Complaint Review: Subdreamer LLC - Lakewood Ranch Florida

Just as Subdreamer ignored my issues, they ignored the BBB, and ignored the Florida Consumer Protection Division, they also ignored the Florida Secretary of State. I filed a complaint about Subdreamer having inaccurate contact information for their registered agent. A letter was sent to Subdreamer on April 10, 2008. The letter was addressed to their 8374 Market Street address. I contacted Karon Beyer of the Florida Division of Corporations. Today I received the following response via email: "I wrote Subdreamer, LLC regarding the registered Agent improper address on April 10, 2008 and have not received a response. The 2008 annual report has not been filed either. Since 60 days has passed and proper notice was given to the LLC to correct the problem, we have administratively dissolved Subdreamer, LLC for failure to designate a registered agent. Proper notification has been mailed to the LLC." Just more evidence that Subdreamer feels they have to answer to no one. For those thinking of buying Subdreamer, I must ask this question. "Do you really want to purchase a substandard product from such a shady and unethical company?"

We do not publish our phone number to avoid solicitations and general inquiries because we do not provide general support via telephone. General inquiries are queued to the next available representative through email, the contact form or support desk and communications are opened from there. For an open and escalated customer service issue that is being discussed via email or our supportdesk for example, we have no problem at all providing a phone number on request. We would be glad to make an outbound call as well. Contact the Subdreamer staff directly: http://www.subdreamer.com/contact Mailing Address: Subdreamer, LLC 8374 Market St #151 Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202 All customers are free to contact us at any time using our contact form, support desk, direct email with ongoing communications, our forum for general topics, and any other channel we provide. We communicate with hundreds of customers on various topics every week. Support desk and email are typically reviewed within a few hours and typically no reply waits more then 24hours.

We do not publish our phone number to avoid solicitations and general inquiries because we do not provide general support via telephone. General inquiries are queued to the next available representative through email, the contact form or support desk and communications are opened from there. For an open and escalated customer service issue that is being discussed via email or our supportdesk for example, we have no problem at all providing a phone number on request. We would be glad to make an outbound call as well. Contact the Subdreamer staff directly: http://www.subdreamer.com/contact Mailing Address: Subdreamer, LLC 8374 Market St #151 Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202 All customers are free to contact us at any time using our contact form, support desk, direct email with ongoing communications, our forum for general topics, and any other channel we provide. We communicate with hundreds of customers on various topics every week. Support desk and email are typically reviewed within a few hours and typically no reply waits more then 24hours.

We do not publish our phone number to avoid solicitations and general inquiries because we do not provide general support via telephone. General inquiries are queued to the next available representative through email, the contact form or support desk and communications are opened from there. For an open and escalated customer service issue that is being discussed via email or our supportdesk for example, we have no problem at all providing a phone number on request. We would be glad to make an outbound call as well. Contact the Subdreamer staff directly: http://www.subdreamer.com/contact Mailing Address: Subdreamer, LLC 8374 Market St #151 Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202 All customers are free to contact us at any time using our contact form, support desk, direct email with ongoing communications, our forum for general topics, and any other channel we provide. We communicate with hundreds of customers on various topics every week. Support desk and email are typically reviewed within a few hours and typically no reply waits more then 24hours.

We do not publish our phone number to avoid solicitations and general inquiries because we do not provide general support via telephone. General inquiries are queued to the next available representative through email, the contact form or support desk and communications are opened from there. For an open and escalated customer service issue that is being discussed via email or our supportdesk for example, we have no problem at all providing a phone number on request. We would be glad to make an outbound call as well. Contact the Subdreamer staff directly: http://www.subdreamer.com/contact Mailing Address: Subdreamer, LLC 8374 Market St #151 Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202 All customers are free to contact us at any time using our contact form, support desk, direct email with ongoing communications, our forum for general topics, and any other channel we provide. We communicate with hundreds of customers on various topics every week. Support desk and email are typically reviewed within a few hours and typically no reply waits more then 24hours.

give a phone number....Why do you NOT have a PHONE NUMBER ???

Contact the Subdreamer staff directly: http://www.subdreamer.com/contact Mailing Address: Subdreamer, LLC 8374 Market St #151 Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202 All customers are free to contact us at any time using our contact form, support desk, direct email with ongoing communications, our forum for general topics, and any other channel we provide. We communicate with hundreds of customers on various topics every week. Support desk and email are typically reviewed within a few hours and typically no reply waits more then 24hours.

