Here is a summary of issues we have had since being signed up with the services from City Search.
Dishonest about how services are billed.
-I was given a different impression of how the site operates after talking to the citysearch employee for over 2 hours. I was given the impression that the site made income from adds placed by larger companies in the form of banner adds or featured sections. I have been involved with several different sites and they offer free advertisements and paid advertisements if you want a banner or bigger adds.
-Their was about 1-2 hours of conversation before the signup agreement where there was no mention of the service costing anything. Then during the signup process I was abruptly asked for my credit card information and was told the service would be $10/month, which is no problem, "with an investment of $1000/month." That's when I immediately stated that I can't afford this.instead of looking out for the interest of me the customer, she was more intent on making a sale. She then replied that it is only a limit. She stated that "it is $1000 at a dollar a click, but if 1000 people contact you then it's worth every dollar." This statement would further imply that $1=1 contact. I at this point was under the understanding that the "Click" that was discussed earlier was in reference to clicking the link for contact information. With this in conjunction of the possible number of people in Portland looking for a makeup artist for a wedding, I was under the impression I would be looking at $20-$50 a month.in actuality the service entails $1 per profile view not a dollar per click. If this was described and explained correctly I would have under no circumstances signed up for City Search. Not only is the explanation blatantly confusing but also borders dishonest. I would like to add that after finding out how services were billed I immediately attempted to terminate the service. Given the circumstances an exception could have been made for an early termination of services.
The profile itself was incomplete and poorly constructed.
-The profile was put together with very little care being a victim of numerous grammatical errors and obvious misspellings. Not only is this unacceptable especially for an add company but makes my business look careless and incompetent.
-Second I was also listed more than once, one of which was under the wrong category. There was one profile listed under Cosmetics which was correct, but another profile listed under Hair Salons. I am not a salon and have nothing to do with hair which should have been pretty apparent during the 2 hour phone conversation with the person signing me up. I signed up for one listing under Cosmetics. This looks like nothing more than a tactic to rack up profile views at a dollar a click especially when comparing the number of people looking for a makeup artist for their wedding with the number of people looking for a place to get their hair cut.
Out of the $1600.00 that was charged to our business card for the over 1900 clicks we had in that 3 month period we were contacted by a total of 2 people. There is no way that many actual people clicked on that page.
Customer service.
Simply on an added note, In an attempt to sort all of this out, I had my significant other and partner in the business Jonathan call and try to work everything out. The gentlemen that he spoke to in customer service was not only uncompassionate of our situation but also very unprofessional. Very few questions were asked pertaining to how he could help and upon seeing that things were far from getting resolved he asked to speak to a supervisor. He was flat out told no. He than had to pry to find out who he could talk to for help. He then had to ask there isn't any one else to talk to? No supervisor or manager? At that point he was then told after a long pause simply they're in a meeting.
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