There are some good link building companies out there, it just takes a while to find them. I would say though that many people have stopped large scale drectory submissions,personally I think this is a mistake. I use a wide combination of backlinking methods, and directory submission is one of them. One of the reasons I shotgun directories is that it makes life a LOT harder for the competition who are trying to find out which backlinks I have that are working for me
