Complaint Review: Binoy Pillai (binoypillai.com)

This individual, claiming to be an experienced SEO (search engine optimizer), appeared very professional initially. During the pre-sale period, his web site was informative, his emails were prompt and answered each of my questions in a polite manner, and he provided a detailed and professionally written contract and schedule of duties he intended to perform.

Although I was hesitant about this, I agreed to wire the payment to him, since it was the most convenient method between two international companies. It was also suspicious that the wire recipient is in a different name and address:
Shankar N Sharma
106B, D Block, Simla House, Malabar Hills
Bombay, India

Still, based on our initial communication and the sample works he presented to me, I agreed to comply and wired around $400USD. When the first pieces of the work were due (according to his schedule), I received nothing. I sent emails and got no responses. Finally we discussed the matter over the phone and he explained that he was having technical problems. I worked with him and yet he still failed to keep his promises.

I received some (very little) of the work about 2 weeks late, and then it didn't seem the quality we expected and we had questions about some of it's details. So we emailed our questions, etc. No response. We talked again on the phone. He claimed he worked during the night so that it would be during our day time hours. It didn't seem like that, since he was so hard to get a hold of. Perhaps he just didn't work at all.

So finally, we sent several follow up messages and stopped hearing from him completely, I sent a request for a refund, since he had provided me with guarantees in our contract, but he has seemedly disappeared.

Do not make the same mistake I made and order his services. And I suppose it's obvious that wiring money to suspicious parties is not a great idea either. Beware of this "SEO expert"!

Emily
Austin, Texas
U.S.A.