Early this year, I bought some email scraper software from a company called Lightfoot Associates. These people do not supply their city, state, or phone number, but I believe they are located in California, because I heard them mention that on their video. I was only allowed to deal with them through their email. They will not supply any other contact information.
Lightfoot sells email scrapers that will extract personal emails from the www.CraigsList.com site, and the www.Backpage.com site. These scrapers are designed to collect thousands of emails from these sites, in order to be able to market to the owners of these email addresses. In January of this year, I bought the Craigs List and Backpage scrapers from Lightfoot.
Lightfoot provides videos to help people set these scrapers up. I was able to figure out how to set the scrapers up, but not without some difficulty. Lightfoot claims to provide email support, but in the past, I have not found this support to be very helpful.
About 3 or 4 months ago, the people at Lightfoot suddenly quit selling their scrapers, and they shut down their email address. This was after they promised to provide continuing support for the customers who bought their software. We were no longer able to contact them. I emailed them to ask why they quit selling the software, and they responded with a sarcastic reply. After that, no one was able to contact them anymore.
Then, these guys suddenly reappeared a few weeks ago, telling us that Craigs List blocked the resumes category, and that they (Lightfoot) are now selling some new software (probably just to make more profits from us) that helps to get around that problem, so we could still market to that category.
Lightfoot also said they were marketing a scraper that will extract email addresses from www.Yellowbook.com. I bought the Yellow Pages scraper, because I trusted these people from the other scrapers I bought from them before.
The problem I discovered with the YP scraper is that it is very inferior to the other ones, and also, I wasn't able to make it work at all for me!
I asked Lightfoot for a refund, and they refused to give me one. I paid them with one of those Green Dot cash cards, so I don't think I can get my money back.
I asked them for help with trying to make the YP scraper work, and here is their response that I copied and pasted:
"this is not 'hold your and hand and make money for you' software. if you didn't know what to do with the data, you shouldn't have bought the program."
This response was appalling to me, because I was asking these guys for the help they promised to give me! They basically don't care! They have my money, and they don't care about me anymore!
They also replied with this remark:
"The software is doing what it is supposed to do. If it didn't we would be here to make it work right. Case closed.
And referrals?? If they consume as much time on our support desk as you have then please don't send them."
Again, they have my money, they are not providing the support they promised, and they don't give a rip."
I recommend everyone stay away from Lightfoot Associates and their scraper software! It's my opinion that these people have cheated me, and that they don't care! Normally, they are very rude to me when I send them messages!
I hope Lightfoot goes out of business! Next, I will report them to the BBB in their state! Beware of Lightfoot Associates! They took my money on the Yellow Pages scraper, they are no longer willing to support me to help me set it up! DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THESE PEOPLE!