup and 59.00 monthly! Because I am too busy and envisioned my company doing great business in a search term that only the big boys can get into, I said yes today! They gave me some story about how they have a relationship with many local newspapers around the country and the outgoing links and incoming links will boost me to the top. I mentioned getting blacklisted by google and they said they have a special relationship with Google. What a crock of s#%t!!

After, i laid my credit card down, I researched and found all kinds of people complaining. I tried to cancel but I cant until my credit card goes through. lol

The 99.00 ain't nothing but the damage they could do to my current google positioning scares me. Is that a genuine concern? Or should I just let it raide and see what happens with it? The money is nothing to me if it works, even a little bit!

Please let me know what your thoughts are. I will cancel tomorrow and hopefully get my money back!

Glad I found this post early!

Any thoughts?

dabugman