We paid them for a 12,000 contact database list of Microsoft Dynamics CRM users. We provided them with our criteria and they came back with a list of more than half that didn't match our target market. Much of the list included contacts for our competitors and companies who do not use Dynamics CRM. We were even sent contacts who use Salesforce, Microsoft’s biggest product competitor.
I had spent a week on the phone with them, much of the time with extremely rude customer service reps and was told that I did not provide them with the correct criteria, which I had several times and kept sending it to them over and over in emails to show them that I had. They accused me of being unresponsive when they tried to contact me, and I had to send them an email full of attachments of all my responses to them. We had not used their list they sent us as it provided no value to us and I finally said I would send it back to them, and they can issue us a refund as it was clear that they were not going to be able to accommodate us. They told us that they do not issue refunds. Great policy, right?
Finally, the manager (Richard Prathap) said that he was going to help us, and he would replace the contacts. Days later, (the whole time, mind you, we thought they were working on our list), the manager backed out and asked me to send him AGAIN the email that proves I sent them my original criteria. So, he did not replace the list.
In the PO, part of the agreement is they guarantee an 85% delivery rate. We had a 52% bounce rate. I had to pull each hard bounce out of our system and send it back to them; a pain, but it is standard. They replaced the bounces with 3,000 contacts, again, more than half outside our criteria. I don’t have time to keep arguing with them, so I took the list and imported what I could. Of those 3,000, 971 were actually usable, and 720 were hard bounces which gave us a 47% bounce rate. I had to go back in and pull all of the bounces out and send it back, and they responded with the following:
We have sent these emails to our Campaign team and the report is attached, we have opens and unsubscribe for the e-mails sent across. The Unsubscribe is because of the content which was not intended to the this client.
[email protected] // open
[email protected] // Unsubscribe
Let me know the type of campaign you are sending.
Their attached report means nothing to us, as I sent them our report of how their list performed in our system. 47% Bounce Rate! Unacceptable. Also, unsubscribe has nothing to do with Hard Bounces. They continue to argue and not provide us with what we paid for.
Another frustrating point about working with this company is when I let them know that they did not provide the correct service to us, Richard responded with “Please understand that there are lots of man hours spent on generating the list”. That is their job, right? Is he aware of how many hours I have had to put into getting this sorted out, which is why we requested their services to begin with? To save time and get results.
Short of getting our money back I do not want to do business with them. I just hope that this will deter others from using their services and having to go through the same.
Richard
California,#2UPDATE Employee
Wed, March 09, 2016
Will send you an email or set up a call to start discussing on how we can amicably close this in the best interest of both parties.
#3Author of original report
Wed, March 09, 2016
Do you read the responses before replying?
Yes, these are great customer service practices continually to comment that we are responding with false claims, are in denial mode and are a difficult customer. Very professional. We have provided SilverSkySoft with three scenarios on how we would like the situation resolved and all have been refused. These have outright been refused to us in email exchanges so why they insist on publicly saying they are willing to resolve the issue is beyond us. SilverSoftInc has our criteria, has our list of hard bounces so if they are so willing to resolve the issue, resolve it. Instead of flat out lying. 3,500 out of 12,000. Replace the remainder that we paid for with the actual criteria we have provided many times. SilverSkySoft doesn’t want to do that, though. If we are mistaking, provide us a list that follows our criteria with the remaining contacts and stop publicly lying.
Richard
California,#4UPDATE Employee
Wed, March 09, 2016
Unfortunately, Trovare Business Solutions false claims only further substantiates with their responses even now. From the very beginning of this exchange of conversations and earlier as well, we have been saying we want to resolve and fix the list issue even if Trovare Business Solutions chooses to be in denial mode. Trovare Business Solutions can reach out to us whenever they are ready to talk to us to fix and address the list requirement. These are good Customer Service practises inspite of having to deal with a difficult customer.
