SEO Gears

[redacted] signed up for our PPC advertising service on April 17th.  PPC advertising displays ads in the paid area of [redacted]'s search results.  The service does not include any service to show a website in the organic search results.  Any change in the [redacted] ranking would be completely unrelated to the service purchased.

During the campaign weekly reports were emailed explaining how the service was performing.  Attached is a complete report showing the lifetime of the campaign.  The product asked to target was confirmed and no traffic was delivered from unrelated phrases.

[redacted]'s account manager was out of the office on vacation during the last week of June resulting in his direct unavailability.  During this time all emails and phone calls were replied by other members of the team.

A full refund for the final month was provided prior to receiving this complaint.  A manager called and emailed [redacted] on Friday to confirm the refund had been processed.  [redacted] asked for the refund to be expedited and as stated in the complaint, we explained the processing time is up to her banking institution.

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me.  I will wait until for the business to perform this action and, if it does, will consider this complaint resolved.

Regards,

[redacted] signed up for our PPC advertising service on April 17th.  PPC advertising displays ads in the paid area of [redacted]'s search results.  The service does not include any service to show a website in the organic search results.  Any change in the [redacted] ranking...

would be completely unrelated to the service purchased.

During the campaign weekly reports were emailed explaining how the service was performing.  Attached is a complete report showing the lifetime of the campaign.  The product asked to target was confirmed and no traffic was delivered from unrelated phrases.

[redacted]'s account manager was out of the office on vacation during the last week of June resulting in his direct unavailability.  During this time all emails and phone calls were replied by other members of the team.

A full refund for the final month was provided prior to receiving this complaint.  A manager called and emailed [redacted] on Friday to confirm the refund had been processed.  [redacted] asked for the refund to be expedited and as stated in the complaint, we explained the processing time is up to her banking institution.

SEO Gears, purportedly an SEO marketing firm, conducted a push marketing campaign targeting sites hosted on [redacted]. Their representative [redacted] contacted a representative of our website, and falsely created the impression that he was a representative of [redacted], offering pie-in-the-sky "improvement" to our website stats.
To make a long story short, their service is completely ineffectual for our type of website, they talked a big game to the unwitting member of our organization, and sold a "bill of goods" that they did not properly disclaim as being completely and unequivocally not guaranteed, and they created and nurtured the impression that they were part of [redacted]. Fraudulent premise.
SEO Gears makes sales pitches that are enticing to poorly-informed "marks" and buried in their website they completely disclaim ANY AND ALL responsibility to actually produce results of any sort.
When this was discovered, before they had commenced any work, they were told to cancel, and still have billed and collected funds via credit card. A reversal is in the works with the bank. Exercise extreme care when dealing with this organization.

Thank you for this opportunity to resolve this complaint.According to our records, the customer purchased an SEO Link Building (five keywords ) plan on March 18, 2015, after speaking with a sales representative. The cost of the plan was $499 and this amount is billed monthly.From reviewing the phone...

calls, it would appear this is a case of mismatched expectations. The product purchased is a long-term solution and would take time and funding to accomplish results. In this case, the customer wanted a product which would get him top spots in the search engines much sooner.The customer contacted us back on March 19, 2015 in order to cancel this service. We have canceled the service and issued a full refund of $499 back to the customer on the same day. We apologize for the misunderstanding and will be looking into ways to prevent situations like this from happening again. As a gesture of goodwill, we have also provided the customer with one month of hosting credit to his Homestead account, worth $90.

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this proposed action would not resolve my complaint.  For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.

First, I WAS told that my business would be #1 on [redacted] within 24 hours.  That is the reason I decided to take the chance in the first place. 

Second, I did purchase the support on the 6/17/14,  and my campaign went live on the 25th.

Third, out of town or not - As per my experience, this company has a bad excuse of customer relations.  I could not directly reach my manager, but instead, I had to leave messages  and send emails OR make an appointment through an online calendar to speak with [redacted]. As of 6/14/14, the next available phone appointment that I could have was July 1st.   I have all the emails to show that I did request over and over for the campaign to be cancelled.  Once before the money was pulled and multiple times after.  I have emails from [redacted] asking was I sure that I wanted to do this with no refund or cancellation of the charge.  I was told when I called that I would receive a call or email within 24-48 hours.  I was unable to speak to billing.  I was unable to speak to a manager.  Everything was a support ticket with a 24-48 hour response time.

Fourth, I did not receive a refund for the last month of service.  I received a refund for $249.95 that I had asked on the 16th not to be charged for.  Many emails and calls later, I was told on the 27th that I would be refunded in 7-10 business days.  I received my refund on July 1st.  Because of the delay in the refund, I incurred $76 in bank fees.