This will be my last post on this thread. It is quite obvious that the Subdreamer people are incompetent. Yes, now I am being "aggressive." I have explained the situation multiple times and the only thing Subdreamer has done was regurgitated the same responses over and over as if they were canned robotic responses. I just read on the other complaint that was on RipOffReport and it seems that this representative of Subdreamer also tried telling the other person that it was probably because of them being "abusive" that their account was deleted. It completely amazes me! This company ignores their customers, treats them like dirt, and then when a customer gets fed up with it and stands up, it is THEY, the customer that is the one being abusive? The comment of me twisting things is the most asinine statement I have ever heard. Either this person is not reading the posts, is mentally retarded (no offense to mentally retarded people), or simply expects me and everyone else that reads these posts to accept his load of bull crap he's trying to feed anyone. These posts are clear examples that Subdreamer is a ripoff company that provides a subpar Content Management System with subpar customer service. In the end, when you stand up against them, they pretend they are the victim. How pathetic!

"Dancing" was a term you brought up. It surely doesn't matter how I respond you will twist it as you see fit. Lets put it in this light. I am not going to discuss your intentions, your person consumer advocacy site and aggressive behavior would easily enough point to the fact that you didn't get the answer you wanted when originally refused a refund and have decided to turn it into a consumer crusade against us with exaggeration's and rants. We certainly don't run a successful business in the way you suggest, we have very happy customers except for the odd customer that requests a refund (usually new customers who didn't read or ask questions prior to their purchase,,,, we hope to offer trial versions in the near future to curb this some) or has a technical problem and doesn't allow us to resolve the issue.... even with these customers in these rare occasions, the issue never escalates to anywhere near what you describe. (except for your case of course). Typically if there is a will, there is a way but it takes two to meet half way. Our goal is to have the highest level of customer satisfaction possible... We try to be fair but sometimes you can't bend far enough and here we are. The purpose of this report/rebuttal or any communications is to try to resolve our differences not to be aggressive, slanderous and demeaning. This is in all likelihood why management stopped communicating with you. I'm sorry you experienced discrepancies with our mailing address, you now have the correct address. If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

I am so glad you responded in such a way. First, though, what does dancing have to do with this? Well, unless you consider that Subdreamer has a tendency to dance around issues. 1.) "If they were cut short it would only because you were threatening or attempting to bully us in some way which is not acceptable for a busines or a consumer,,, in which case snail mail and your formal letters would be the correct channel and you can resend them to the correct address as I have provided." Whomever you are Mr./Ms. Anonymous Subdreamer person, it's call the LAW. When a consumer repeatedly requests something and is ignored, then it is common for "threats" to be made. However, let's clarify one thing. The "threats" I made were legal. I threated Subdreamer with a small claims suit. That is my legal right. If you want to talk about bullying, then please talk to your moderators that belittle people when they have a different opinion than theirs. Subdreamer just doesn't know how to handle people like me that are well aware of the law and their legal rights. People don't know how to handle people like me that have investigative skills and catch Subdreamer on their shady tactics. Once again, I will mention this. The first letter I ever sent was to the correct address you keep mentioning about. After about a month or two of no response, then I sent it to the registered agent. What you keep failing to realize is that is court, a letter of demand is to be sent to the registered agent on file of a corporation. It is the fault of Subdreamer, LLC for not keeping a correct address for a registered agent on file, not mine. I simply submitted my letter in accordance with normal precourt preceedings. 2.) "If you have an unresolved issue and would like to discuss it directly, you are also free to contact us via the public contact form from which we can pick up conversations via email." Ziad had plenty of opportunities to discuss this matter via e-mail. He chose to continue to ignore the issues. Now that I have publically made this issue available it is as if someone lit a fire under Subdreamer's butt. The only communication I will do is once Subdreamer has updated their registered agent contact information, I will send a letter of demand. If this letter is ignored, then I will proceed with filing a small claims lawsuit in my local district. I have noticed that this individual is now replying to the same post I have listed on a website forums. Once again, it seems that they are only responding because I have made this matter publically available. I am glad they responded because now I have more evidence to list on my website of how Subdreamer has poor customer service.

