WebsiteBusiness.com Website design company WebsiteBusiness.com incommunicado - Are they out of business? Phoenix, Arizona
Most bloggers are passionate writers. So if you have a website managed by a website design company and one morning you wake up and cannot login to your account to write your latest blog post, you're going to get upset when you call the Customer Support line and keep on getting a busy signal. WebsiteBusiness.com recently upgraded their AtomWord system so there would no longer be a delay when publishing changes to a site. Unfortunately, it looks like they couldn't get their act together, even after a press release touted the advantages and success of their latest venture. I've had my website since July 2010 and it cost me a pretty penny--$3,500. I should have never paid $760.00 for the bloggers to launch the site when I wound up doing it myself over a period of time or $1,499.00 for a fancy template. In retrospect, I could and should have done the site myself on WordPress. I know I was extravagant, but the site looks good and it was easy to make changes using their AtomWord system. Who was to think that they would mess up the whole business.
Visit scam reporting blogs like xxxx (((REDACTED))) and xxxxx (((REDACTED))) and you'll get an idea of what happened. Toward the end of August after all their customers were forced to use the new AtomWord, WebsiteBusiness.com stopped answering phone calls and emails. I got that awful feeling in my stomach that the company had gone out of business. I had only just signed and faxed them a contract giving them permission to manage my domain and charge $39.99 to my credit card account. At least the domain is registered under my name and I should be able to take possession of it. However, all that work setting up the blog posts, web pages and advertising layouts is probably down the drain, and I have to decide if it's worth it to put together another website. There must be scores of WebsiteBusiness.com customers who recently purchased their website design package and will never be able to run their websites using their now defunct WebsiteBusiness.com account. For them, the company principals Reza Akahvan and Kyle Winn (aka Bert Winn) literally took their money and ran. Maybe they just couldn't make a go of the business and weren't making a profit. But why couldn't they just make a simple announcement that they were closing the company. Naturally, they couldn't because irate customers would demand the return of their money. Word to the wise: Don't build a website through a website design company because you won't have access to your admin dashboard to make changes to the site if they go out of business. Learn WordPress or pay someone to build you a WordPress website, then you'll always be able to access the dashboard. Lesson learned.
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1 Updates & Rebuttals
Anne
Albany,New York,
United States of America
More information on WebsiteBusiness.com
#2Author of original report
Tue, September 13, 2011
The source who informed me who the company owners were contacted me to say that Reza Akahvan had a falling out with Kyle Winn about where the company was going and was no longer one of the owners. Bert Winn is Kyle Winn's father and had nothing to do with the operation of WebsiteBusiness.com.
I found out something that angered me even more. When you signed up with WebsiteBusiness.com, they told you how you can make some money writing reviews of other websites with Postzilla and writing articles with Writezilla. Every time I asked if they had any Postzilla or Writezilla writing jobs, they told me they had nothing. I spoke to a WebsiteBusiness.com customer who said he made $4,000.00 doing writing assignments in the first year he was with WebsiteBusiness.com. When I agreed to shell out $3,500.00 for them to design my site, they enticed me with the idea that I would be able to make some money reviewing websites (Postzilla) and placing the articles on my site. The writing assignments never materialized and I never complained about it because I was writing so many blog posts of my own. I realize now I should have made a big stink about it and should have confronted them and accused them of conning me into thinking I could make money from completing writing assignments they would provide. Their account manager was a consummate con artist.
I filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission at the advice of the WebsiteBusiness.com customer who told me the company had closed. He also urged me to file a complaint with the Arizona Attorney General's Office. I wonder if they will be able to catch up with Kyle Winn and I wonder how much money he took with him. There must be a lot of furious customers who paid them and never saw their websites be completed.