- Report: #1310470
Complaint Review: Branded3.com - Internet
Reported By:
Mobile Phone Business -
Other, United Kingdom
Submitted:
Updated:
-
Author Confirmed
Why?
Branded3.com
Internet, United Kingdom
Phone:
+44 (0) 113 260 4010
Web:
www.branded3.com
Categories:
Business Rating:
(0)
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Branded3.com *** BEWARE – DO NOT USE BRANDED3 FOR PPC *** Leeds Internet
On one of our businesses we ran our own PPC for 7 years. It has been consistently profitable for 7 years but we were not spending enough time on it. We believed that moving it to a professional PPC agency would grow our sales & profit further because they would dedicate more time to it. We contacted Branded3 as they looked like a trusted agency. Branded3 reviewed all our PPC accounts and said categorically without doubt they would be able to significantly grow our profit and sales so we handed over our PPC to them. This was one of the worst mistakes we have ever made.
Here are some of the reasons why you should not use Branded3 for your PPC:
1) Within 2 weeks of Branded3 taking over our Google Adwords accounts had been hacked. We previously had Google 2-Step Verification in place for many years so no one could access our accounts. This is a standard security measure that should be in place on every PPC account but the account that Branded3 use to manage their clients accounts does NOT have this essential security measure in place! This is terrible, this is an essential security feature and they admitted they did not have it in place. They are exposing all their clients to massive risk. Going through Branded3’s insecure account spammers hacked into our account and put up loads of spam ads to direct traffic to their spam sites. The result of this is that Google deleted all our Campaigns containing the spam ads and this is irreversible. This meant that Campaigns with 7 years of good history were deleted as a result of Branded3’s poor security. This has permanently damaged our campaigns and lost us a lot of money.
2) From the day Branded3 took over our PPC our traffic, sales & profit completely plummeted. Our PPC had consistently performed well and been profitable for 7 years so we had plenty of like-for-like data. Branded3 promised they would increase our sales & profit but instead caused them to completely drop off a cliff.
Here is the shocking damage Branded3 did from the day they took over our PPC (bear in mind our PPC had been consistent for 7 years):
- 1st month – 87% drop in profit
- 2nd month – 130% drop in profit (went from highly profitable to making a loss!)
In 6 months we used Branded3 these are their overall performance figures:
- Traffic down 50%
- Sales down 45%
- Profit down 75%
Branded3 took our well-established profitable PPC accounts and turned them loss making and lost us many tens of thousands of pounds!!
3) The quality of their work is appalling. They assured us they could improve our current PPC by building better quality campaigns. We paid them loads of money to build so-called ‘improved’ campaigns but the quality of work was so bad that every single bit of work Branded3 created had to be completely scrapped because it was complete and utter junk.
We showed Branded3’s work to our Google Account Manager and she said it was some of the worst quality work she had ever seen in 5+ years at Google. She was shocked that an agency could do such poor quality work. She said it was so bad that the best thing to do was scrap everything and start again.
So basically we paid Branded3 loads of money for nothing. Regardless of the damage they have done to our business as described above we asked Branded3 for the money back we paid them in good faith and they refused. So Branded3 took money off us for worthless junk that had to be scrapped and refused to give us our money back. They are rip off merchants that only care about money and not their clients.
Here are just a few examples of the appalling quality of their work:
- They changed the text on our ads from ‘iPhone’ and ‘iPad’ to ‘i-Phone’ and ‘i-Pad’
- We looked at why our traffic had dropped by 50%+ and found they had paused loads of existing campaigns and launched new ones to replace them but the new campaigns had no Ads in them so got no traffic! This by the way went on for weeks until we found the problem and alerted them as they were not aware!
- They put up Ads in our account linking to a competitors domain name!
- We looked into why our traffic & sales had dropped so much and we found 150+ of our previous main profit keywords that had a consistent history of generating 200%+ ROI that Branded3 did not have showing in their supposedly ‘new improved’ campaigns.
- Our Top 20 traffic / profit keywords were not showing. We looked into why and found Branded3 had added the keywords as negative match in the same adgroups so we got no traffic on our top terms for several weeks
- Here is an example of some of their terrible quality ads (yes unbelievably these are real):
- "Sell Your Nokia. No need for a loan – sell your LG phone”
- “Sell Your Xperia Z3. Many phone models accepted. Don’t delay, get money for your old iPad”
- “Sell Your Blackberry. Get the most money for your Samsung mobile phone”
- These are just a few examples, there are hundreds and hundreds of examples we could cite of similarly appalling quality work that was so bad we had to scrap the lot
In summary, Branded3 totally screwed our PPC. The figures speak for themselves. After 7 years of consistent profit the day Branded3 took over our PPC our profit dropped 87% in the 1st month, 130% in the 2nd month and 75% overall in the few months we used them.
In total we estimate that using Branded3 has cost us several tens of thousands of pounds and it has been one of the worst mistakes we have ever made.
Also, this company do not care about their clients. There have been clear, provable mistakes made by Branded3 that have cost us a lot of money. We asked if they were prepared to take responsibility for their actions and do anything it and they said no and said their contract states that they are not liable for any poor performance or losses. Even though there is clear evidence of their mistakes and how they dropped our profit by 75% they do not take any responsibility and simply fall back on their contract which basically says they can mess up your PPC and lose you loads of money but are not liable for anything. In our opinion this is not how a professional agency should act
Please be aware, we strongly recommend you do not use this company for PPC. We have been doing PPC for 15 years so we know what we’re talking about. Using Branded3 for PPC was one of the biggest mistakes we have ever made. They screwed up our PPC and cost us tens of thousands of pounds. They promised they could increase our PPC sales & profit but the figures speak for themselves, they took 7 year old, well-established profitable PPC campaigns and dropped the profit by 75% and then charge for the privilege! We are writing this because we do not want anyone else to suffer the damage we have as a result of using Branded3. AVOID…AVOID…AVOID