Hi Nicholas, I can certainly look your previous communications. If they were cut short it would only because you were threatening or attempting to bully us in some way which is not acceptable for a busines or a consumer,,, in which case snail mail and your formal letters would be the correct channel and you can resend them to the correct address as I have provided. If you have an unresolved issue and would like to discuss it directly, you are also free to contact us via the public contact form from which we can pick up conversations via email. Regards

First and foremost, please notice that this "representative" did not leave a name. Now, on to their sad excuses. 1.) "Per our EULA, 'Subdreamer offers non-tangible irrevocable goods and services and DOES NOT issue refunds after the product has been downloaded and/or installed. This policy is to deter fraudulent orders/piracy and costly chargeback's so that we can keep our prices as low as possible. We encourage all parties interested in purchasing the software to fully explore its features and requirements before purchasing. Please contact us directly with any and all questions. Refunds are handled solely at the discretion of Subdreamer. For any unforeseen technical issues, please submit a support ticket for a resolve." They are worried about piracy? Why would someone want to pirate their system. There's free systems, such as Joomla! that far surpass their software. For those that think I am mentioning a "competitor", in a way I'm not. Joomla! is a free open source CMS (Content Management System). In other words, if you download and use Joomla!, the Joomla! team don't get a penny of money unless you want to donate to the cause. I did contact them directly, in fact, via multiple methods. First, I was in normal contact with Ziad Hilal, owner of Subdreamer. When it got to the point of me requesting a refund, Ziad stopped responding to my emails. He even ignored future emails. 2.) "We do not have record of a refund request from this customer but they are free to enter into further discussions with us if they have an unresolved issue." This is because they half false information on their records. The address they have listed I did send a letter to, however, I never got a response. 3.) "We would be glad to either find this initial contact that was made with us or start from scratch but general WHOIS records of our domains is not a proper contact method." Actually, the WHOIS record was NOT my main source that I sent the certified letter to. I sent the certified letter to their "Registered Agent" on file with the Flordia Division of Corporations. I received the certified letter back from the post office as undeliverable. Want proof? Below is the tracking number for the certified letter and you can see it being sent from Morgan City, LA to the zip code of their office. Just go to www.usps.gov, in the "Track and Confirm" box, enter this number: (((ROR redacted)))1805 Then click on additional details. You should get something like this: Label/Receipt Number: (((ROR redacted)))1805 Detailed Results: Delivered, April 07, 2008, 3:50 pm, MORGAN CITY, LA 70380 Notice Left, April 07, 2008, 2:37 pm, MORGAN CITY, LA 70381 Moved, Left no Address, March 29, 2008, 12:49 pm, BRADENTON, FL Undeliverable as Addressed, March 28, 2008, 11:00 am, BRADENTON, FL 34202 Acceptance, March 25, 2008, 2:56 pm, MORGAN CITY, LA 70380 By the way, it was this reason that I filed a complaint with the division of corporations. I sent a copy of the envelope that was stamped "Return to sender. " However, why did Subdreamer decide to hide their WHOIS information when I filed a complaint with their domain registrar that they had inaccurate information? Why did Subdreamer have so many addresses over the years on the corporate information? Did the person posting forget that I not some "disgrunted customer?" In previous posts I provided all the evidence including links to corporate filing information. It seems that whomever responded completely ignored all of the information and evidence I presented in previous posts. 4.) "RE: Staff and removal of postings: The Subdreamer staff will moderate the public forums as a place of business and remove any abusive, or private topics better discussed through other channels. Customers that are upset are encouraged to vent privately via email or our support desk and work towards a resolve from there. Customers with unique or sensitive problems are encouraged to communicate with us directly so that we can cater our response and handling to the best interests of that individual." Anything that is "against" Subdreamer is considered "abusive." If a moderator says something and you disagree with them or attempt to validate your point by providing evidence or discuss it, that is considered "abusive." 5.) "RE: Address/Contact method: We have staff and locations of business in different US States and different Countries period,,, I will post for clarification so this customer can reach us, the best way to do so:" No. According to the corporate filings, Ziad lived at all of these various addresses mentioend at previous posts. Therefore, there is no "staff", there's only Ziad Hilal, owner of Subdreamer. You don't have to take my word for it. Copy and paste the address listed in a previous post and read the previous years annual corporate filings. 6.) "Support desk and email are typically reviewed within a few hours and typically no reply waits more then 24hours." Wrong! A major security flaw that Subdreamer considered nothing major took three MONTHS to be addressed. So much for 24 hours. I am still awaiting Subdreamer to update their corporate filings so that I may send a legal letter of demand. All of the inconsistencies mentioned in these posts will be used as evidence in court, including the following: - Subdreamer ignored the complaint filed with the BBB against them. Of which, the BBB sent the complaint to the exact address they have listed in their own post as being the "correct" contact address. - Subdreamer ignored a complaint filed with the Florida Consumer Protection Division. The Consumer Protection Division sent the complaint to the same address that Subdreamer lists as being the correct address. I have noticed that Subdreamer ignored all of the evidence I presented and simply danced around the issues. This is why I posted this matter here as well as on my personal website, which deals with companies that rip people off. On my website, though, I have full copies of all trouble tickets submitted, forum posts (even the ones that were deleted), screenshots of such, as well as copies of any letters sent to them, and a copy of the envelope that I received back from the U.S. Post Office proving their address on corporate filings was inaccurate.

