I know this is an old thread, but I thought it's important to point out a few things here.
A) If you ever get called by salesmen, hang up. Using outbound cold calling tactics is an aggressive strategy for any company, let alone one that has been reported to have claimed things that are just impossible like touch local saying 'they can guarantee to get you to the top of google for a monthly fee' (that's usually way above the average price of a decent website). Note that Google doesn't favour any website over another, and for this reason it isn't possible to guarantee any position in Google at all. Touch Local will cold call you if you sign up for their free listing and they do push their superior listings.
B) Verbal agreements do exist but if you've been told you're paying to get listed at the top of google then it's classed as miss-selling and you're entitled to all your monies back. It isn't possible to charge somebody and guarantee them high rankings. Therefore their side of the contract has been based around a lie. Go to Trading Standards with your complaint and ensure they look into their sales tactics themselves. They can knock up a free listing and get cold called within seconds. If they hear Touch claiming they can charge you to get you to the top of google, and then they read the google guidelines, they'll see that they don't match up.
As a web guy, and as a guy who runs construction forums (the type of member that touch would love to have on their system paying £57+ per month) I speak to many and read many reports about cold calling companies claiming to either get you to the top of google, or even companies selling advert space in mags that either don't exist or just don't get distributed to the type or amount of people they first claim.
The problem is this verbal agreement lark. As it's business-to-business you're not covered by free legal advice. You have to pay your own way to get the monies back in most cases.
So the only way to guarantee you will never get miss-sold by cold callers is to hang up and say nothing. That is to say not all do miss-sell.
Register your numbers with
TPS Registration and then tell anybody who calls that 'you're with the TPS' and that you don't want them to call you again.
If they still call you, report them to the TPS and you're one step closer to getting them fined.
If they keep cold calling you, keep reporting them and keep a record of their calls. They'll soon have a fine in their mail from the TPS.
In tough times you need to spend your money wisely when it comes to advertising. For around £350 you can get an optimised website of your own that you manage and keep for life advertising yourself to the world. And although there are no guarantee positions, you can rest assured you have a better chance with your own website and not one that's just a duplicate of many others.