#5Author of original report
Tue, March 08, 2016
In response to their comment “The response sent by Trovare Business Solutions highlighting our responses only substantiates what we have been saying all along that at no given point Trovare Business Solutions was willing to acknowledge or accept that their claim was incorrect in spite of sharing facts but kept pushing it back claiming the list was bad.” What is there for us to accept? We provided our criteria; it wasn’t followed. We paid for a service and were provided a list we could not use. That is a fact. 70% we could not use as it was outside our target market and provided us a 52% bounce rate. How is that not a bad list?
In response to their comment “Further to our response highlighted by Trovare Business Solutions it also substantiates that at no given point we have refused not to rework the list or replace the bad contacts but only raised flags why their claims was incorrect not as per our agreed contract.” SilverSkySoft management has refused several times. The only time you have offered to help is in this public forum now that the issue is available to the public. SilverSkySoft in no way shape or form has gone the extra mile or honored customer commitments until now.
In response to their comment “Trovare Business Solutions can still reach out us to resolve this issue and we are more than happy to work with them to put a rest to this issue, our previous attempts to proactively reach out to them and as substantiated in the highlighted response shared by Trovare Business Solutions only substantiates we never backed out. Hopefully , Trovare Business Solutions will gives us an opportunity to talk and resolve this issue in the best interest of both parties.” We have reached out to SilverSkySoft, several times for a resolution and we even offered a solution which was more than fair that was denied. The response to “put the issue to rest” was that we were “taking it personally”, which was summarized in our “agitated response” and that SilverSkySoft was planning to escalate the issue further. Where in any of that was there an attempt to resolve the issue? There is no further opportunity; SilverSkySoft has wasted too much of our time and money. Bad business.
#6UPDATE Employee
Tue, March 08, 2016
The response sent by Trovare Business Solutions highlighting our responses only substantiates what we have been saying all along that at no given point Trovare Business Solutions was willing to acknowledge or accept that their claim was incorrect in spite of sharing facts but kept pushing it back claiming the list was bad. Further to our response highlighted by Trovare Business Solutions it also substantiates that at no given point we have refused not to rework the list or replace the bad contacts but only raised flags why their claims was incorrect not as per our agreed contract.
Trovare Business Solutions can still reach out us to resolve this issue and we are more than happy to work with them to put a rest to this issue, our previous attempts to proactively reach out to them and as substantiated in the highlighted response shared by Trovare Business Solutions only substantiates we never backed out. Hopefully , Trovare Business Solutions will gives us an opportunity to talk and resolve this issue in the best interest of both parties.
#7Author of original report
Tue, March 08, 2016
Addition to our second point:
In response to their comment that we “came back claiming that this has to be < 750 employee size. The attached signed contract can substantiate the same however not reported in their complaint.” It “has” to be
#8Author of original report
Tue, March 08, 2016
In response to their comment “as per the signed contract it was agreed to include companies of all employee sizes irrespective of its size however Trovare Business Solutions,Sacramento – California” The PO does not include several key factors of our criteria that were discussed in emails and provided to them in their own formatting of what target market we required.
In response to their comment that we “came back claiming that this has to be < 750 employee size. The attached signed contract can substantiate the same however not reported in their complaint.” It “has” to be
In response to their comment that “Trovare Business Solutions, Sacramento – California, came back with claims that they have received bounces and need replacements , we honored our commitment as per the signed contract and sent them replacements even though the entire claim was not legitimate. There were further claims of bounces which was otherwise when this was tested at our end however Trovare would not agree when provided with facts. Our agreed terms was to replace bad contacts and not refund however Trovare continued to disagree in spite of sharing facts on why their claims was incorrect with respect to criteria of the list as well as the bounces.” We provided SilverSkySoft with the first list of bounces and included whether they were DNS Failures, Invalid Recipients, or Generic Bounces: No Rcpt., etc., and also provided them with the bounce rate, which was 56%. Please explain how this is not a legitimate claim? They did replace the first list of bounces, but again, with contacts that were outside of criteria. So once more, we could only use maybe 30% of what they sent us. As for the second list of bounces, we again sent them all of the above facts: the type of bounce, the contact info, and the bounce rate, and were told we are the ones not agreeing. They did not replace those.
