Buzz Web Design- Buzzazz - Total Biz 24/7 Business Owners Beware This company will take your money and run Clear Water, Florida, Merrillville, Indiana

2017-06-1610:33:34

Frankly, I was shocked to read this "Rip-Off Report".  Firstly, because it does not report a "Rip-Off", and secondly, because it only reveals the juvenile attitude and questionable mental state of someone who seems disgruntled and desirous of maligning the good name of business owners, with seeming impugnity.

I know, and have done business with Keanan and Kurtis Kintzel, and over the past 3 years, I have only known them to be individuals of the highest ethical standard, and all round nice guys.

The Kintzels are good and trustwirthy people, and their businesses have helped me out tremendously and offer real value to the business community on a short and long term basis.

As to the private and personal information regarding foreclosures and financial solvency, you should be utterly ashamed of yourself.  The falsehoods and half-truths you share would be laughable were it not that they are so dangerous, IF your maliscious attempt werent so half-baked.

Lastly, you bring up their constitutional right to freedom of religion and religious expression. In so doing, you sink to the lowest depths of bottom feeding for attention.  A man has a right in our country, to believe as he so chooses.

Additionally, I have never known a Scientologist who was not an exemplary human being and stellar business person.

I have been employed at Buzzazz for over 7 years.  During my time here, I have gotten to know the principals better than any other employers for which I have ever worked in my 25 year carreer.  The claims made in this report about them and Buzzazz are patently false.

No one here at the company requested or encouraged me to write this rebuttal.  I simply can't let these unwarrented claims to go unanswered.  I have no relationshop with the principals at Buzzazz outside of work.

I am not a Scientologist.  I am an avowed atheist and everyone here knows it.  If there had ever been any attempt to force me to take Scientology "courses" or prosthelytize to me in any way, I would have been out of hear in a heartbeat.  What someone else believes is there own business as long as they don't try to force their beliefs on anyone else.  No one here ever has.

After 7 years at Buzzazz and having held several managenent-level positions, I have found the principals here to be honest, ethical, dependable and more concerned about their clients than themselves.  Many times I have watched as they performed well beyond what was promised a client to the point of non profitability because they couldn't stand the thought of an unsatisfied client.

Buzzazz is not a big corporation as this disgruntled former employee claims.  We have about 20 employees.  This has grown from 4 employees at the time I started here 7 years ago.  This is a family owned and operated business and we value our reputation above all else.  Our clients like us.  If you are considering hiring Buzzazz, you may call the office any time and we'll provide you with more references than you'll ever have time to call.  We've had the same phone number here since I was hired: 727-443-7300.

You are right, Fran. We didn't move until after you left but the design team was moved to the other building into a larger space. This did occur. Sorry you weren't able to be a part of it. So, to say it "never happened" is yet another lie written by you. Fran, it's so incredibly irresponsible of you. You might have said something like, "we were too long in a space too small" or something like that and perhaps I couldn't argue. Physically moving operations is not an easy process and takes a bit of effort and planning. I'm sorry if it took too long in your opinion.

OK, Fran. Here we go again. Please stop being so irresponsible in your writings. I really don't mind confronting your opinions but do not mislead people with your generalities.

I'll try to answer everything here.

Fran states, "The Kintzel's have adopted scientology into their business and do use it as a tool to promote within the company." This is not true. The Kintzel's are Scientologists as am I. We use a management technology in our business that was developed by L. Ron Hubbard. L. Ron hubbard is, indeed the founder of Scientology. The management technology is secular. The Kintzels discovered this to be an extremely valuable and workable management technology long before they were Scientologists. It works. That's why we use it.

We absolutely do not have and never have had "scientology classes" at Buzzazz or any of our other companies. Fran is confusing classes which teach the management technology with religious classes. There is absolutely nothing religious about these courses. Perhaps Fran doesn't know that because he never looked over the material himself.

What we ask our employees to do is understand and use the methods we've chosen to run our business. This is no different than any company on the face of this planet. Nothing else makes sense because an organization cannot survive in any other way. The difference here is that the methods we use were established by a man who also established a religion. That's it.

Fran states, "I am a christian and I won't work for anyone who states that I must stduy their DOCTRINE in order to work for them." Fran, DO NOT MAKE THESE FALSE, MISLEADING STATEMENTS! The word DOCTRINE is most often used in relation to religion but I'll say it again. WE DO NOT AND NEVER HAVE TAUGHT OR REQUIRED OUR EMPLOYEES TO LEARN THE RELIGION OF SCIENTOLOGY! Fran, please produce evidence to the contrary before you continue to print these falsehoods. Truly, I'm willing to look at mistakes we may have made but you haven't produced evidence of one on this point other than simply stating that it happened.