Fifth, I have attached a file of an example of what I received from the company as a report.  I did receive 1 report that was similar to the one the company posted.  That was the one [redacted] tried to explain to me, vaguely. I told him I had to have much more results than that.  I asked him how he knew that the conversion was from the SEO work they were doing, and he told me he would have to get more analytics to know for sure.  I too, was doing SEO through the social networks, and I wanted to make sure that I had received those conversions from the $249.95 that I was paying them.

Sixth, I did not feel even if I had gotten 2 sales from their work that that was justifying the $249.95 I was spending.  I was not even getting 1/10 of that in profit.   I had told them that I would have to see me making back my money very quickly for it to be worth me doing.  Everything was just as I explained it in my original complaint.  I did not receive what was promised.  I would not only like the $499.90 and the $76.00 in bank fees.  I could not have been more clear on what I needed and wanted, they told me they could deliver, they did not - I was VERY clear on the money issue, after I was charged anyway, I was calm and patient, but never received the refund until on the 27th when I made a HUGE clatter!

I would suggest you are more truthful in your sales tactics AND have a better system for speaking to the managers of your customers money.

Regards,

[redacted]

As explained previously the service purchased was to run advertisements using [redacted] Adwords.  During the welcome call with your account manager the service was explained in detail.

Upon purchase you were sent the following email explaining this was a PPC campaign

It is our procedure to create a PPC campaign and start within 5 - 7 business days of purchase. If the campaign was live on the 25th this was well within our standards.

While your account manager was out of office we strived to respond to every ticket within 24 - 48 hrs which is our standard response time.

We delivered 3 months of PPC advertising service and provided a refund for the third months charge.

Once again this service was for PPC services not SEO work.  The service delivers traffic to the website and over the course of the campaign we work on improving the quality of the traffic to deliver more sales.  Most of your complaint is related to the fact we did not provide SEO services.  We can't find any record of you purchasing our SEO service.

We spoke with the customer regarding the charge and a full refund ($299.00) was issued back to his credit card on May 18, 2015. The refund can take between 5-7 days to post on his credit card statement.

To Whom It May ConcernWe respond to this complaint as follows. The customer purchased SEO services with the understanding that they could cancel any time and would receive a prorated refund. The SEOGears policy states that customers are not eligible for a refund once services are purchased....

We did review the call and did hear the Bluehost Sales representative missold the product and provided incorrect expectations. As the Sales agent provided Kim C incorrect information and only one month of services were used Bluehost issued a prorated refund on February 26,2016 of $639.34 back to the card on file and cancelled the service.Furthermore we have spoken with the agent in question so this experience does not happen in the future to another customer.At this time we believe this should resolve the disputer in question.Regards,SEOGears Customer Relations

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me.  I will wait until for the business to perform this action and, if it does, will consider this complaint resolved.

Only one thing I'd like to provide: I cancelled the service one Nov 1 instead of Nov 30 as the reply from the company mentioned.Regards,[redacted]

I usually do not write reviews. However, I have to do that this time. I found the way SEO Gears and [redacted] doing business is not right.
Here is the story. I use [redacted] for hosting my website. They advertised the SEO service and Pay per Click service to my business. When I talked to the [redacted] Senior Business Consultant, she explained to me SEO Gears, [redacted] and fatcow are under same parent company. Also, their SEO service could help generate customer traffic in a long term and Pay per Click service could help to bring in customer traffic and increase sale immediately. Also, she told me if I order the Pay per Click service, they will put in $100 dollars to my pay per click account if I sign up the service. I did ask her what is the different in between [redacted] adwords and their service. The Senior Business Consultant told me they use tool to track down the traffic and dynamically change pay per click price. I asked her if they could track down the [redacted] traffic, since my product is selling on [redacted]. After she talked to her boss, she told me yes. She also told me there is a Marketing Project Manager (MPM) to follow my case from SEO Gears after I sign up the services. They also could wave my setup fee. Also, she said it will only to talk about 3 business days to setup my account. Eventually, [redacted] sound very professional. I ordered the 5 keywords SEO service $229 per month and $250 per month pay per click. That is the nightmare start. The day I ordered their service, they start to charge my fee right away (my account have not been setup yet). Also, I found out [redacted] already schedule to charge my credit card every month. I filled a ticket to ask [redacted], they just ignore me. The first appointment with the MPM one week’s later after they charge my fee, the MPM is late for 15minutes. In the meeting, the MPM inform me they could not track my [redacted] product page. That is not [redacted] told me. Also, the MPM said my account will be setup in 3 business days. That did not happen. I tried to called the MPM and emailed the MPM, he never replied my call and email. I complained to [redacted] just ignored me. I keep setting up several meetings with the MPM in the first month of I ordered the services. One meeting is cancelled, one meeting MPM did not show up, one meeting last minute cancelled, two meetings 15 minutes late. Furthermore, the MPM either did not follow the meeting action items or just handle it in a wrong way. SEO Gears should also help my website to write title tag, meta tag, sitemap and tracking codes, but that have not never happen. After the first month, the SEO Gears MPM still have not properly setup my five keywords properly. I opened a ticket to cancel the service in [redacted]. I got a very surprise answer, they replied back saying they could not cancel the service (month to month service), they asked me to talked to SEO Gears. However, [redacted] is the one charge my monthly fee. I reopen the ticket and asked [redacted] why you charge my fee every month. Eventually, my services are cancelled. That is very terrible. It wasted my time and money.