In response to their comment that “We proactively reached out to Trovare Business Solutions, Sacramento – California, again to resolve this after it was reported to you however with no forthcoming resolution in sight, our response is only intended to throw light that we honor customer commitments even if we have to go the extra mile to close customer issues , We still stand by this commitment and will address to fix the list issue forTrovare Business Solutions, Sacramento – California, whenever they are ready to talk to us again.” The following messages is how their management proactively tried to resolve the issues:
Message 1
"I understand you have reported us to the Ripoffreport. I am not sure why when there has been no breakdown in our communication until now , I guess it is a bit unfair. Please let me know how you want this to be resolved according to our agreed terms in the signed contract or we could pursue this through ripoffreport itself for a logical conclusion . I am available if you think we should get on to a call to discuss this."
We responded with several logical conclusions such as: rebuilding the list per our proper criteria; a refund per the contacts not provided; adhering to the bounce replacement guarantee and providing replacements instead of telling us we are wrong. The last being a bizarre claim as how could we be wrong? They were provide a clear spreadsheet of the bounces and the bounce rate.
Their management responded to our conclusions with the following:
Message 2
"Angela - Are you saying we should not be given an opportunity to contest your claims based on facts available with us or adhering as per our signed contract , I think you have probably taken this too personally and your agitated response summarizes it all for us to further escalate it with BBB and Ripoff on how Trovare Business Solutions have been browbeating us with unfair claims. Probably , Yes, those are the forums we can get to a logical conclusions."
Why is the response that our Marketing and Operations Manager is taking it personally? Because she is a woman? This is a business transaction, and we paid SilverSkySoft for a service that was not delivered. Bottom line.
This has been our experience with them, ever since the Manager said he would resolve the issue and backed out a week later and asked us to prove again to him that we sent them our criteria. There is no resolution attempt here. Their attempt to address the issue is to send emails that provoke, accuse us of making false claims, and that there is nothing they are going to do about it. Great customer service . . .
We paid for 12,000 contacts and only 3500 at the most, matched the criteria that we sent them. There is nothing false about that.
Richard
California,#9UPDATE Employee
Tue, March 08, 2016
Trovare Business Solutions, Sacramento – California, represented by their Marketing & Operation Manager, Angela Grom, purchased a list from us on 1/20/16 and the terms of the list purchase contract was mutually agreed and signed by both parties. The list was built and delivered as per the terms agreed in the contract.
The first issue raised by Trovare Business Solutions, Sacramento – California, was regarding the criteria of the list relating to employee size of the companies in the list, as per the signed contract it was agreed to include companies of all employee sizes irrespective of its size however Trovare Business Solutions, Sacramento – California,came back claiming that this has to be < 750 employee size. The attached signed contract can substantiate the same however not reported in their complaint.
Trovare Business Solutions, Sacramento – California, came back with claims that they have received bounces and need replacements , we honored our commitment as per the signed contract and sent them replacements even though the entire claim was not legitimate. There were further claims of bounces which was otherwise when this was tested at our end however Trovare would not agree when provided with facts. Our agreed terms was to replace bad contacts and not refund however Trovare continued to disagree in spite of sharing facts on why their claims was incorrect with respect to criteria of the list as well as the bounces.
We proactively reached out to Trovare Business Solutions, Sacramento – California, again to resolve this after it was reported to you however with no forthcoming resolution in sight, our response is only intended to throw light that we honor customer commitments even if we have to go the extra mile to close customer issues , We still stand by this commitment and will address to fix the list issue for Trovare Business Solutions, Sacramento – California, whenever they are ready to talk to us again.