Complaint Review: Elixir Interactive [Fionn Downhill]

Elixir Interactive is the most deceiving and crooked company I've ever had to deal with, I am warning everyone thinking of using them to stay away at all costs. My experience with them cost me over $8000 and a whole lot of stress.. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THIS COMPANY! (hopefully my story below will stop a few people getting taken in by their scam)

I first came into contact with Elixir Interactive in March 2010 when I asked for a quote for some SEO work, the lady I talked to on the phone (fionn downhill) seemed really knowledgeable and told me they could get my site to rank for competitive terms without much trouble. after talking to her for about 30 minutes and going over everything I was convinced they would be a great fit. I started a contract with them a couple days later for $x,xxx/month. they said I could cancel anytime if I wasnt happy with the results.

The first few weeks I would get a call from Elixir Interactive every 2-3 days saying they were doing "research" and analysing my site for how it could be optimized better for search, they said they were changing some of the code of my site (i gave them FTP access) to improve its visibility in search engines, although i didn't understand most of what they were talking about I trusted they were working hard and doing good work.

They spent a whole month doing on-page seo work,as I didn't know much about SEO I just figured this must have been necessary. from then on they told me they were building links and employing some really strong seo strategies, I though ok, great, maybe ill see some results now. there were still no more inbound links according to yahoo site explorer and I wasn't getting any more traffic, they just told me to keep paying their fees and that shortly my site would go way up in the rankings.

About 10 weeks in there was still no difference in the ranking of my site and i was starting to get suspicious that they werent really doing much. When I called up Fionn and demanded them to give a report of the work they had done, they told me everything was "trade secrets" and they couldnt reveal their SEO methods. I told her I wanted proof of work done NOW, after continually haggling her she told me they would put together a report and email it to me.

It was only when i got the report of work done about a week later that I realized for sure I had been ripped off this whole time. in TEN WHOLE WEEKS and thousands of dollars in fees all they had to show as proof of work was a bunch of directory submissions, some social bookmarking and blog commenting, maybe about 15-20 hours' worth of work in total, if that.....and its just basic SEO stuff. I sure wonder what their "trade secrets" crap is. I couldve hired someone to do this work for about 5% of the price Elixir Interactive charged me.

the pathetic part was when I called them up obviously really angry, they suggested that I should go on a "larger plan" where they could devote more time working on my site. Of course this didnt go down well with me, I told them to go F themselves and the person hanged up on me. I havent been able to get through to them for a refund since.

bottom line: DO NOT GET TAKEN IN BY ELIXIR INTERACTIVES FANCY CLAIMS. they will try to make you keep paying their fees for as long as possible before you realize they are stealing your money.