Complaint Review: Live Deal Inc

I contracted Live Deal to perform a service of advertising for my company based on a conversation with the Sales rep. Nick Maloney. He stated that I could have my company posted in the first section of Google, MSN, and Yahoo, Build me a web site, and guaranteed me a minimum of 125 visitors per month to the site. He went on to tell me that according to Google's research that 40 % of the visitors would call in to our company for service or questions. It all sounded good to me so after speaking with another customer of theirs in N.C. I decided that I would go ahead and sign the contract. I informed Nick Maloney at that time that I didn't mind signing a contract but keep in mind if they couldn't produce what they stated I didn't mind breaking the contract either. He agreed and faxed me the contract on 3/19/2009 (Paid 500.00)
3/20/2009. (Paid 1250.00)
3/21/2009 (Paid 100.00 for VIP Tracking?)
3/25/2009 (Paid 216.00 for Call Tracking)

The process started out simple enough signed contract and give them a credit card and they went to work on the web site. Somewhere around 4/12/2009 they had the site built it looked fair but it needed a few changes so I told them as long as they could get the changes done in the next week to go ahead and make the site visible to everyone. (According to Nick Maloney this would have been the date that the advertising dollars would be billed from. NOT the date I signed the contract like they have charged me.)

The first months I received 0 calls and yet they say I am getting (Clicks) traffic to the site. However they didn't send me a report showing what kind of traffic was hitting the site or any kind of call record that I was paying for.

The second month I received 1 call. I called Nick and asked what was going on? I also informed him this was not what I signed up for, that it is not looking good on his end and Nick assured me that they were still adding Key words and it would pick up. But still no report showing what kind of traffic was hitting the site or any kind of call record that I was paying for.

The third month I received 2 calls by 6/19/2009. So Once again I called and emailed a complaint to Nick (a copy of the email is in this file with every correspondence with the company.) Before I had heard back from Nick they had charged my credit card another 1500.00 6/19/2009. I called Nick ecstatic to say the least he assured me that he didn't know why they charged my credit card early but he would find out and get back with me on Monday. Well Monday came and went with no results Tuesday more of the same and so on. Nick told me he was suspending my future payments until they could get their service up to what was contracted but they wouldn't refund my card.

I informed Nick that was unacceptable and as far as I was concerned they were in default of their contract and I was not paying for this quarters advertising until they made it right. I also demanded to see the VIP reporting I paid for and the call tracking information, instead he faxed me a key word list.
(I have no idea why they would even fax that to me I gave them the key words in the first place) Later that day Nick did send me my VIP call tracking information (sheet is in this file) that's when I figured out why I hadn't seen one for 3 months. If you look at it you will see that the month of June there was only 12 visitors to the site and all came from goggle, none from MSN or Yahoo as stated in the contract and when I search for my company their it doesn't come up at all on the 3 computers I have in my office. Also I have searched main key words by city and found that in several cities I am suppose to be advertising in I am not even listed.

I have attempted to call Nick Maloney several times a day throughout the week but he keeps offering to do anything else but refund my money until 6/24/2009 he offered to refund 1000.00 and have me pay monthly. I find this unacceptable based on my past experience with company. On 6/25/09 I left 3 messages with Nick and finally I called the lady he had been talking to. I called Cathy and explained my position and to begin with she claimed to know nothing of it and then suddenly remembered it all, and told me that they were revamping my site and this was just a glitch. I informed her that she could refund the 1500.00 today or I would contact my bank and initiate a charge back for the entire amount that I had paid for their supposed service. I also told her I was in the service industry and if I did a job as poorly as they did I would never get paid, I likened it to going into a mechanics shop for new tires and paying for the service and leaving with 4 flat tires. That is unheard of and her service was no different, after speaking a few minutes I informed her that I needed a decision right know that I was tired of waiting after all it has been 6 days. She thought about it a minute and replied Do whatever you need to do.

I don't think that this how a reputable business should be ran and after I hung up with her I searched the internet for any complaints and found 9 similar to mine. I will also be filing a complaint with anyone that I can to assure that no one has to deal with this level of incompetence in the future.

James
Venice, Florida
U.S.A.