Sitelock Warning: Save Your Money
When my antivirus software (and some customers' software) started sounding malware alarms when going to my site, I immediately searched for a malware removal company and ended up talking to Sitelock.com. Based on their website (what else do we have to go on?) Sitelock.com seemed to be legitimate and I entered a phone/email dialogue with one of their representatives.
Should have moved on when I received an email urging me to call her back because "I have the quote ready and I got a very good discount approved for you, " followed by an email "I just talked to my manager and he had authorized the following offer for you"... Which came to "only $1,298/yr." Cleaning up the current issue was $450; the rest involved "hardening" and "maintenance, " which she assured me "will save me $400/yr."
When I balked at this, the price suddenly became $250 to clean the site and $149 for a one-time hardening. I was sent a list of 10 wonderful things they were going to do for me to protect against future infections. When I specifically wrote asking if Sitelock would guarantee that their work would prevent future infections, her written answer was "yes." (In a later email, she slipped in the carefully worded statement that "it would block up to 90% of the attacks out there.")
Since I was getting no sales at all at the site because of the malware problem, I accepted.
I then began receiving urgent emails and phone calls from my representative about their SEO service, which I declined.
I paid them to begin on 11/22. Several weeks later, in January, my site was being flooded with malware warnings from my own antivirus software, and previous customers were writing to tell me about worms and viruses at my site.
Then the "fun" began. Many emails marked URGENT, HELP, etc. Went unanswered. Phone calls to my representative were not returned. I re-sent the pleas for Sitelock to remove the new attacks and bonor their warranty directly to their "support engineers" and to the man the operator told me was the manager.
I then asked their operator if she would ask my rep to respond to my increasingly frantic requests. I was told that D, my representative, was in Germany. I began asking the operator to speak to the manager on the phone. Mysteriously, he was always "not in yet, " or "just left." To this date the phantom manager has not called or responded to my emails entreaties.
Once, in the middle of the night, I was able to reach the night man on the technical support desk. He was very nice and seemed ready to help, as soon as we got the "price" issue resolved!
Finally I got in touch with another sales representative who decided to help me. She offered to waive their usual $69 diagnostic fee, and got me a special price on a "cleaning": $236. When I explained that I'd paid $399 less than 2 months ago, had a "guarantee, " and have had 0 sales since I began contacting them about the malware crises, there was silence at the other end of the phone.
I lost the $399 I paid them, The $200 I then paid a reputable company to fix the site, and $4,000 based on my previous daily sales during the time spent pleading for them to do what I already paid for. Save your money! Sitelock is a rip-off.
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