Yellabot Yellow Pages Scraper

I trialled this software a week ago and immediately ran into a serious issue. I have raised 3 support tickets in the intervening 8 days and have recieved nothing in reply.

Do not buy this product - the support is non-existent.

I found the Yellabot Yellow Pages Scrape software whilst trawling the internet for screen scraping software and the original reviews which lead me to their website from a webhosting discussion forum, were quite promising at first. Having had many negative experiences with all types of software, I was pleased to find that Yellabot came complete with a 7 day time limited trial, enough time to evaluate the software, and obtain any support and help from the Author(s), should I require it.

I double checked the Yellabot website, just to make sure that it could be used with the UK version of Yellowpages, as this was where I was based, and the only edition which would be of any use to me. One check of the Yellabot website re-assured me that it was compatible with the UK Yellow Pages (Yell.com) and so I downloaded the trial version from the Yellabot website.

The Yellabot Yellow Pages scrape software installed quickly and easily on my Operating System (Windows XP), and I immediately decided to put it to the test. Finding your way around the Yellabot software is fairly easy, and everything is clearly labeled and self explanatory, since it was only Yell.com which was of interest to me, I selected the UK option from the drop down options, and the UK version of the Yellow pages, correctly appeared in the viewing window within the software interface, all ok so far.

I then entered a popular geographical area, and a business example which would be reasonably popular into the software, in order to find the business information which I required. A few seconds later, the viewing window fetched the results on the actual Yell.com website, and told me that it had matched 89 results matching my search term, in the geographical area I required. Now it should only be a matter of clicking a button in order to set the Yellabot software into extract mode, and convert the results into CSV, SQL or TXT format.

I clicked the button which would begin the extraction process, a few seconds passed, and the software reported that it had fetched '0' results. Huh?!

So what had occured?, I was faced with 89 matching results from Yell.com which matched my inquiry, but the software had only successfully extracted a grand total of '0' results. I tried to start the extraction process once again, and unfortunately, Yellabot failed miserably to produce anything from the Yell.com website.

Over the next few hours, I tried various search terms and various locations. On each of these searches I could see hundreds of results displayed on the Yell.com website via the Yellabot integrated viewing window, however, on every SINGLE occasion, the software stubbornly refused to extract any of this information, and each time it reported a big fat zero in relation to the information it had successfully fetched.

In short, I must have made over thirty different searches, and each time Yellabot failed to deliver its promises. The following morning, I found my way onto the Eatworm support desk, and sent an email to their support department explaining the fact that their software was seemingly unable to extract any information from the Yell.com website.

Several hours later, I also got a 'welcome' email from Gerry, who pointedly advised me that should I encounter any problems with Yellabot then I should contact them directly if I found anything wrong with it. Since the Yellabot software clearly wasn't working correctly then I thought 'Gerry' should know about it, so I fired off a copy of the first email to him.

Several days went by, and I had no acknowledgement or reply from either the support email, nor from my direct reply to Gerry's original email, so that is two emails, and zero replies, zero being the same number of results that Yellabot extracts from Yell.com so at least the Authors are consistent in two respects, unfortunately non of them endear me to their software.

Interestingly, I had another email from Gerry today, wondering why I hadn't purchased their Yellabot software!, so it seems that they are wonderful at sending out follow up marketing emails, however support emails seem to conveniently escape them, not just once but twice.

Well, in answer to your email its quite simple Gerry, in my experience your software simply doesn't work, and during my trial your 'AMAZING' software miserably failed to extract a SINGLE result from Yell.com. Not only that but your end user support is simply non existent, because you and your support team failed to reply to two separate emails, sent to two different email addresses, and therefore I was unable to get your software to work, and certainly will not be buying it, nor recommending it from friends and other internet users. Quite the opposite in fact.