Complaint Review: CityGrid

I thought that it was important to write this report to inform people of some of the deceptive practices that CityGrid is participating in.

I was contacted by CityGrid who said they were the marketing arm of City Search. In the sales presentation, the sales representative totally misrepresented the service to me as pay per click advertising.

During our conversation, I specifically ask if this was a pay per page view service because I was not interested in this type of service. I even joked "I don't want to pay for someone checking us out on a map." The sales rep said no and reassured me that it was not a pay per page view service like other sites. Then continues to represent their service as a pay per click for "directed traffic to my website or phone".

I was actually excited about the campaign because I felt it was very low risk investment at $2.50 per clickthrough to my website or phone call (later they called to reduce it to $0.75) and under those terms, reaching my $400 limit would be difficult and well worth it.

When the campaign started, it was clear by the report that I was paying for page views of my CityGrid page not for directed traffic to my website or directed phone calls. I even saw on the report that I was charged for Map Views!

Also, their report states that they directed 9 people to my website, but I checked my Google Analytics Account and I had no referrals from them or any of the networks they service.

I immediately cancelled the service and they stated that I would have to complete the whole month. I fired off another e-mail and sent a certified letter to the office saying that they misrepresented their service to me and they are not authorized to charge my credit card on file. I noticed that they maintain a high rating on the Better Business Bureau by refunding money to resolve complains so if they ripped you off with this scam, I would report it to the BBB to get your money back.

Because of the exactness of my question and the intentional deception during the sales call, I am quite surprised that this has not become a class action suit yet.

By the way, after this happened, I polled my MasterMind group of about 100 Martial Arts School Owners on Facebook and it took me only 5 minutes to find another school owner friend that had the same experience with them . It makes me wonder how many business owners these guys must have scammed across industries across the country.