Complaint Review: CityGrid Media LLC - Chicago Illinois

I cancelled on February 10th of 2013. When the sales rep asked why I was cancelling I said it was because in the two years we had been working with them to handle our SEO and SEM they had brought our pagerank from a 4 to a 3, and our rank in keyword listings from top 5 to not even in the top 300. The sales rep had no response other than to say I could cancel at "any time" and they would "stop billing and work immediately". So I cancelled. 

They charged my card for February, March, and April. Over $7,000 total. When I called in May they gave me the run around. They told me the email ticket #'s they had sent me were not valid. They asked me to send every email they had sent me. So I did. Then they never answered the phone when I called back. After 3-4 weeks of trying to get somebody to acknowledge what happened I finally got a manager on the phone who acknowledged they had outsourced their SEO to another firm called "Orange Media" and as a result they didn't recognize the ticket numbers, and the sales guy had forgotten to put the cancellation through, or there had been some other breakdown in communication. So fine, I say, just refund my money. She says ok, but it's going to take a while.

I wait several more weeks, and when I dont get our money back I file a chargeback with our credit card. Shortly afterwards another employee from their collections dept emails to say they have decided to refund March and Arpil because I filed my complaint "with the wrong department". Oh sorry, I thought my sales rep was the guy who handled my account and I could talk to him about it. Silly me. I guess I was supposed to just randomly guess where to send my cancellation request as there is zero instructions on the website, and no official way that I can find to cancel the account. I still have no idea what the "right way" is or would be. 

But the most obnoxious thing is despite doing a horrible job for our company, and actually making everything MUCH WORSE when it came to our SEO, and charging our card without our authorization, or even sending us a bill, and holding on to thousands of dollars belonging to us for months screwing up our cash flow, and forcing me to make numerous calls to their customer service department who seemed to answer the phone only if they felt like it, despite all of that they STILL wanted me to pay for the entire month of February, even though I had cancelled only a couple days in, and as far as I can tell they didn't do anything after that other than charge our card. 

I called their collections department, and again no one answered the phone, but after calling repeatedly I eventually spoke to an employee who told me that yes they would waive February charges too. 

OK, so great, I think I'm done. Nope. 90 days later we get a bill for the February amount, with late fees as well. And of course I've been trying to call them all day and you guessed it: no one answers the phone. Not even a voicemail. Just 20 rings or so and then silence.  

I think I'm going to have to take these guys to court. But in the meantime do not make my mistake and hire these guys for any kind of advertising or marketing online.

1. They don't care about their customers.

2. They don't answer their phone.

3. They do a horrible job at what they claim to be experts at: Your rankings will actually get worse.

4. They are completely unaccountable for the horrible job they do.