Complaint Review: 411 Locals - Las Vegas Nevada

I have been looking into this for about 3 weeks now, and wanted to get as many details as I could prior to replying to your complaint.

I've spoken with techs both in our European office and the techs present here at our U.S. office.

No one has admitted to putting ninja turtles or the gentleman you've posted pics of on any of our NY customers' sites--or any site. None have hinted at any knowledge of it and we have not been able to uncover any record of this happening--HOWEVER THIS CASE IS NOT CLOSED. We are aggressively pursuing this we assure you.

Of course had they admitted it they would have been fired immediately without any question and this along with the time which has passed may hinder this investigation, but we do not want you to feel that we are taking this lightly or that we are just giving you the typical corporate form response. We take this very personally we promise.

This sort of behavior from any of our techs would not only be grounds for immediate termination, but legal action by us against them if we were so inclined. If any of our sales associates deviated from our sell-back script to the point of threatening your business in any way, they too will be immediately fired.

Let us give just a bit of background about how we view this type of behavior:

We consider your website and your placement a piece of your personal property. Yes we do own the site we create for our customers technically (not your personal site, but the sites we create, and this has to do with optimization and nothing to do with wanting to own the site we build for you, it is simply a matter of being able to optimize from the ground up). We consider the type of behavior described if we are responsible akin to vandalism or a break-in, but in many ways worse because it is your livelihood. While once a customer no longer is partnered with us we no longer work to optimize the site, naturally, we MOST CERTAINLY DO NOT DO ANYTHING TO HARM THAT SITE. Our goal is to get customers back, the 10% we do not retain, our goal is not to "ruin their business." We absolutely promise this. We are one of the 5-10 largest online ad firms in the world, we are growing extremely fast, and we absolutely have nothing to gain by doing anything similar to what has been described.

Though our internal investigation has not resulted in any evidence of this occurrence, if you have screen shots or any evidence which may help us discover if someone in our company is responsible please go to our contact page: http://411locals.com/contact-us.  Fill in the details and address it to me, David H, Copywriter/PR/Marketing at 411 Locals. 

There is a small chance that your site was hacked, very small, but as you describe it, unless there is something we are missing then it may well be one of our people and if so we promise that this IS NOT how this business operates.

I would like to mention a couple of details which may or may not pertain to your particular case.

1. Generally speaking we do not take on customers in New York City itself. In the outlying areas yes, but normally not within the city itself, so you would have been one of the few if indeed we are to blame.

2. We do have around 23,000 customers, and though we do have many, many techs in order to fulfill the optimization needs of all customers, build websites, build mobile sites, etc. they are extremely busy. That one of them may have had time to do this is another problem entirely. I promise each and every one of them has much better things to do during their day.

3. All of the subsequent complaints in your post which you had pasted from other sources have each been resolved positively, and a couple were not us at all but a different company entirely.

4. We have found many instances of our company being blamed for the actions of other online ad firms, either posing as us with a similar name or flat-out using our name. Please be aware that WE DO NOT SELL GOOGLE MAPS LISTING we sell optimization of that listing, Optimization of Google Business Listing, a Website, a Mobile Website, a YouTube Marketing Video, and a range of other services as part of 1 package. If someone called you selling a simple listing and called themselves our name, they were not us. We do not sell that, we sell all of the things listed as part of one package.

I personally, and we as a company, 100% understand your frustration if we indeed are responsible for this, but please do not simply copy and paste other unrelated complaints not relevant to your case, as this does not serve to resolve your problem and in this case each one of those complaints it has turned out were unfounded or not about our company.

All of that said though, we have no other defense. If this was indeed from us and if we find the person responsible they will be fired.

We do feel it is important that we mention a couple of things:

We do have an A-Rating from the BBB. That is current, we have been thoroughly vetted because there is so much fraud within this industry, and that rating is more important to us than any one employee (or 50) playing pranks on our customers with actions like this. We would literally fire an entire branch if they put that rating at risk.

We have received a Certificate of Google Partnership and our sales people should be explaining the meaning of this, as most online reading this probably know it does not mean we are in any way affiliated or work for Google. It does mean that we have been found to use Google Best Practices in our optimization efforts. This too is very important to us. We do not use tactics that would in any way put this in jeopardy. It would not make sense from a business perspective to do this.

We do not sell simple listings. We must repeat that because there is so much misunderstanding. We sell optimization not listings. If someone sold you a listing without optimization, a website, a mobile site, as of now a YouTube marketing video and more all as part of a package, we must repeat that it was not us.

We have one of the highest long-term retention rates in the industry due to the results we bring our customers; however that equals 90% approximately which means 1/10 do leave us. Our strategy for those customers is to look at their optimization and whether we were able to do what we promise. If we were and if it has been found that our efforts resulted in higher ranking then we do try our best to describe better what they've gained and to get them back. Many customers do not realize how our efforts help their business, leave for a bit, and then come back after they see that indeed optimization is important, that is extremely common. However, nothing in any script or in any directions given to any of our sales people includes making threats to ruin a business, nothing close to that, and we absolutely do not actively try to harm the optimization of former customers.

Again, we are sorry and we hope this has been or will be resolved very soon.