Businessmen clash with Yellow pages

Two Nelson businessmen who have set up an online tradespersons' directory have been told to withdraw a claim they make on the website or they will face legal action.

James Gordon and Rob Stevenson are fuming over the warning they've received from the Yellow Pages Group, which operates the Yellow pages business directory.

They said it was an attempt by the giant company to stop them competing against it and likened the situation to a "big fish going after a little fish".

However, a lawyer for Yellow pages said the pair's claim that they had the biggest tradespersons' directory in New Zealand was misleading.

Mr Gordon and Mr Stevenson set up their directory, called Tradesmen Direct, three months ago and it currently has about 18,000 tradespeople nationally listed on it.

They plan to expand into printed business directories next year.

The first directory, for the Nelson region, is scheduled to be distributed to households in April next year and they plan to follow that up with directories for Marlborough and the West Coast and eventually the rest of New Zealand.

The directories will be called Go Pages-Trade Pages, and the pair plan to rebrand the website that as well.

"We will be offering businesses a cheaper alternative to the Yellow pages we will be offering people good value for money," Mr Gordon said.

The pair received an email at the weekend from the legal counsel for Yellow Pages Group, Toby Sharpe.

In the email he said the company took issue with the statement about Tradesmen Direct being the biggest tradespersons' directory in New Zealand, because the Yellow pages directory was bigger. The Yellow pages had about 10,000 listings just of builders, he said.

"We feel that you are misleading customers as to the position of your directory in the market," Mr Sharpe said.

He stated that typically in such situations the company would send a "cease and desist" letter, which if not acted on would be followed up with an injunction. It had not done that yet because it realised Tradesmen Direct was "new to the market" but would if the statement was not removed from the website within two weeks.

Yellow spokesman Travis Logan said the company was "not being too aggressive. From a brand point of view we want to maintain that Yellow is the place to go."

Mr Stevenson said the email came as a shock. "All we are trying to do is offer some competition. We're really wracked off that Yellow pages is threatening us already. It's a case of another corporate giant from overseas taking action against a small fish," he said.

Mr Gordon said words such as "biggest" and "best" were commonly used by businesses to market their products and services. "Everyone uses them," he said.

They were seeking legal advice, and if it turned out that they had to remove the statement from the website, they would, he said. However, it would not deter them from going ahead with the printed directories. They had already hired staff to start selling advertising for the Nelson directory from next month.

A Commerce Commission spokeswoman said under the Fair Trading Act, businesses making claims while promoting or advertising a product or service were required to ensure accuracy.