I received a telephone call at my home office and the caller id said the call was from 'Google SEO'. A recorded voice said that a Google sales rep was waiting to talk to me if i was interested in improving my Google ranking. Having just watched a tv program about the rise of Google and the importance of Adwords i was interested to see what they said.
The sales rep was very nice, introduced herself as Alyse Jones and went on to talk about the service. They basically give you a position on the top pink (paid) part of the first page of Google and another on the map listed page. As my company website is already listed on page 1 i argued the specifics as to whether it would benefit me but, you know times are hard and i figured anything that would get me up the rankings would be worth trying (a guy on the Google tv program that makes custom cowboy boots said he had a hard time keeping up with the business his Google campaign generated).
Alyse explained that the contract was for 1 year at $3000 but they would give me a 3 month trial for $900 and if i was not happy with the results that i could cancel then. Bearing in mind that i pay almost $1000pm for print yellow pages ads that produce very little i was hooked and signed up over the telephone. I gave them my credit card number and she said she would send the contract to me by email for signature and return.
When the contract arrived within the hour i was concerned to note that i was contracting with a company valled LiveDeal.com and immediately plugged their name into Google to see what i could find out. They are F rated with the BBB of Nevada and the web seems full of horror stories about their tactics. Despite searching all over the web i could find no connection between them and Google other than a news item generated by them announcing a 'partnership' between the two companies. No-one at Google will tell me if there is still a connection between them and i assume that they are simply 'authorized' to resell space on Google?
I immediately called Alyse and explained my concerns, she was courteous but said she could not cancel the contract and all managers were at lunch (why is it with these types of scam that all the managers are out of the office and all seem to take lunch together)? She promised that she would get back to me in an hour.
I called my credit card company to stop the payment but they said that this could not be done until the transaction was posted to my account, it had already been pre-authorized by LiveDeal.com though!
Needless to say i did not get a return call so i called Alyse and she put me through to Charles Hall. He tried to calm me saying that the BBB rating was because every company gets a few complaints and they were such a huge company listed by Forbes etc etc a partner of Google etc etc and that even DisneyWorld has an f rating!!! (they do not, by the way, they are c rated but with 30 million visitors a year it is unsurprising that they have a hundred or so complaints).
I told Charles that i thought they had misrepresented themselves by using the caller id of 'Google SEO' and was concerned by their on-line reputation. I told him that i wished to cancel the agreement until i could research them further and would then decide if i wanted to do business with them. I explained that if they were as squeaky clean as he said they were then he should not worry and that i would be back as a customer. Of course Charles was not going to cancel the agreement and tried to convince me that they had been working feverishly on my account since i gave the go ahead about an hour previously (which is strange because Alyse told me it would take 7 to 10 days to get everything in place). He refused to refund my $900, i refused to sign and return the contract and i put the telephone down on him after telling him that i didn't know how he could sleep at night after scamming people all day.
I called my credit card company 3 days later and have put the $900 in dispute. They are sending me some papers to complete and return and tell me that LiveDeal.com has 30 days to answer my dispute.
I guess we will see where we go from here but, in the meantime, i will be registering a dispute with the BBB also.
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