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Comments:
i was called by BT customer st in december 09. after a 90 minute phone call i agreed to pay a £353 setup fee and £82 per month for what i thought was SEO for my personal website. obviously what i got was something very different. i tried canceling the contract as soon as i realised but without success. i then sent a letter stating they were in breach of contract and gave them 14 days to rectify the situation. they were unwilling to do this so i made a claim against them in court.
their legal team have sent me a document outlining the defense against my claims. one point i raised was that there are many other people in the same position as myself who have been mis-sold a service by BT Customer St. their response was that they have no knowledge of this and i have no evidence to suggest so. i included links to several of the many webpages where people have complained about them, however this does not seem to be substantial enough. if anyone would be willing to briefly outline their complaint and send it to me i would be very grateful. maybe we can finally expose this company for how they have exploited many small businesses and get some justice.
please send your replies to David@DavAshMusic.com
Aha - so there is a cooling off period!!! Is this a statutory law? I offer you my support, and would be interested to know how you got on with BT Customer Street in the Small Claims Court.
I am a small business person running a holistic bodywork business, and I was sold this package over the phone with persuasive sales tactics that promised state of the art web design and professional support with writing copy, and all sorts of cunning search engine tricks to get my customers to find me. What they delivered was truly pathetic. The advertising copy was ridiculous, and the design was very cheap and boring. They then tell you to write and design the site yourself, having sold you a 'service'. Nine months afterwards, I have received ONE client from this website.
I called to cancel the day after I agreed to the package on the phone (they have no record of that call - but have records of all my other calls). They told me that I couldn't cancel, because as a business contract, there was no cooling off period. It seems that they were breaking the law therefore, and I am going to pursue them for the money they have taken off me.
I find their business practices highly unethical. They don't seem to realise that the people they target, iridologists, osteopaths, counsellors, life coaches, herbalists and so on do work under a serious code of ethics whilst serving the public. When we have an unsatisfied customer, we refund their fee. It takes a lot of money, time and effort to train in your chosen craft, and then to get exploited by a company that operates a ineffective service that you cannot get out of paying for for a year because of a 5 minute decision is enough to make you worse than sick.
I have decided to go to my MP about this, and now I have seen how many people have suffered, I will not stop until I get my money back.
Hello everyone, I am preparing to take BT Customer st to the small claims court. I feel with having a letter which tells me I have a five day cooling off period I have a good chance of success. Its now nearly two years since I spoke on the telephone to them when they mis sold a package to me which can only be described as laughable inconcise and totally flawed and incidentally has produced zero leads let alone any business.
These people need to be brought to justice and I intend to do it soon.
Rob
I was coaxed into advertising with BT Customer
Street. The websites they have created are to a
very poor standard and are not representative of
me or my company. I already had my own website
set up that is perfect but with their aggressive
sales techniques and impressive promises I was pushed into parting with a large amount of money.
I want out of this contract but I don't know who
to complain to or who to contact as there is no
information about this on their website.
Please help.
Customer Street DID NOT IMPROVE my businees for the year contract. In short waste of time. Discovered I was getting hits from all over the world from certain countries. Found out that my Hits were mainly due to 'unusual' addies. Tried to cancel, but was ignored due to the fact I had tied myself into a 12 month contract. You can do the same thing cheaper with your own software. Total cost was £200 set up and 12 payments of £34.44 OUCH!!! By the way I only got 2 customers in 12 months and that was advertiing acheap deal on driving lessons 10 for £150. (Average driving lesson price £19)
I would just like to say i stupidly signed up with this company. After refusing to pay them i got a letter from collections, all i had to pay was my outstanding bill and the contract is now void so i am not tied in for 12months. I paid £103 which was for 3 months arrears and thats the end of customer street!
My advice would be to not pay them and wait for it to go to a debt collection and just pay them and ask them to cancel the contract with customer street. Easier than going to court.
