ReachLocal, Inc.

Where do I begin with the issues!
I needed a new company web site, so after talking with several other companies I decided to go with RL, at a $monthly commitment on my partWe started with web design of our new company pages, I wrote ALL text and sent .wd files over to Robbie *** at Reach to then send to his outsourced developerNow, I am a great Mover, but not a copy/text technical writer, but when I got the finished product back 3-weeks later, there were basic grammar errors, spelling errors, when I asked for a picture to be inserted, they literally wrote "insert pic here", with NO pictureWe went back & forth on the web corrections for more months, they never fixed the problemsThen I ran analytics on the site that they built; coding errors, major issues w/ *** capability, numerous +/- keyword issues, and of course, they failed to fix any of these issuesTheir sales people (and that's exactly what they are) lie to your face very easily, but never provide resultsI had to hire another company to monitor the web sites issuesIt got to the point that I was having WEEKLY status meeting with Robbie *** / RL Sales, to "fix" the issuesI finally told him that I was spending so much time doing his job, that I didn't have time to grow my businessVery poorly run company! If you call their Phoenix office, they don't even have a receptionist, it is all V/M
I ended up canceling my contract with RL, and found a much better company that actually knows what they are doing; Today's Local Media out of DallasNow, RL is holding me hostage and will not take the web site laden with issues/errors down, so *** thinks it's a duplicateI have literally had to go to their office and sit for hours at a time to get a response! Horrible company w/ really bad employees!
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Move-U Packing & Moving

Before I write my complaint about ReachLocal, it should be noted that by looking at the complaints that have been filed on the Revdex.com website and pages and pages of complaints from countless small businesses on other complaint websites, there is a pattern and a serious problem with them taking advantage of small businesses.

We went to ReachLocal for Internet advertising services. We are a small flyer distribution company that only services Southern California in the Los Angeles area. We explained to ReachLocal in detail that we only wanted our advertisements for a specific area in the Los Angeles area.

I have the map that ReachLocal produced showing us the area that our ads would show up in on Google, Yahoo & Bing when any of our keywords were entered into any of these search engines. This campaign was a "PPC" (Pay Per Click) meaning that we pay each time someone clicks one of our ads.

I was already doing the online marketing myself with good results, but since we were starting to grow I thought a professional company would get us better results and leave me more time to grow our company. As soon as the ReachLocal campaign began, they asked me to turn off all my other marketing efforts so if would not conflict with their campaign. I immediately turned them off like they asked. As soon as I turned off MY marketing and only relied on the ReachLocal marketing, the phones almost completely stopped ringing. We were only getting between 1 and 3 calls a day. With our web submission we were only getting between 1 and 3 a day.

When I was doing it myself, we were getting anywhere from 8 to 12 a day. I called ReachLocal to ask them about this and they said it would take some time for their campaign to sync with Google and the other search emgines. So we waited about 2 weeks. Then we realized that we were getting calls and quotes from other States like New York, Texas, North Carolina, Florida, New Jersey and New Mexico. These are just some of the areas.

Again, we only service the Los Angeles area. So we called ReachLocal for and explanation. First they denied that our advertisements were being shown outside the Los Angeles area, but after calling a few friends out of State and asking them to enter a few of our keywords, it was confirmed. Our advertisement came up every time. ReachLocal had us on a Nationwide campaign when we specifically told them it was for the Los Angeles area only. So we basically spent our entire advertising budget marketing to people that we could never service.



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It had been close to 3 weeks with hardly any new business coming in and it was starting effect our business and our survival. We called them and told them we wanted to cancel the service because we would go out of business if we continued. They asked us to give them one more chance and promised us they would make it right and that they would credit us back all the money that had been wasted. We decided to give them one more chance.

One week later I was in San Francisco and in Oakland. I decided to look online at the flyer distribution companies that were in the Bay area. What I found was our advertisement being shown in San Francisco and in Oakland. I took screenshots of these and sent them to ReachLocal and asked WHY our ads were being ran in San Francisco. At that point, I cancelled our service with ReachLocal. The next day they took $3500 more out of my account.

I have filed legal action to get the $7,000 that they took from me. I will not stand by and let this company take advantage of us! If they return the money, I will drop the legal action. If they do not, I will use every legal means possible until I get my money back.


PS... You can see the email regarding the lie that they told me about why my ad was showing up in San Francisco and Oakland. They said that it was because my laptop was from Santa Monica. It is hard to believe that they operate this way.