Complaint Review: Genebyte

I had the misfortune of becoming involved with this company Genebyte www.genebyte.com out of India. I found them through Odesk, I was searching for a low cost SEO firm to do some upkeep work for my rankings. I negotiated with them to do some work for an upfront pay and I would pay as we go. I gave them an initial payment of a couple hundred bucks and they started doing work. The work was typical for what I was paying for, but I noticed that instead of helping my rankings, it was hurting them. I understand that once SEO work starts, there can be a short term drop in rankings, but to this day the rankings have not recovered. It's hard to say if it is their fault or not, but it started at the same time period I had them start working and before then my rankings were at a consistant level without much movement. So one day I get an email from Bhrat, saying that I owe him $300 bucks to do more work, I told him that I did not want anymore and that I was going to wait and see if my rankings recovered first. This is where it starts to go south. Genebyte demanded that I pay them for work they said they had already done, but I was paying for the work ahead of time. Also, their work in my opinion had hurt my website, not helped it. I refused to pay them anymore as that was not our agreement, then the threats started. They said I had to pay them, and lowered the amount they were willing to take to $200. I received several other emails about this which I ignored, until today when I recieved the email below, which in my opinion is flat out blackmail.

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Despite of several reminders to you for clearing the pending invoice of $200 via PayPal (sales@genebyte.com) you have not paid the same.

We have submitted fraud reports against you, your business (Clopton Capital) and soon they will coming whenever someone will be searching for your name, your companys name.  

We will not be liable for any damage it would be causing to you/your business.  The only time you have are these 2 days as the reports are pending from approval from those network sites and once they get live, we dont have any control over them and RipOffReports and other sites dont allow them to be taken down once they are published. In case you want us to delete those reports, you are requested to pay for pending $200 via PayPal (sales@genebyte.com) by Monday, 12 November 2012 11.50 PM EST.   

Thanks,

Ravi

Arbitration Department

Gene Byte Pvt. Ltd.

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I am posting this because of the threat from their company to do so. This is pretty bad business practices and I would warn anyone to get involved with someone who would make these types of threats. I considered just paying the $200 bucks to have this go away, but whats stopping them from just demanding more after that to prevent them from doing this again? If they feel like settling this in a professional manner, I will gladly update this post.