Who Can You Trust – My Story

How a reputable digital marketing agency with a 20 years experience providing web design and management services has badly let itself down.

My warning here is be careful who you partner with.

I’ve not named the company in this article – instead I’ve substituted the company’s name with (company)

I entered into a Website and Internet Marketing Partnership with (company) in December 2020 to update my website and provide marketing support for two years.

The mistake I made was not appreciating what Clause 4 in their Terms and Conditions allowed (company) to do.

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When the time came to upgrade my 5 year-old Traveljunkies.com website, I chose a company that was forward looking and had a good reputation. I’ve been customer of this company for many years so I knew who I was dealing with and felt I could trust them.
That was another mistake.

After discussions and agreement on what was required, (company) started work in January 2021 to upgrade my website, or so I thought.

All went quiet and on 4 March 2021 the Account Manager presented her website.
It was a not an update to my original website as we’d agreed but a completely different website with so many mistakes that it was unusable. She did this without my knowledge or agreement.

At a review with the Account Manager and her boss on 4 May 2021 I was assured that the website they had produced was good for my business and the errors would be corrected.

A year later this work was still not finished.

The website developed by (company) still contained errors, the most serious being the Account Manager had failed to correctly load nearly 2400 customers from the .csv file I had provided.
Instead of showing 2635 customers, only 252 were in the All Customers list.
When (Company) saw the errors the Account Manger had made, they replaced her.

In August 2022 following a phone call with (company’s) management, I called a halt to discuss when (company) would finish the work and what was the best way to move forward.

Without answering my questions, (company) made an offer that was far from acceptable and meant I would have to continue to work with them and pay them. As I no longer wanted to work with a company I couldn’t trust, I asked for a refund.
(Company) said they were not prepared to refund me because of the the work they had done.
What they failed to admit was that most of the work they had done, and charged me for, was to correct their own mistakes caused in the first place by their Account Manager.

I then sought the opinion of two other companies and they both told me the website developed by (company) was for travel agents, and not suitable for my business. Traveljunkies is a marketing company, not a travel agent.

Both companies felt that (company) couldn’t be trusted and I had been treated very badly. I passed this comment on to (company’s) management.

Clearly worried about their competitors comments, (company) told me that all future correspondence would be handled by their solicitors.

In their email to me the solicitors warned me about making these comments known and quoted Clause 4 of (company’s) Terms and Conditions.

( Company Headline )
WEBSITE AND INTERNET MARKETING PARTNERSHIP TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Clause 4. Refunds for all or some payments made are not permitted under any circumstances including business downturn, closure of business, ill health or family issues. You are free to cancel this agreement anytime and you agree not to pursue any back dated refund or indemnity claims against (company)

(company’s) solicitors added … Consequently, (company) has no obligation to pay any refund and you have agreed not to pursue any claim for a refund or an indemnity. Any claim made would be struck out accordingly.

This should be a warning to anyone dealing with a company who has Terms and Conditions like this which are totally one-sided with no regard of their customers.
It means a customer can’t claim a refund even if (company) screw up or are in default when they don’t even do their work defined in the contract.
This is the case here.

What has (company) failed to do?

The Agreement says that in addition to hosting and managing my website for two years the following eleven clauses, in bold below, will be performed by (company).
These are the tasks in the Agreement that (company) should have done and for which they have charged me.
Only three were even started and my comments are in italics beneath each item.

>  Our media team will produce a home page video.
A video was produced for the first website but I no longer have access to it.

>  Create up to five additional web pages each month for two years
This hasn’t been done

>  Produce up to two additional videos for you each year
This hasn’t been done

>  Install the (company’s) Email Autoresponder on your website.
This may have been done but I’ve not seen it nor used it

>  Create or re-design your Facebook business page
They have not done any work on my Facebook business page.

>  Create or re-design your Linkedin business page
They have not done any work on my Linkedin business page.

>  Create or re-design your Twitter page
They have not done any work on my Twitter page.

>  Write and post weekly posts for two years on Facebook
Posts were posted for 6 weeks then cancelled because the website produced by (company) still contained errors. I wasn’t prepared to promote my business with a website that was unusable and, quite frankly, an embarrassment.

>  Write and post weekly posts for two years on Instagram
As above. Posts were made for 6 weeks then cancelled because the website produced by (company) still contained errors.

>  Write and post weekly posts for two years on Linkedin
They have not posted anything on Linkedin

>  Write and post weekly posts for two years on Twitter
They have not posted anything on Twitter

I can post the full copy of the Agreement if required.

(Company) then decided to produce a second website but this still contained the same errors they hadn’t corrected in the previous website, most importantly the omission of 2380 businesses in All Countries Worldwide. This alone made the second website unusable.

I haven’t named the company in this document but as I’m now having to pay another company to do the work (company) failed to deliver, I expect (company) to step up to their responsibilities, act honourably and refund money they have taken from me for work they did to correct their own mistakes and for work they haven’t done.

(Company) and I have exchanged more than 100 emails and they have the .csv file which contains the full list of 2635 customers, all of which support my story. These and screenshots of the websites (company) produced are available.

I’m still waiting for (company) to do the right thing and refund the money I have paid.

Cliff Chapman
Traveljunkies
Helping you find customers by helping customers find you.