SEOP, Inc. Mr. Manuel Clark; Ms. Kimberly Pitcher SEOP Search Engine Optimization / Marketing SANTA ANA California

My dispute with SEOP has been fully and finally settled to my complete satisfaction.

Feb 5:   I posted an unfavorable review of SEOP on ripoffreport.com

Feb 10:  Kimberly Pitcher calls me and threatens to sue me for liable if I don’t remove the post.  I refuse, and say that what I posted was true.  She disagrees with me and continues to rample on, so I hang up on her.  I wonder, Did her boss at SEOP put her up to this?

Later same day: I send an email to Manuel Clark, Kim’s boss, telling him that Kim called me. 

Later same day:  Manny emails back and says that Kim shouldn’t have called me and we arrange to speak with the new COO of SEOP to see if we can “work things out.”

Feb 11, 3 pm:  A 45 minute conference call with Manny and the new COO of SEOP, Yasir (spelling?) (didn’t get last name), tells me his view of what happened.  In short, it’s all my webmater’s fault…Kim’s team didn’t have access to do what they needed to do.

Then I recite what I wrote earlier:

Point one

I paid seop for 4 months and did not get 4 months of work out of them.  I signed an agreement and authorized payment of $1500 per month on Sept 26, 2014.  Three more payments were made, one each in oct, nov, and dec.  Four months of payments would have me paid up until jan 25.  At my request, Manny suspended my account on Jan 12.  So there should be no argument that seop owes me for 13 days.  The very fact that seop has not already refunded me for these days is prima facia evedence that seop is not a reputible firm and is – even continuing to this very day -- engaging in a scam.

Point two

I paid seop $6000 and have the only one thing to show for it: a half page of text content inappropriately put at the top of my website’s product page.  Which, by the way, wasn’t even written by seop but is my own words cut and pasted from other pages and which we had to move to the bottom of the page so as not to interfeer with people ordering product.  That’s it! I paid $6000 for half a page of content that I myself wrote and which was inappropriaty pasted onto our product page.

We know exactly the condition of my website and shopping cart before seop was hired, we carefully monitored seop’s activities during their empoyment, and made an audit of seop’s “work” after seop.  We have come to the conclution that the only thing of (dubious) value that seop gave us is the aformented half page of content.  There were no changes made to meta descriptions, title tags, url structure, category structure, deleting pages, image alts, h1s, h2s, blog posts, etc.  things -- that if done properly -- might have an effect on my search engine rating.

Why is this the case?  That is the subject of point 3      

Manny is aware of the detailed chronology of events I first recited to Manny over the phone and later emailed to him.  90% of this chronology details us giving access to Kimberly’s team, Kimberly’s team members saying the access didn’t work (which it did), and when Kimberly’s team did finally get to where they wanted to go, they broke things that we had to fix.  I’m not going into detail about this because I have given manny most of these details in a previous telephone call.  And to add insult to injury we are still finding things that seop has screwed up and we are in the process of fixing. 

The easiest explanation for this is that the members of Kimberly’s team were incompetant.  The other explantion is more disengeneous.  And that brings me to point 4     

In the chronology, my webmaster offered 3 times to make all of the changes Kimberly’s team wanted to make. Three times my webmaster made this offer and 3 times he was ignored by Kimberly and her team.  My webmaster wrote the code for my website and his associate wrote the code for my shopping cart.  They know this website and shopping cart inside and out.  Certainly they could have made all these changes quicker and more accurately than any of Kimberly’s team members could. 

I can think of only one reason why they didn’t want the changes to be made quicker and more accurately.  Because, if that were done, it would soon become obvious that these changes would have no effect on my search engine rating and they would be found out as a disreputable firm trying to string along poor unsuspecting website owners by trying to make them believe that they are not getting results because they are not getting cooperation from the website owner's webmaster.             

Let me summerize the salient facts:

1) seop has done precious little for the $6000 they were paid

2) I have no doubt that I can clearly document that seop did next to nothing for the $6000 I paid them and win my case in small claims court.

What ensued after reading my statement was an argument.  Not once did Yasir address any of my points directly.  He stuck to his talking points: lack of access, lack of access, lack of access.  Finally I had had enough: I told him that I can prove that my webmaster, on at least 3 separate occasions offered to do all of the changes that Kimberly’s team wanted to make.  So access was never an issue!!!.  I said, “If you use that argument in a court of law, I will chew you up and spit you out on the courtroom floor!!!”

That, at least, slowed him down.

Yasir did make an offer: SEOP will work for 3 months for free and Yasir will supervise their work. 

I told him that, according to my experience with them, SEOP empolyees don’t have a clue what they are doing and that he would have to make me a better offer than that.  Yasir agreed to put together an offer and email it to me.  He has yet to make me an offer.

February 26: I get a voicemail from Ms. Eileen Spadoni who says she is a lawyer for SEOP and wants to see if we can work things out.  I call her back and leave a message on her cell phone.  In the next 4 days I leave several messages on her cell phone. 

March 2: I send an email to Mr. Manuel Clark telling him that their lawyer doesn’t return her phone calls.

Later, same day: Spadoni finally gets around to calling me and I am ready with my talking points.  Told her that before I filed suit against SEOP I asked my webmaster to conduct an audit of everything that SEOP did, during the 4 months that SEOP was employed, that could possibly have any effect upon my SEO ranking.  For example: changes to content such as adding content, removing content, editing content, url changes, url deletions, category changes, changes to meta-tags, meta-descriptions and title tags, removing bad backlinks, adding good backlinks, writing blog posts, engaging social media, etc.