This customer rebilled on the30th of a given month, we end up fulfilling services immediately in thefollowing month. Ultimately this customer paidfor 6 months, and 5 months appeared to have been fulfilled.   Rebilled >...

Fulfilled July 30 > Fulfilled in AugAug 30 > Fulfilled in SeptSept 30 > Fulfilled in OctOct 25 > Fulfilled in NovNov 25 > Fulfilled in DecWhen the customer submitted the cancellation request on November 30th, we were already in process to fulfilling thecampaign for December. As a gesture of good faith we have issued a full refundof $299 for the renewal that had taken place on November 30th, aswell as a refund of $299 for the renewal on December 25th. Pleaseallow up to 7 to 10 business days for the refund to be fully processed back. Atthis time the SEO campaign for this customer has since been canceled.

SEO Gears is the most difficult, non-responsive and worthless waste of money I've EVER spent on advertising. They handily latch on to you for the sell, then after no results are impossible to contact. STAY FAR AWAY!

We ask the customer to refer to our previous response. If the customer is not satisfied with the refunds already provided, he is welcome to propose a specific adjustment and we will consider it. Thank you!

Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your feedback about your recent experience with SEOGears. We completely understand the frustration regarding the issue you specified with SEOGears, and we want to thoroughly apologize on our behalf for any inconvenience that you may have...

experienced. We have investigated this matter and, as a gesture of goodwill, we have processed a refund for 3 months of services.

This response is submitted on behalf of SEO Gears, which provides online marketing services for [redacted].The customer purchased a 5 keyword SEO Campaign and a $1,250 PPC (Pay per click) Campaign which started on June 30, 2015.The customer's biggest complaint is that he had 3 broken links on his site...

that were affecting his PPC campaign. On July 22, 2015, the customer sent us the following notification from his [redacted] account:--------------------------------------We wanted to alert you that one or more of your ads or keywords havebeen disapproved. Unfortunately, we won't be able to show your ads on[redacted], our search partners, or on Display Network placements until youedit your ads or keywords to make them compliant with our policies.If this is an error, we want to get your ads back up and running asquickly as possible, and your [redacted] team is here to help. Below you'llfind the reason why your ads or keywords have been disapproved. At theend of this email, you'll find a Problem Report that includes detailsabout which ads or keywords have been disapproved and what you can do tofix them (if possible).====================Disapproval Reason====================[Destination URL] Invalid HTTP Response Code: To ensure a good userexperience, your destination URL must work properly and not return anerror code beginning with a 4 or a 5 (such as a 404 error). Yourdestination URL or some component on that page (like [redacted]) isreturning a status code indicating an error.-------------------------------We researched the issue and contacted the customer the following day. The customer claimed they didn't make any changes to their site so they weren't sure why [redacted] was finding broken links. Our team subsequently fixed the issue with the invalid links for the customer as a one-[redacted]e courtesy.On August 24, 2015, the customer again notified us about invalid links within his campaign. While performing an audit, [redacted], our PPC specialist, discovered that the customers links on his web site were invalid once again. Specifically, the following links:[redacted], the customer’s marketing manager, spoke to the customer on August 24, 2015 and the client indicated to us that he believes he fixed the link issue. [redacted] also got on the phone with the customer on the same day and they agreed to redo the campaign from scratch. While redoing the campaign, our team didn't set the budget correctly and his campaign didn't produce any clicks for 2 days (September 2, 2015 through September 3, 2015). This was fixed and the customer started getting clicks again on September 4, 2015. We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this issue and thank the customer for bringing this to our attention so we could fix the issue.The customer believes it is our responsibility to fix any invalid links on his website. We can assist the customer with fixing links, but it's not part of the scope of the project to update a customer's web site without their permission. This disagreement caused the escalation and the request to cancel his services.As far as his campaign, we felt the progress was going very well. For 2 months of SEO, he started popping up on page 2 and 3 of [redacted] for:-shower door replacement new jersey - #[redacted]custom shower door new jersey - #**-frameless shower door new jersey - #**-shower door new jersey - #**-shower doors new jersey - #**For PPC, his campaign generated 717 clicks with 26 conversions (3.63%) between July 7, 2015 to September 5, 2015 (while his campaign was active with us).[redacted], a different marketing manager, tried to take over the campaign from [redacted] per the customer's request who reached out to the customer on September 8, 2015, but was told that he already contacted [redacted] and requested that the campaign be cancelled and refunded.At this time we have cancelled the SEO Campaign and PPC campaign. These services will not renew which means the customer will no longer be billed for these services going forward. The customer also requested admin rights back to his campaign which have been granted to him on September 9, 2015. We do note the customer was automatically charged $1,000 for the renewal of the PPC campaign on September 8, 2015 but we successfully reversed the payment so the customer should not see the charge on his credit card.