RE: Refunds: Subdreamer CMS offers refunds on an exception or case by case basis. Per our EULA, "Subdreamer offers non-tangible irrevocable goods and services and DOES NOT issue refunds after the product has been downloaded and/or installed. This policy is to deter fraudulent orders/piracy and costly chargeback's so that we can keep our prices as low as possible. We encourage all parties interested in purchasing the software to fully explore its features and requirements before purchasing. Please contact us directly with any and all questions. Refunds are handled solely at the discretion of Subdreamer. For any unforeseen technical issues, please submit a support ticket for a resolve." We do not have record of a refund request from this customer but they are free to enter into further discussions with us if they have an unresolved issue. We were not aware of this report or other reports this user has made throughout the internet until recently and we were not contacted directly to our record. We have searched all past email and ticket archives for inquiries from this customer but none are found. We would be glad to either find this initial contact that was made with us or start from scratch but general WHOIS records of our domains is not a proper contact method. I will end this post with our correct contact paths. RE: Staff and removal of postings: The Subdreamer staff will moderate the public forums as a place of business and remove any abusive, or private topics better discussed through other channels. Customers that are upset are encouraged to vent privately via email or our support desk and work towards a resolve from there. Customers with unique or sensitive problems are encouraged to communicate with us directly so that we can cater our response and handling to the best interests of that individual. RE: Security flaw: The flaw was patched as promised. RE: Address/Contact method: We have staff and locations of business in different US States and different Countries period,,, I will post for clarification so this customer can reach us, the best way to do so: Contact the Subdreamer staff directly: http://www.subdreamer.com/contact Contact our technical staff and resources: http://www.subdreamer.com/support Correct Mailing Address: Subdreamer, LLC 8374 Market St #151 Lakewood Ranch, FL 34202 All customers are free to contact us at any time using our contact form, support desk, direct email with ongoing communications, our forum for general topics, and any other channel we provide. We communicate with hundreds of customers on various topics every week. Support desk and email are typically reviewed within a few hours and typically no reply waits more then 24hours. Best regards

I received a response from the Florida Department of State Division of Corporations. Their response to my inquiry about Subdreamer not having valid registered agent contact information was the following: "Every corporation is required to keep a registered agent for service of process. The agent must be available from 10:00 to 12:00 daily except weekends. If a registered agent moves or resigns, the corporation has 30 days to designate another agent. If this is not done, the corporation is subject to administrative dissolution by this office. If you are unable to serve a corporation, send proof of attempted service to the address indicated below. If the corporation does not designate a new agent within 60 days, we will administratively dissolve the corporation. Before the corporation can reinstate it will have to designate a new agent and pay reinstatement fees. Send your proof of attempted Service to: Karon Beyer Dept. of State Division of Corporations P.O. Box 6327 Tallahassee, FL 32314" I checked the online status of the certified letter and it now shows: "Moved, Left no Address, March 29, 2008, 12:49 pm, BRADENTON, FL" I'm not surprised. As I showed in the initial postings, Subdreamer has multiple addresses spanning multiple states. This is just more evidence that the company is a scam. Once I receive the certified letter back (it should be on it's way now), I will make a copy of the envelope showing the letter was rejected and send the copy of the address I posted above.

In a last attempt before filing a small claims suit, I decided to send a certified letter to the registered agent on file with the Florida Division of Corporations. The company address (8374 Market Street, #447) is the one listed on the BBB profile. This address has returned no responses. Ziad and Alice Hilal have ignored complaints with the BBB as well as the Florida Consumer Protection Division. The address for the registered agent is: HILAL, ALICE 7302 DUNES COURT BRADENTON FL 34202 The certified letter was sent on March 25, 2008. I checked the status of the letter today and the following is posted on the U.S. Postal Service's Track and Confirm page: "Undeliverable as Addressed, March 28, 2008, 11:00 am, BRADENTON, FL 34202" I have notified the Florida Division of Corporations about the false and inaccurate information. I will now attempt a certified letter to the Market Street address. The more I try to deal with this company, the more I have see how shady and unethical they are.

