#1 Employee
AUTHOR: Russ - Bellevue (U.S.A.)
SUBMITTED: Thursday, April 02, 2009
POSTED: Thursday, April 02, 2009
We at FutureRanking.com will not participate in slandering or bad mouthing any companies in Forums, Blogs, Websites or any other social media websites.
We are sorry that you feel this way. We would like to help you in a professional manner.
You can contact us directly at 1.800.314.2060 or email customerservice@futureranking.com. If you are outside the United States then you may call (425) 296-0280 to be connected with a manager.
Respectfully,
Future Ranking Staff
#2 Update By Author
AUTHOR: www.Gpsfrontier.com - Lake Havasu City (U.S.A.)
SUBMITTED: Tuesday, April 21, 2009
POSTED: Tuesday, April 21, 2009
This a copy of the reply letter from future Ranking to the Arizona's state Attorney Generals office about my complaint. There are so many inaccuracy's in it that I had to number them and then post the fact below, one by one.
Future Ranking Reply:
Jeff Sanders was solicited by our sales representative by the name of Joel, around the time of March 10th 2008. Jeff was presented with information on the marketing service we offer, commonly referred to as Search Engine Optimization or '·SEO". (1) He purchased our smaller program, which we refer to as the Steel marketing program. The program comes with 15 researched keywotds and submissions to the 1000+ directories and major search engines. This service is done in an attempt to increase the ranking results, throughout the different search engines, of the client's website. (2) It is an 8 month program whereby the client agrees to pay us a set up fee and nionthly maintenance fee for every month the website is marketed. (3) After 8 continuous months of marketing if we have failed to meet the guarantee stated explicitly in their service agreement then the client is due a refund of their initial set up fee.
(4) We did waive the client's monthly fee, after some confusion, which would have totaled $479.92 over the 8 month period. It was my assumption that we had done this because the client was having difficulity paying it and we were trying to help him stay in the program. (5) Canceling before the 8 month program is up voids the client's warranty and we stop all work on the site. (6) Waiving monthlies was something we did to help Jeff out in his financial situation. (7) Jeff was provided copies of his ranking reports on May 28, July 18, and September 10th, all showing progress from one report to the next. Submission reports were run every month we marketing his website and we do have copies of all reports saved in his file.
(8) Around September 30th the client began leaving messages and emails expressing great stress and concem over our marketing program, despite the increase in rankings. Our concern was that since we were not collecting monthly maintenance fees we were actually losing money by paying our technicians to marketing his website. (9) Eager to get the client results he would be happy over, we put his keywords back through to the marketing department and changes were made to his program that we were confident would bring better results. (10) It should be pointed out that we consider good results, good rankings, however most clients base their satisfaction over how much traffic and sales the website brings, of which we have no control over and thus cannot take responsibility for.
(11) We did re-design Jeff's keywords, free of cost, and were attempting to obtain the user name and password to his website in November of 2008 so that we could upload these new keywords to his website. (12) After several back and forth emails, with customer service, it was obvious Jeff was not going to supply us with this information and thus we could not perform the changes we wanted to make. (13) He was informed that his warranty was met by previous ranking reports and we believe this led to him not wanting to work with us further. Since he was not paying the monthly fee, we chose to cancel his program, (14) as his warranty was met. (15) He wanted us to make good on the program he purchased and we tried but received little cooperation from the client in tile end and we were at a stand-stili.
As far as the other reports included in Jcff·s complaint, Ripoffreport.com is not a fair and accurate reporting agency and thus we put no importance into anything that can be found on that website. Often companies try and debate issues of fraud and dissatisfaction but as (16) most clients are rather emotional it usually just turns into biased banter. We do not engage in online slander, which is primarily what that website is used for (17) Please direct any concerns as to the validity of out company or the way we handle complaints to the BBB, or Better Business Bureau, where we currently have a B rating.
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If more infonnation is needed, please contact me through the information below.
Russ ,Tonnson
Project Manager
Future Ranking 425.296.0280
russ@futureranking.com
The Facts:
(1) I did not choose any progran myself Joel said was trying to lower the price of the plan that was to market 30 keywords of my choosing. I was told after I paid, that I can choose 15 keywords and I didn't complain because I wanted my site in the rankings for something as I said in my orignial complaint.
(2) I was told by Joel that the monthly fees wouldn't start until my website was on the first page of the search results for all of my keywords and this was a must for me because as I told Joel I can only afford to pay one or the other but not both.
(3) This is what I want but have not received and have been told I am not going to. So this guarantee is actually useless.
(4) Again they were not doing me any favor, but only what I was promised from Joel because I told him I wasn't able to pay both setup fees and monthly fees.
(5) I never cancelled the (so called) service as they are trying to imply.
