On January 9th I received an unsolicited email from an online Resume Distribution company called ResumeBlaster. Since I am unemployed and looking to increase my exposure I went to the website which claimed to be able to blast out more than 2,400 cover letters and resumes to 'recruiters' who specialize in vertical markets I seek to interview with. The online service asked for $62 to do this, which after reading numerous testimonials on their site, I agreed to pay. Ironically, the founder of the company, Dave Phillips, has an audio message which begins as soon as you pull up the site, touting the quality, and integrity of this service, which according to Dave, is the first of its kind.
So, I paid the money requested, and was emailed a confirmation which thanked me for my business, and was told that as soon as the cover letter and resumes were successfully faxed, I would receive an email confirmation. That was supposed to take approximately 24 hours since they had others in the queu before me.
I waited one day and of course received no confirmation so I went to the resume blaster site and obtained a phone number so that I could contact someone directly. This is where it gets interesting. I called the 800 number and got a message stating that I would need to pay them another $4.99 if I wanted to speak to someone. Of course I did not pay this money and instead emailed customer service wanting to know why I had not received a confirmation. They responded by saying that in fact the cover letters and resumes were already sent out. Ya, right!
So one week later, January 16th to be exact, I have recieved 0, you got it, no responses to more than 2,400 resumes being blasted. Ha, ha! Not a single response! By now of course I am feeling ripped off and stupid for paying them any money without speaking to anyone first so I wrote an email to ResumeBlaster to tell them how unsatisfied I am and that I would like a refund and you have probably already guessed it, I have tried 5 times to get it to customer service. Each time it has bounced back as 'undeliverable'. I have even copied and emailed the same dissatisfied email to the [email protected] and it too has bounced back.
What am I to do? It's not even the $62 as much as the fact that this website is taking money from people who are in the process of finding gainful employment and probably cannot afford the service. Then when you attempt to reach them to get your money back, there is no recourse. The emails bounce back. I certainly don't think I should have to pay another $4.99 to MAYBE get someone on the phone who can do anything.
I am angry and hope that someone else out there wants to help me do something about it. Or perhaps has any ideas?
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