Fran asks, "Why were websites being sold when their were not enough, or not enough competent designers to do the job?" This may, to some degree, be the only salient and valid point that Fran makes. Now, what I'm about to state is my personal opinion and not that of Buzzazz or any of its other management. I believe that we should have hired better designers and designers who were more competent not only at web site design but also as workers and organizers and managers. This is not to say that the designers we had were poor but for the job we had to tackle, we needed better. This is something we have since discovered and corrected and, in fact, our entire backlog of projects which once numbered over 200 is now at a normal range of 10 to 20 which could not even be called a backlog. It is the number of projects in progress.

Fran wrote the following complete lie: "Their solution--> let's hire anyone who replies to this job ad. If they aren't qualified, oh well. We can make our two current designers train the new hires. Offer them extra pay? NAH! That's not cheap. We just hire in someone who has the tiniest jist of how web-design works. We throw them into this backlog mess and see what we get out of it. BTW, we're only gonna pay them minimum wage because their not experienced designers. Who suffer's? Not Buzz. Will the new designers ever make more money? Well, when review time comes around... How many Scientology classes did you participate in? None? Well you're not making an effort to be a part of this company, so we won't reward you. We won't even give you what you deserve for all your hard work. Besides we lose money when we pay you more." Come on man! Who in management did you ever hear say these things? Where did you ever see these things written as policy or ideas that we were operating on? These are your made-up ideas about what you thought was going on. I'll try to take these ideas up one at a time.

"let's hire anyone who replies to this job ad. If they aren't qualified, oh well." I can speak on this as I did most of the hiring. I do have a tendency to give most people a shot at doing the job if I think they can do it. As I saw it, every designer that was hired was capable of doing the work that was currently being done by our designers. I may have been wrong.

"We just hire in someone who has the tiniest jist of how web-design works." Was this you Fran? Who was this? I think everyone I hired certainly had much more than "the tiniest jist" of web design knowledge. If I'm wrong, tell me who! I'm perfectly willing to believe I may have been wrong on this point.

"Who suffer's? Not Buzz." Not true. As stated before, we may have certainly suffered for hiring designers who were not capable enough.

"How many Scientology classes did you participate in?" As stated previously, we offered absolutely no classes on the subject of Scientology. Please produce evidence to the contrary.

"Besides we lose money when we pay you more." What's your point in making this statement? Are you suggesting that we should have paid you more and lost money? I don't know any company doing this successfully.

Some supplementary info: 66% of our current staff are non-Scientologists. Of those, all have all agreed to use the methods and policies and directives of our company for doing their jobs with no objections, certainly none based upon religious beliefs and in doing so, there's been no talk of religion. Now, this is just me telling you this but if you'd like more substantial proof, I'd be perfectly willing to provide it if I can.

It's the same old story here, Fran. You are making general, sweeping statements that don't really reflect any evidence of proof:

"They fired all their new hires who disputed their policies." Really? All? How many? 1, 5, 500? Who? Was this the stated reason they were fired?

"You pissed off a lot of people." Really? How many is a lot? Is it outside of a normal range? Is it a normal percentage considering the total number of customers handled? Were the pissed off customers ever taken care of?

"Buzz does have a successful customer database, but it is greatly outnumbered by those who were ripped-off or terminated for a belief in doing good business." Really? What is the total number of satisfied customers? What is the total number of dissatisfied customers? What is even your guess for those figures? I could tell you if you're right or wrong. I can tell you with tremendous certainty that the number of our satisfied customers greatly outnumbers those who you claim were ripped-off or terminated by Buzzazz and I can prove it. In fact, if you honestly think about, Fran, you would know that's true. Or perhaps not. Maybe you're just making irresponsible comments like that because you believe it to be true but I guarantee that you do not have the facts. I would stake my life and the lives of my children on it!

Again, Fran, I would be more than willing to discuss these issues with you until you are satisfied that you have all the info. I'm perfectly willing to have you disagree with me and us but what really disturbs me is that you don't have the facts, you don't seem to be willing to look at them, you fabricate lies to suit your arguements and you draw conclusions not based upon your direct observations. Call me to discuss this. I don't really have any animosity for you. I'd simply like you to see the truth.

If we state our name that just gives you an opportunity to use that contract you had us sign against us in court and take more money from people who don't deserve this?

To those who were recently fired, I sympythize. Don't let them trick you into giving up anything.

For potential Buzz customer's--> do your research

You don't have to be a victim to find out what we have.

****'They are constantly changing phone numbers and addresses.' Another exaggeration! During the time I mentioned above, we did move our Web business from one of our buldings to another and back again. These locations were blocks apart but had seperate phone systems and thus different phone numbers. I do admit that it created some real difficulties for our customers in reaching us but that has been corrected and it was nearly two years ago.