The only changes SEOP made in those 4 months were 2 FTP changes which relate to access NOT SEO.  So, my webmaster’s answer to the questions, “What did SEOP do?” was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Oh, and by the way, on January 16^th I asked Mr. Manuel Clark of SEOP to send me a report of what SEOP had done.  He promised to send it, but he has yet to do so.  So, it seems that SEOP is admitting, by the lack of said report, that they have provided me ABSOLUTLY NOTHING of value for the six thousand dollars I paid them.

My webmaster is willing to stand next to me in small claims court with a laptop computer and prove to the judge that SEOP has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING of value for the six thousand dollars I paid them.

Let me tell you why my webmaster is downright eager to spend his valuable time doing this.  Kimberly Pitcher, Manuel Clark and Yasir, SEOP’s brand new Chief Operations Officer are blaming HIM for their own incompetence.  They are claiming that my webmaster denied them sufficient access to make the needed changes.  This is the sum total of their entire defense, and it really pisses off my webmaster.  As an attorney, I’m sure you understand that, sometimes, the only way a sufficiently pissed-off person can be pacified is by having his day in court.

We can, very easily, demonstrate that the access claim is a fairy tale.  We have detailed records of every Log-in and Password my webmaster gave Kimberly’s technicians so they could access whatever portions of my website and shopping cart they requested.  We also have a record of every keystroke SEOP’s technicians used to gain access to my website and shopping cart, where they went once inside, and what they did when they got there.

What SEOP’s technicians did was: 1) repeatedly used the wrong Log-in and Passwords for the areas that they were trying to access, and 2) once they finally got in, repeatedly broke things; things that my webmaster had to fix. 

(Another reason my webmaster is looking forward to testifying is because he and his team spent many man-hours fixing Team Kimberly’s mistakes, which he refers to in one email as “mistakes only a beginner could make”).

In short, we can prove that Team Kimberly’s technicians were incompetent b***s who, if they were having access problems, they were problems of their own making and had nothing to do with my webmaster.   

And yet another reason why my webmaster is chomping at the bit to get to court is that, very early on, he offered to do all of SEOP’s work for them.  It’s right there is one of his first emails to Kimberly: he states, “tell me what changes you want to make and I will make them for you.”  A very generous offer, I think. 

So, even if Team Kimberly was having access problems (of its own making) it had an out.  All the technicians needed to do was to tell my webmaster what changes they wanted to make and he would have made those changes for them.  NOT ONCE did they take advantage of this very generous offer, even though this offer was made repeatedly in emails and verbally when my webmaster was taking directly to the technicians over the phone.   

What this means to you and to SEOP is: If the person representing SEOP in court tries to use “access” as the reason for taking my six thousand dollars and giving me back ABSOLUTLELY NOTHING of value in return, my webmaster and I will CHEW THEM UP AND SPIT THEM OUT ON THE COURTROOM FLOOR.

Let me give you some friendly advice:

What SEOP really wants is to avoid a judgment against them.  They want to avoid a judgment against them, even it’s only one red cent, because a judgment against them means that I will be able to post the fact that I took SEOP to court and won my case against them on websites such as Ripoff Report (there are many other similar sites).  This would give me great credibility!

If I took a big company like SEOP to court and won, it would mean -- in the minds of those reading the report -- that the judge is validating everything  I have written in the report as true.  This transforms everything in the report from something written by a guy who has an axe to grind to the Absolute Truth!

Not only do such reports scare off prospects from doing business with SEOP, they may even encourage others who have been ripped off by SEOP to file suits against them.  Or, at least, to be more assertive in demanding money back from SEOP because they think they could actually win if they took SEOP to court!

If you truly represent the interests of SEOP, you will do everything in your power to prevent this scenario from becoming reality.  This, of course, means recommending to the Decision Makers at SEOP to do whatever it takes to prevent even the possibility of this happening.  

SEOP has stolen $6000 from me (taking my money and giving me nothing of value in return is the very definition of theft!).  In order to make me whole, SEOP must return my $6000.  Tell SEOP that I will not accept any offer of a number of free months of SEOP’s “services.”  I wouldn’t let an SEOP tech-boob within a thousand miles of my website!  I will also not accept any offer less than $6000 (I should let SEOP steal $1000, $2000 or $3000 from me?  Why Would I Do That!!!???

Tell them if they don’t want to refund me my $6000, then I will win a judgment of $5000 against them in court and will continue to do my civic duty and share my experiences (all of them truthful) with SEOP as far and as wide as possible.  After all, everyone should have a hobby!

Later, same day: I get a call from Gary E Mastin, another SEOP lawyer who says that “because I have issues with Spadoni,” he has been assigned to my case.  I tell him that I spent a good deal of time with Spadoni and am not inclined to repeat that with him.  So I emailed him my talking points.

I really don’t see the point in SEOP hiring lawyers and having them call me.  Especially since neither of these two lawyers had been empowered by SEOP to make me an offer.  What’s the point in spending money on lawyers unless you want them to negotiate a deal?  Do they expect me to go away  just because a real live lawer calls me?  For the money they are spending on lawyers they could have refunded me in full!  How stupid is that?  Every time I have an interaction with SEOP my opinion of them gets progressively worse.  Who’s making the decisions over there: The Three Stooges?