iePlexus false promises, incomplete work Bothell Washington

iePlexus

iePlexus was a company recommended to me for website development after having had a bad experience with another company, Vibrant Web.

The name of the website in question was OUTDOOR MOOSE.  This E-commerce site was originally developed for the sale of outdoor camping and hiking equipment.  The original creators of this website, Vibrant Web, never completed what they had originally promised me, therefore, I was forced to cut ties with them, salvaging what I could of the original work.

I then searched the internet for a new website development company and the name iePlexus came up.  I checked their reference and it turned out they had a A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.  I originally spoke with their salesman, John Swift, who was an incredibly smooth talking individual promising me any number of things which today turned out to be totally false. John has since left the company leaving me high and dry.

After several discussions with iePlexus I agreed to work with them and signed a contract.  It was a Web 2.1 Finance + Social Agreement whereby iePlexus would complete certain tasks for $3,000 if I provided them with all the necessary information including the files for outdoormoose.com which I had managed to rescue from Vibrant Web.  I transferred all the files to iePlexus. 

Part of the agreement with iePlexus was to also create a blog to promote the products being sold on the outdoor moose site.  The name of this blog was outdoorsandcampingblog.com.  For this blog, I was charged an additional $150.00 for four blog posts monthly of 300 to 500 words.  I stopped paying this money when I discovered the website outdoormoose.com was not secure.  An unsecured website without an SSL certificate is a website that will never rank in the search engines.  Google will not touch a site like this.

When all this was going on I was also in conversations with employees at iePlexus trying to solve some additional problems.  When John Swift left the company, I was assigned a new person in charge of my account, Rory Kenna.  Rory’s contention was that Web2.1 was everything I needed to succeed for promoting the website. Something which is not true, particularly an insecure website impossible to rank on Google.

On another occasion and after some time I called iePlexus again, asking for Rory Kenna.  Rory Kenna was not available and another employee spoke with me.  When I told this employee, I was calling about outdoor moose and why it was not ranking in the search engines, the guy practically laughed in my face.  He told me that my website was dead or soon to be and that there was nothing to do about it.  This sort of shocked me, not only the attitude of this employee and his opinion of my website.

I wrote Rory Kenna asking him to explain to me what was going on and he said, “Your website overall is horrible, not a winner, and needs an upgrade. Upgrade your site! Work with me man! Work with a local designer. Work with somebody to make your site better and stop putting all your development issues on us.”

I then asked him what the $3,000 I paid was for.  And he replied, “The $3000 was for your Web 2.0 Marketing that you already have listed in this email thread. You are confusing the heck out of me. You asked me what you paid for but the agreement is attached in bold at the bottom of your email. It’s a $6000 program no more no less. Initially you were going to pay $3000 down and pay off the rest to $6000. John got you a screaming deal to do it for $3000 out the door.”

So, the $3,000 as for Web 2.0 Marketing.  You can read the actual details of my responses below.  There is plain and simple dereliction of duty and spirit of our original agreement.

B1.1 (Agreed to…) Where is my Gmail account?

B1.2 (Agreed to…) Where is my Google Webmaster Tools account?

B1.3 (Agreed to…) Where is my Google Analytics account?

B1.4 (Agreed to…) Please show me the Google Analytics code on my website and blog

B2.1 (Agreed to…) I saw no evidence of keyword research for the website

B2.2 (Agreed to…) I was never shown the 25 relevant keywords for my website

B3.1  (Agreed to…) I saw no evidence written content of the 4 pages of my website.  What was on the website was done by Vibrant Web and not iePlexus.  I saw no evidence that any of the content was rewritten or adjusted by your company.

B3.2 (Agreed to…) What internal linking did iePlexus do?

B3.3 (Agreed to…) Any optimized web content was totally useless without first having a secure website that Google is ranking on.

B4.1 (Agreed to…) Again, you couldn't have optimized the title and description tags for a website that is not secure.  It is useless endeavor.

B4.2 (Agreed to…) Again, why bother to optimize titles and description on an insecure website?

B5.1 (Agreed to…) I never had a PR phone interview with anyone from iePlexus.

B5.2 (Agreed to…) I already explained that the press release was a total waste of time and energy for a website that Google would not rank because of security issues.

B5.3 (Agreed to…) The link was probably there, but again for what purpose on a website that nobody will see?

B5.4 (Agreed to…) I never saw any evidence that the useless press release was sent to any newswires.

B6.1 (Agreed to…) Vibrant Web owned the domain name "outdoormoose" so I cannot be sure that iePlexius was providing the free hosting for two years.  Please show me the names on the DNS servers.

B6.2 (Agreed to…) I saw some of the blog posts, but found them to be very short and not very well done.  No videos

B6.3 (Agreed to…) What business blog?

B6.4 (Agreed to…) Outdoormoose was not designed by iePlexus nor was any effort made to improve upon the original design.

B7.1 (Agreed to…) Where are the Facebook and Twitter accounts?

B7.2 (Agreed to…) Where is the company Bio?

B7.3 (Agreed to…) There is no evidence that any distribution was ever done.

C1.1 (Agreed to…) Never received as tracking report

C1.2 (Agreed to…) The same response as above.

C1.3 (Agreed to…) The same response as C1.1

C2.1 (Agreed to…) The only communication I had with your blog team was to charge me the monthly fee

C2.2 (Agreed to…) The only positive phone support I received from iePlexus was a very good conversation I had with Jason Thurston.  The rest of the conversations I had were with Rory Kenna and some other employees who basically told me that my website was useless and dead.

C2.3 (Agreed to…) What video blog training?  I complained to the blog team that the blogs should have video but they never did anything about it.

C3.1 (Agreed to…) I was never charged a monthly fee because outdoor moose was not hosted by iePlexus

C3.2 (Agreed to…) Same answer

C3.3 (Agreed to…) Same answer

C4.1 (Agreed to…) I never received any website support

C4.2 (Agreed to…) Same answer

C4.3 (Agreed to…) Same answer

C5.1 (Agreed to…) At $150 a month for four 300-500-word posts is highway robbery with each post costing $37.50.

One final note.  I did speak with the owner of iePlexus, Jason Thurston, about the problems I was having with his team.  It was a good conversation, but with no real conclusions.  We ended it with Jason promising to get back to me “in a few days.”  He never did.

The problem is this, still today iePlexus cannot tell me what they did for $3,000.  If you asked Rory Kenna, it was for the Web 2.0 and social media work which is basically nothing of benefit for outdoor moose.  A site that is not ranking in the search engines and never will.  Web 2.0 is not a technical fix for any website.  It is merely a way to promote a well put together functioning website that is ranking in the search engines.

iePlexus is not to be trusted.  They talk hard and fast, but do not come through with what they promise.  Be careful with them.