We have had the same phone number for over a year. Our address has changed locally once in the past year and we did establish an office in Florida a year or so ago. Our local office is now at 109 Library Lane, Valparaiso, IN. We do have a P.O. Box in Florida as many of our corporate dealings are handled out of that office.****

I worked for Buzz in Merrillville, in late '06 and you guys were still in the same building, and still talking of giving the web-design team (er should a say guys as in four of us) more room by moving their department to the next building, which never happened.

The Kintzel's have adopted scientology into their business and do use it as a tool to promote within the company. Is this a business or a church of science?

The Vice President, also my former boss, explained in a contract that WE MUST sign it in order to work there, and "if we choose not to sign the agreement, we would also forfeit our job with their company." Exaggerated? I think not. Sounds like blackmail...

okay, so you can work for anyone right? a legal business shall not discriminate against race, color, origin of descent, RELIGIOUS BELIEFS when hiring from within the public. Am I wrong or are they?

If any former employee's still have this contract it should be posted here to show the validity of these statements. I was too furious at what happened to me, that I destroyed every documentation that they gave to me to take home.

In this contract it explains that these scientology classes were not mandatory, but ask my fellow employee who worked for them, what happened when he refused to take their courses and stated that his beliefs were against this?
I am a christian and I won't work for anyone who states that I must stduy their DOCTRINE in order to work for them. Or, I can continue to work for them, but will remain in stale-mate for the length of my employment.

Above and beyond this violation of personal rights, I firsthand witnessed the operations of bad business from within.
Why were websites being sold when their were not enough, or not enough competent designers to do the job?

Not only was this stressfull for new employees such as myself, but it was just outright wrong to take a backlog of 2-years of websites that had not yet been developed and throw this responsibility on us few designers. (BTW there were only 2 designers there who had remained for longer than two weeks, for a total of six designers, all of whom were not qualified for the job)
And why were these customers of 2-years just now getting their product that they had been paying a monthly, NON-REFUNDABLE service fee for?

My theory... the Kintzel's saw their ship was sinking and had to come up with a fast and CHEAP way out.

Their solution--> let's hire anyone who replies to this job ad. If they aren't qualified, oh well. We can make our two current designers train the new hires. Offer them extra pay? NAH! That's not cheap. We just hire in someone who has the tiniest jist of how web-design works. We throw them into this backlog mess and see what we get out of it. BTW, we're only gonna pay them minimum wage because their not experienced designers. Who suffer's? Not Buzz. Will the new designers ever make more money? Well, when review time comes around... How many Scientology classes did you participate in? None? Well you're not making an effort to be a part of this company, so we won't reward you. We won't even give you what you deserve for all your hard work. Besides we lose money when we pay you more.

Actual question and response brought up in our employee discussions-->

"What if the customers don't like what they're getting after waiting so long?"

Buzz's response sent through the interoffice Go-To boy-->
"That is what they pay a monthly service fee for. To get updates to there sites."

(the customers couldn't cancel because Buzz employees were forced to make their quota and keep these customers paying. It's not the employees fault, it's their job.)

My thoughts-->
"(At a frequency of one free update per month, they must be kidding. Haven't you raped these customer's wallets enough. You should host them for free and give them the site they want for all the money you took from them.)"

My solution--> Boycott, Boycott, Boycott

FACT--> BuzzUS is now BuzzAzz

FACT--> They fired all their new hires who disputed their policies.

FACT--> You pissed off a lot of people.

FACT--> They are cleaning up their trails and trying to make a new name.

FACT--> It's too late.

FACT--> We won't give up until justice is served.

What kind of a business sells recycled long distance, web-hosting, and retail all in one business place?

A business that is looking for a way to scam money from unsuspecting elderly folk and entrepreneurs.

The retail end of it may be the only legitimate part of the business.

FACT--> Buzz does have a successful customer database, but it is greatly outnumbered by those who were ripped-off or terminated for a belief in doing good business.

I can't believe I'm spending more of my valuable time answering one of these irresponsible accusations. How can it be called valuable to give someone the opportunity to publish lies about another without giving the other party fair treatment. Yes, I have been given the opportunity to respond to these accusations and am doing so now but I only found out about this when someone else pointed it out to me. So, it's been published for several weeks without our knowledge of it, thus denying us a fair playing field. In other words, anyone can say most anything and have a good chance at spreading lies without holding those lies up to any sort of truth or other viewpoint at all.

Additionally, when I answered one of these earlier it was not given equal billing on this web site. Someone published lies about us, did not have a high enough level of responsibility put his or her name to the falsities they wrote but their writings receive top billing and, in fact, I've had 2 people tell me since that they couldn't find my rebuttal. Now, I don't have a particularly difficult time finding it but it certainly is not given equal treatment.