Our records indicate this customer had engaged in our “Monthly SEO link building” campaign” on 6/19/2013. This was to include the optimization of “3 keywords” to help increase this customer’s website ranking and online presence within search engines such as...

[redacted]. The customer was billed $199/month for the execution of this campaign to be completed by our SEO Team.  

 

Please understand that by engaging in such campaigns, we are unable to make any set  guarantees that the work completed will gain the desired ranking or level of online presence, as there are many factors that can play a role in determining a website’s level of success through SEO services. Additionally, please take note that upon the engagement in such services, the level of progress can vary from website to website and keyword to keyword, which explains why customers may not see visible progress within the first 3 to 6 months of their campaign. 

 

In this case the customer had made contact with our team on August 26th, 2013 requesting to cancel their SEO campaign as they felt there was no progress being made to their website presence or ranking. It was through several communications thereafter that progress was being made with regards to the campaign, however that due to tighter competition involving the specific phrase this customer was intending to use, the progress was not as far along as the customer was hoping for. Therefore to help speed up the level of progress being made, our SEO team had proposed two options for this customer’s consideration: 

1) We can keep the customer on the current Standard Level 3 Keyword phrase campaign and modify the phrase being used to help push the rankings. However this could take approximately 6 to 9 months due to the level of competition for the keywords being used. 

2) We can switch the campaign to an  Aggressive level campaign that only targets a single keyword phrase for no change in price which would allow our team to perform more work on a single keyword. The goal here would be to focus on a single phrase more aggressively to increase progress within a 3 to 6 month period. 

It was also suggested by our team that this customer allow more time to be provided to allow for the campaign to mature. Unfortunately we never received official confirmation from the customer with regards to altering their campaign as suggested above. Throughout the communications between this customer and our SEO team, this customer had asked several questions related to the “potential” performance if one course of action is to be taken over another, and unfortunately as stated above, there are many factors that can play a role in the level of success of a specific keyword or phrase, and therefore it becomes difficult to make a prediction as to how such phrases or keywords may react in rankings. 

On August 29th, upon confirmation from the customer, we had made slight modifications to the metadata being submitted with the goal of increasing this customer’s ranking. Ultimately this customer had requested to cancel their SEO campaign on December 18th, 2013 due to dissatisfaction in the level of progress that had been made. Per this customer’s request we moved forward with the cancellation of the campaign. 

Lastly, our SEO team had been as transparent as possible throughout this customer’s campaign, as lines of communication were kept open between this customer and our team throughout the entire process, and although we can understand this customer had not been satisfied with the level of progress made during the course of the campaign. We must emphasize that all work had been completed according to scope. Unfortunately as previously stated, the level of progress through the engagement of such campaigns can vary, and there really is not a set guarantee that the anticipated level of achievement can be reached. 

 

Unfortunately since the monthly link building service was completed to scope, we are simply unable to provide a full refund as requested by this customer. However, as a gesture of good faith, we have issued refunds of $199 for the months of September, October, and November of 2013 back to the customer’s credit card on file. Please allow up to 7 to 10 business days for the refunds to fully post.

I have reviewed the response made by the business in...

reference to complaint ID [redacted], and find that this resolution would be satisfactory to me.  I will wait until for the business to perform this action and, if it does, will consider this complaint resolved.

Regards,

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this proposed action would not resolve my complaint.  For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.

No mention at all of my campaign being completely taken down for over 48 hours of no sales and no phone calls ....Very bold not to mention that it takes aprox 7 messages left on answering machines and never getting a return call

Regards,