I was contacted by Ian Fisher from AcquireLists on November 13 with an offer to append email addresses to our customer list. This means that we would provide AcquireLists with our customer list (after they signed a non-disclosure agreement) and they would give us any email addresses they had on file for those customers.
AcquireLists ran a test append for me. I gave them some customers for whom I already had email addresses to see if AcquireLists was able to find the same addresses. The test was successful. Here is the series of events that followed:
November 18: Received a quote of $8750 to appendemail addresses to our customer list
November 21: Sent full customer fileto Ian for appending
December 8: Sent existing email file to Ian forde-duping and received adjusted quote according to the new total of customer records.
December 17: Check for $9,641 FedExed to Acquirelists
January13: Received appended file
April 1: Sent first email blast to COMPLETElist (though state segmentation was used starting in February). Received a slewof complaints about incorrect information. Checked Acquirelist file and foundinconsistencies (e.G. Email address for a dentist in Texas was appended to thecustomer record of a customer in Kentucky). Further research indicated that MOSTof the records were incorrect. Ianasured me that he would send me a corrected file within a week. April 20: No updated file received, emailed Ian fora status update. April 27: Ian responded and promised the correctedfile by April 29. May 11: No updated file received, emailed Ian for astatus update. Received an apology from Ian. May 28: No status update or file received, emailedIan again. June 5: No status update or file received, emailedIan again. June 15: Spoke with Ian on the phone and receivedemail follow-up promising the new file by June 17. June 22: No status update or file received. EmailedIan for an update and requested a refund. He responded that I would have thefile before 3:00 PM EST. Received newfile, which was still FULL of errors. Emailed Ian and Mark Johnson with a sample of the errors I found.
June 23: No apology or explanation received. CalledIan and voice mail was not working. Called main office and received only avoice mail — left a message. Sent Ianan email requesting a proposal or refund. July 15: Sent another email to Ian expressingdisappointment in lack of professionalism and requested communication. Imentioned that I would be forwarding the case to our attorney. July 24: Received an email from Acquirelist's salesteam. They offered me a canned list with a "value of $8,000" for thediscounted price of $3,500 because of the problems I had experiencedbefore. I responded that I had alreadypaid $10,000 for a project I never received, so I didn't see why I should haveto pay anything more. I mentioned thatif AcquireLists would like to void the old contract and just send me the newlist as a replacement, I would be willing to compromise. They replied that I should just pay the $3500since it was a great deal. I told them Iwould gladly pay $3500 after receiving my $10,000 refund. Otherwise, I was not interested in a new list, but our original project.
AcquireLists sent me half of the $3500 list free of charge. Iasked if they were unable to complete the original contract. They responded that I would receive theproject in 6-10 days. (By the way, the custom list was not useful to us—it was specialists and our market is general practitioners only.)
August 13: Sent a reminder that my project was overdue. September 10: Sent an email that I still had not heardfrom the team. November 2: Sent the above timeline to every email address I had for AcquireLists (general sales email address, Ian Fisher, and Mark Johnson—the data delivery coordinator). Asked for a refund. I still have not heard from them and they do not return my voice mails.
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