I guess the above is really a comment to file in a Ripoff Report against this web site. I don't really have a problem with the site and see potential value in it but they seem to have some unfair practices.

As for this report, I will attempt to answer to it and give my viewpoint. I will begin by saying that my name is Mark Krajewski and I am the Vice President of Administration for Buzzazz. I don't know who the person is who wrote this report but I wonder why it is that they can't muster up enough responsibility to put their name to what they say and write. I would think that one might question the veracity of the accusation based on this point alone.

I would next like to point out that one should beware, in serious situations such as this, of statements such as "Buzzazz, Buzz Web design or Total Biz 24/7 whatever name they are using this week." While we did change the name of our web design business twice in it's infancy, it wasn't over a period of weeks. Let's only state facts here please! This business, over the period of about two years, went through a very dramatic reorganization. We did change the name twice in that time period. Once as we merged the web business with two other businesses we had at the time, thus giving them all the same name and the second change occurred when we decided to seperate the companies again and actually folded the other two organizations.

"They are constantly changing phone numbers and addresses." Another exaggeration! During the time I mentioned above, we did move our Web business from one of our buldings to another and back again. These locations were blocks apart but had seperate phone systems and thus different phone numbers. I do admit that it created some real difficulties for our customers in reaching us but that has been corrected and it was nearly two years ago. We have had the same phone number for over a year. Our address has changed locally once in the past year and we did establish an office in Florida a year or so ago. Our local office is now at 109 Library Lane, Valparaiso, IN. We do have a P.O. Box in Florida as many of our corporate dealings are handled out of that office.

That brings up another interesting point. I don't know who wrote this report but if the person is really from Portage Indiana as they say, they haven't worked for us for at least a year and probably longer. So they have little right at all to speak about how our organization is operating today. We are a young company and we admittedly experienced a good deal of growing pains as we were evolving. This person is very obviously speaking about his or her viewpoint of our operation as it was well over a year ago. In the past two years, we have always moved in the direction of improvement.

It is interesting that this person states that "They call businessess on the phone and try to con you in." In the next paragraph he or she states, "My position was sales and customer service." OK. Well, who was doing the conning that this person perceived was going on? Our company directives and policies explicitly forbid any sort of actions that might be construed as a "con." Buzzazz is responsible for the actions of its representatives. There is no doubt about that. Perhaps that's why this person no longer is working with us.

A little over a year ago we made the decision to completely reorganize and, for all intents and purposes, restaff our company. We had problems. We had fantastic potential but we were too far from where we knew we could be and we knew that a part of the solution was to find more capable employees. Let me iterate that that was A PART of the solution. So, while we took responsibility for what we had created and did something about it, what has this person done? A year or more later he or she gets on a web site and publishes exaggerations and lies about a situation to which they contributed and about which they did nothing but blame it completely on others.

This person said, "They promise the world yet they are never available to get on the phone." Well, I don't know what more I can say that I haven't already. "They promise the world..." What specifically do we promise that one could considered to be "the world?" I'd really like to stick to facts only and I'm perfectly willing to confront our shortcomings if someone would like to present facts!!!!! This is a broad generality that's all too easy to state without talking about specific facts.

I have taken some very difficult phone calls from customers over the years but I've almost always confronted them and tried to come to a resolution. DO NOT USE WORDS LIKE "NEVER" WHEN THEY COME NO WHERE CLOSE TO BEING TRUE!!!!

"On their current site they show a lot of lies." I will take a phone call from anyone who would like to point out a lie that we have on our web site. Please! If there is one there, I will correct it but I don't think we have one there. You may call me on my cell phone at 219-670-6275. This person follows that statement with, "So if you get a site your stuck for a minimum of 3 years. You can leave at anytime if you choose to pay the difference of the remaining 3 year term." In addition to the improper grammar used here, this is not exactly our policy but even if it was, where is the lie in this? This is a published term of agreement with our customers. You may have a disagreement with the policy but we are very upfront about it - to the point of publishing it publicly on our web site and our order form. There happens to be a good reason for such a policy. Our design fees are about 25% to 30% below our market for the quality of work we do. We do that as an incentive for new customers to join us knowing that they will likely make up that initial loss to us over the years as they continue to use our service. What we need protection from and the reason for that policy is that a prospective customer could conceivably take advantage of our low design prices and then simply move on when the design work is complete. We will do design-only work but we charge more for it and that fact is published as well.

I know I haven't answered each an every point this person has made but I honestly don't feel like writing any more here as I feel like I've sort of gone on too long already. I hope you will consider all that I have said here as evidence that what this person writes may be considered, at best, to be fringing on total falsehood. I will take a phone call from anyone to discuss these matters if you wish. I doubt you'll get such an offer from this coward who doesn't put his or her name to their rantings.

Mark Krajewski
Vice President of Administration
Buzzazz Internet Marketing