Complaint Review: FreshMove Media - Glen Allen Virginia

We hired FreshMove to build our website as well as create a marketing plan that included video, label design for our products etc.  Their quote was substantially higher than everyone else’s by almost double, but we liked James & Ryan and wanted to support a local company as most in our industry are on the West coast.  The website was to be completed in 3 months and then at that point we would roll in to a monthly retainer to create ads, social, additional media etc to push consumers to our website.  After 3 months, we didn’t have a website OR product to sell due to supply chain issues, changing manufacturers etc.  FreshMove continued to charge us $3500/month to the tune of $17,500 even after multiple e-mails and text asking them to please stop and to provide us what exactly the $3500 was going to since we a) didn’t have a website and b) didn’t have product to sell so what the heck were they doing?!  They FINALLY stopped charging us after 6 months (they did stop for 1 month in that 6 month period).  Once we had product and the website was complete, FreshMove resumed the charges at $3k/month and we were reassured they could market our products in the CBD space.  After the first month, every single ad was blocked.  We didn’t have one sale.  They proposed an idea which could open us up to HUGE liability by “bending the truth” and marketing the products as hemp infused vs CBD.  We reluctantly agreed to another month and still…zero sales and another $3k gone.  Finally after the 3rd month, we ended our relationship.  James and Ryan took our money and used us as Guinea pigs to learn about an industry it became very apparent they weren’t familiar with.  We trusted them as the professionals and would have respected them being honest that they couldn’t help us.  We requested our funds to be returned and they said they would give us $4500 back (half of the $9k we had spent since the site was up and running and we had product) and they would run ads for us and let us use their podcast studio for 6 months at no charge.  They knew they had misrepresented themselves.  For us, that wasn’t acceptable as we had spent a total of $56,500 for the site and “marketing”.  We requested the $17,500 be returned and we were MORE than generous in stating they could keep $4500 for whatever they did during that time.  When that wasn’t acceptable and we stated we would file a complaint with the BBB, FTC & other platforms so as to avoid a lawsuit and settle amicably.  We received a letter from their attorney citing defamation if we did those things and that FreshMove would give us $3500 (now $1000 less and none of the other options).  The definition of defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation.  Everything I have stated is 100% true and I have documentation to back it up.  This is a review of a company and the people need to know who they are getting in to business with.  We thought James and Ryan would do the right thing, but now we have to file a lawsuit and take up MORE time and MORE money when we are already a new company that has lost tens of thousands of dollars due to the ineffective marketing practices of FreshMove Media.  The whole experience has been disappointing and the lack of integrity on FreshMove Media's part is surprising!  We thought James & Ryan were different.  Hopefully they will do the right thing in the end and we can put this all behind us.