On December 5/08 I contracted with Alternative Telemarketing, through Sales Rep Marie Foster, for them to provide me with a list for 5,000 names and for them to call those names with the purpose of setting up appointments for me. I paid them by cheque.
In my dealings with the Sales Rep, I was dealing with her on the phone, and via email, and she had an "official" company email address. [email protected]
Once they had my money, I then received one email from Dei Makenna (12/16/08) who had an msn email address, and was referred to Christine (no last name provided), who had a yahoo address. At that point, red flags went off.
12/16: email communication with Christine: "As soon as I receive your list we will get to work on it." Note that I had been led to believe, during the sales process, that there would be a project meeting with the people looking after my account where we would discuss the call script (s) and the list. There has never been any project meeting. Apparently Christine thought that I would simply send the criteria for the list via an email form - which I did.
Dec 22 email from Christine indicating she expected to have the list that day or the following. I asked for a phone call and managed to speak with Christine regarding the criteria for the list. Then Dec 24 Christine called to say she expected to have my list by Dec 26. Didn't happen.
I left this until after the New Year. Jan 2 email'd Christine to ask for a status on the list. No response. Jan 5 emailed again - Christine replied saying she expected to get the list to me that day. Jan 7 emailed again - again no response. Jan 9 the person who referred me to Alternative Telemarketing contacted Marie Foster, the sales rep, asking her to sort out the problem and he received a very rude email basically telling him to "butt out" and that I was being looked after. At that point I'd had enough and emailed to ask what I need to do to get my money back since they have had it for over a month with no services delivered. Jan 12/09 Christine responded to say she still doesn't have the list.
We started to do more research on this company. Of course, after I signed the contract and paid, and then realized that the people I was then dealing with had MSN and Yahoo email addresses, this raised lots of red flags.in December when I couldn't seem to reach someone to speak with I called the toll free number and got what was obviously an answering service. I asked who the owner was and they said it was Christine. Someone else called the toll free number and was told the owner was Dei Makenna. Perhaps they are both owners?
As we did more research, we also began to realize that the words on their website appear to be plagiarized from other more professional looking telemarketing sites. Yet another red flag.
I had also search the internet to see if I could find any complaints about this company. I found nothing at that time. The complaints seem to have begun to be logged starting in January/09. I have since logged complaints with the New England Better Business Bureau and usacomplaints.com. I've not had any responses from either place, so I really hope at least the BBB is taking this seriously and stopping these people. A very expensive lesson for someone trying to start out on a new venture. On Jan 29/09 I received a useless list of just over 5,000 companies. It contained no contacts for the companies included, so can't even be used as a direct-mail list. And it came with no indication that it was from Alternative Telemarketing - was from [email protected], which some others have indicated is one of Christina's email addresses.
If anyone knows of any recourse against these people, I'd be glad to hear of it.
Bajangirl
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
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