(6) They keep referring to this same point, and for whatever reason they desided to wave the monthly fees that is what I was promised by Joel, (that I did not need to worry about the monthly fees until my website was on the first page of the search results for my chosen keywords.)
(7) Yes I did recive the ranking reports. But as I stated in my original complaint that the ranking report in July showed that I was listed on the second or third page of the search engines for a couple of my keywords, and that had me excited to see some progress. But the report in september showed that my website was not listed by Google, Yahoo or MSN for my keywords again and whatever little progress had been made was gone. I don't have all of the reports but I do still have the last one from sepetember and it shows no actual progress. In an attempt to make the numbers better they added "GpsFrontier" and "GpsFrontier.com" to the report and for those words only is my site listed in the search engines. First that is my domain name and not one of my keywords, second of course I would have rankings for those words, that is my domain name and there is no competition for that, and as a keyword is useless because to know enough to use them to find my site you would need to know I sell GPS products and for that you would have needed to visited my site before.
(8) Again as I stated in my orignal complaint I called Brian in customer service because I recived this report that showed a backword direction of progress and was concerned as to why this happened. Brian told me that he was not a technition and that he would need to find out from the tech support and he would call me back. The next day or the day after I recived this E-mail:
"avalon@futureranking.com 9/24/08
Jeff,
I apologize that your ranking report wasn't more impressive. We are going to continue to market the site for another two months in hopes of bringing better results. Unfortunately we have fulfilled our part off the contract so when the two months are up you will not be receiving a refund. If you have any questions please give Russ our project manager a call at 425-296-0280. Other than that if you have questions about your marketing please give me a call. thank you
Avalon
425-296-0283
(9) If they did anything they did not tell me about it because that E-mail was the last I heard from them until november demanding my personal information. PS. the keywords are supposed to be of my choosing and not what they want to use.
(10) I also consider good results good rankings and not visits or sales. I was promised that within 8 months my website would be listed on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN for my chosen keywords or my money back (their usless 100% money back guarantee). That is all that I expect but at the end of the 8 months my website was not getting rankings with any search engines at all for my keywords and apparently this is what they consider doing their job. That is right where my website was in the search engine rankings before I paid them a penny.
(11) A re-design of my keywords is a laugh, first it is not hard to come up with 15 keywords that target a websites content second it is my website and also my choice of keywords to use for marketing it and as I said earler they never contacted me again until demanding my personal information. Also to do what they are trying to make sound difficult or technical by calling it "uploading the keywords" as anyone who has a website knows all you need to do is take the keywords, copy and paste them into the meta tags for the pages of the website you want those keywords targeted. There is no reason they need my personal information to do what they call "uploadingkeywords"
(12) Absolutely, I am not going to give anyone sensitive personal information without knowing why. After demanding the information as I stated in my orignal complaint I sent them an E-mail asking what they plan to do to my site and they said "check code" and the "keywords" first of all there is no "code" they need to deal with to market my site. That is an attempt to make things sound technical. With respect to the keywords I explained that there is nothing to copying and pasting the words into the meta tags but a simple task. But in the off chance that they were trying to make a good faith effort to do something I sent them an E-mail asking for instructions on what they needed done and that I would take care of it. I got this E-mail in responce:
cancellations@futureranking.com
11/17/08
Jeff,
This email is your confirmation that your marketing program has been canceled. Let us know if there is anything additional you need. If this email was sent in error please call the customer service department at the number below.
Respectfully,
Future Ranking Staff
(800) 314.2060
(13) I was not informed about anything except 2 months earlier where they had already decided I was not going to receive any refund and that report did not even come close to having my website show on the first page of the search engine rankings for my keywords. They added my domain name (GpsFrontier and GpsFrontier.com) to the list of keywords to make the report look better, but as keywords is usless and apparently they thought I was too stupid to notice that. I do not trust this company due to their track record with me and I am not going to give them my personal information, that is what led to them not wanting to work with me (as if they ever did anything but try to get money out of me).
(14) The guarantee was within 8 months that my website would be listed on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN search resoults for my chosen keywords. They haven't even remotely begun to accomplish this after 8 months. The best they can come up with is using my domain name as a keyword and that is pointless and useless. As well as not one of my keywords. How they can say that they met the requirements of my warranty is beyond my comprehension. They Just don't want to give me my money back and I am sure that they weren't going to from the very beginning. f the company and giving them the information that can lead to them getting my PayPal account information as well as adding scripts to my site that can be used for any number of reasons like harvesting customer account information or installing a virus to my visitor's computers. I feel that it would be extremly unwise as well as irresponsible of me to give them my personal account information.
(16) I am not emotional about this but I angry about being ripped off. It is even worse to think they will get away with it and keep on ripping other people off too. They should be stopped. I would like to get my $1050.00 back and believe without a doubt I deserve to get it back.
(17) Rest assured I will be contacting the BBB.