We signed on with Eric Gillette and GSolutions to redesign our website and provide SEO services in December. I experienced constant delays and excuses as to the lack of progress on our redesign and SEO over a course of 18 months. We initially invested $2978 upfront to cover the redesign costs, then signed on a "retainer" program for an additional $2700 every 7 months to cover continuing SEO and minor website changes. The retainer thing was a fiasco, and still is to this day - even after discontinuing services with them on July 28th.
The final straw, after many repeated attempts to get them to finish things and provide to me the items they were supposed to as outlined in my Proposal from them, was when Eric screwed up the dates as to when our AmEx card was supposed to be charged our retainer charges (for the second time, the first was a fiasco about 9 months prior). He stated to me that our retainer charge date was indeed July 15 (after talking endlessly to him about their delays and lack of progress - why should I pay for things that aren't finished?).
I found out in July (when I looked at our AmEx statement) that our card was charged $2700 on June 15th. This was to not have been, as I was just talking to him around this time about this very thing happening. He knew... He just conveniently didn't tell me. I asked him for a refund, and got nothing but excuses and was uncooperative. He even threatened me that if I did try to initiate a chargeback through AmEx, he would pursue that "aggressively".
Towards the end of July, he actually managed to hijack our domain name (that we solely owned since 2001) as a probable means of "punishing" us. I had to go through a lot of red tape with GoDaddy to get it back (we were without our site or email, other than a temporary Gmail account, for over a week). We have filed a dispute on this $2700 with AmEx three times now, only to have them side with Eric in the end.
I have provided evidence to AmEx that totally defends our position three times - and it is like they turn a blind eye to it (heck, I can't even manage to talk to a person who makes the actual decision about the dispute... AmEx will not allow me to do that... What?). They say (not in the actual letter they send me notifying me of their decision, but when I manage to talk to a Customer Service supervisor - that's as far as I can get) something about that it was over 60 days from when I signed the contract with GSolutions and the date of my initial dispute. Huh? I thought it was from the date when we notice the actual charge on our statement (which would have been the beginning of July) to when I initiate a dispute to the charge. That does not sound right to me, and I had talked at length to the Supervisor at AmEx about this... And they said there was nothing more they could do. It almost sounds corrupt to me... Like a bad police drama or something.
I will not stop at this. I know there are others out there who have been taken for more that us, and I feel for you all. This should not have happened.
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