I noticed that on January 9, 2008 that they finally produced some sort of patch to fix the security vulnerability. Tobias, of the Subdreamer team, posted the coding that people should update. I responded to their post with the following: "Thanks for the suggestion, however I uninstalled SD almost 2 months ago. After the treatment I received on the forums by Brent (deleting posts), Ziad ignoring my emails and my letters, I had filed a complaint with the BBB (which Ziad ignored). I have now forwarded this matter to the Florida Attorney General's Office. If no luck there then a small claims suit in my state will be filed against Subdreamer, LLC. I'm sure this post will be deleted as my others have. At this point all I want is my money back and I'll be on my way." Just as I predicted my post was deleted. I believe it is their Subdream team member Brent that does this. It seems that everytime I post something that may make SD look bad my post gets deleted and then Brent HAS to post. Is it just his arrogance of NEEDING to have the last word? Brent's post was: "Summary: Issue can generate the possibility of spam being published (rare due to SDCMS not being target of spambots, spambot would have to be specifically engineered for this purpose or spam would be manuall attack as in this report) but no permanent damage and no compromise to data or integrity of the site would be possible minus the hassle of spam should it ever happen. Fix was applied via support desk for anyone that required. Patch will be released in update available this week. Thank you all for your patience. Contacts: Support desk can be used for immediate fix application. Support Contact form can be used to communicate with SD LLC. Contact us" Once again Brent is showing his incompetence by trying to portray to others that the security vulnerability is so minor and that it is rare that it would be exploited. By Brent having such little fear of it being anything major it shows his lack of knowledge of security. Then he speaks of how rare the attack may be. This is from lack of knowledge and being naive. Subdreamer and every other popular script out there is vulnerable. Brent states that the attack would have to be engineered. Well Duh! When people, such as script kiddies, attack, they use programs that are already configured with everything needed to connect and attack a website running a particular script. The more Brent runs his mouth the more he shows how incompetent of a technical support person he is. Why is it that Brent and Subdreamer can put so much effort in to deleting posts and trying to cover up the truth, however, cannot even take the time to respond to a customer or to the Better Business Bureau? Finally, Brent thanks everyone for their patience. My issue has nothing to do with whether I have patience or not. It's a simple fact of a company that does not care about the security of their product. It's about the fact that it took the company almost three months to produce a total of five lines of coding.

To date, Ziad Hilal nor Subdreamer have released a patch for the major security vulnerability in the Subdreamer CMS. This morning I received an email from the Better Business Bureau notifying me that they have yet to receive a response from Ziad or Subdreamer. A couple weeks ago I had filed a complaint with the Florida Attorney General's Office, whom referred me to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Consumer Services. I will be forwarding all of the forum posts and emails I have exchanged with Ziad to the FL Dept of Agriculture. I will also be forwarding the email I received from the BBB to them. This is more evidence that Ziad and Subdreamer could care less about the company (Subdreamer, LLC), their customers, or the law. If no progress is made with the complaint filed with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' Division of Consumer Services then I will be filing a small claims lawsuit at my local court house. Since it seems that Ziad and Subdreamer ignore anything dealing with this matter, it is very likely they will ignore the lawsuit and I will win by default. This will be a victory as I can submit the judgment to the Florida Secretary of State as it shows evidence of unethical activity of a corporation. After all, Subdreamer is a corporation (LLC). I will continue to pursue this matter until I receive my refund. The more Ziad ignores the attempts I have made to resolve this matter, the more it looks better for me when I file the lawsuit.

It has been well over two weeks since I sent a letter to Ziad and Subdreamer requesting a refund on the software. The letter was sent out on November 27, 2007. I gave the company over two weeks to make a decision as well as three additional days for the letter to get from Louisiana to Florida. It is quite evident that the unprofessional attitude on their forums is a direct reflection on how they do business. Ziad ignores all of my emails (about three weeks since I sent the last email requesting a refund). Tonight I will be filing a complaint with the Better Busienss Bureau, FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and the Florida Attorney General's Office. I highly suggest that anyone thinking of using Ziad's junky software to use another commercial software or try one of the many freely available CMS (Content Management System) scripts out there. Subdreamer, LLC is probably nothing more than some home-based operation created by unethical scam artists.

I had contacted their registrar to notify them about the fraudulant information they had put for their phone number. I received an email response from their registrar that their client had updated the information in question. I done a WHOIS query to ensure that Subdreamer had updated the phone number. Well, to tell you the truth I don't know. It seems that they purchased a WHOIS privacy guard service. This means that NONE of their information is available. When you do a WHOIS query on the domain subdreamer.com, you get the contact information for the registrar company they registered their domain through. In my experience of doing business online, any company that hides their information is most likely a scam or trying con people.