In my last posting about BT Customer street I rated them Bad Company. This has now gone to 4, as following my complaints they have halved my monthly direct debits to £19.95. Be advised that verbal contracts with them are not covered by the Consumer protection act. If you get reeled into breaking your golden rule of never giving your details over the phone, as I was in a moment of madness, your call was recorded and becomes a legal instrument. This is seen as a `business to business` contract, so there is no cooling off period. My advice for the more rational businessperson is set up your own website and do the whole thing yourself.
I am just so angry each month when I look at my bank statement. I am still awaiting an answer to my letters of complaint which I sent to the Managing Director he is most likely Somewhere spending the money BT have given him. They just don't give a **** about it, you or anything all they want is your money. Best thing to do is not waste your time even listerning and most of all don't give them any money they are just hopeless you will never get what they have promised. Most of what is on this site I have experenced. They never got it right from the begining and they have no right to be in business. Appauling people and I want my money back.
Hi Gary443695, Customer Street has high levels of staff training in place to ensure that our staff deliver to the customer accurate descriptions of how the package works as well as exactly what it can and can’t do.
The volume of sales calls that we make mean it is impossible to listen to every call made each day but calls are randomly sampled throughout the day and if a member of the sales team are promoting something that is not factually correct then we will always take immediate steps to make sure this is addressed. We value our brand and reputation as being able to deliver an award wining service which is pushing our market leading innovation in the promotion of small businesses ever higher.
Other than changing your mind was there any other reason for wanting to cancel the package? I am not sure how you could make a decision that we had lied to you and could not deliver the product that you were sold in the space of less thank a day. As ever though I am happy to have your individual account reviewed and look forward to hearing from you with your account details.
Hi Cunningham Construction, I can see having logged into your site that you have regularly logged I to the software yourself and made alterations to the content.
You have extra pages on there already but I noted that one page unparticular has failed the seo rating because the content does not relate to your keyword and headings, density, descriptions etc are not to the right levels. We have optimised your first page and your site is now achieving a whole host of positions on the first page of Google under different search terms.
It is great that you have shown a keen interest in making amendments to your own site yourself but some of the changes that you have made will be viewed by Google as trying to “spam” them and can actually be doing your rankings more harm than good.
I have spoken to our SEO team who create our own directory websites and trade portals and have asked them to have a look at the site for you to make a few amendments which will pull together the benefits of the rapidsite with the content that you have already provided and we will be in contact shortly to discuss the changes that will be beneficial.
Hi Fair2087, whilst you say that you never had a service provided we can’t tell what the accurate situation is without checking your account notes. Three years ago we introduced new procedures and policies which would mean that our customers were dealt with far more effectively in respect to contacting them regarding outstanding arrears on their accounts.
It is now impossible to slip through these procedures if there is a problem with a payment so all I can assume is that this must be a historic case. As with all our dealings with customers we make sure that those customers with older debt are listened to before proceeding with escalating the action taken.
We will only expect customers to pay for debt on their accounts when it is genuinely due and I can ensure that if you contact me I will personally have a look over your account and advise you how we will proceed. I hope to hear from you soon.
Hi Dan,
I have found your account our system and have also been able to listen to the sales call as well. I will ensure that we contact you directly to make sure we can get things to the point where you are happy. I can also confirm that I have listened to the sales call and our sales agent did confirm to you that there was the one off set up fee but also that there would be monthly fees of £29.95 plus vat which were due as part of the annual contract.
Hi Monkey, I have read with interest your comments below. With the exception of the point you have made regarding “acupuncture east london” I cant actually see anything else in your posting which would indicate you have any other reasons for wanting to cancel.
Don’t think you have been either “fooled” or “preyed on”. You have bought a market leading service for the promotion of small businesses which works on lots of different levels and also represents excellent value when trying to maximize your presence on the internet.
I can appreciate your concern regarding other things that you come across on the internet when researching companies you may want to do business with but I would exercise caution regarding taking everything that is leveled as criticism as being as being accurate. Someone reading your comment may assume that you have been misled, when in actual fact it appears that you have either misunderstood what you have bought or perhaps it may not have been explained clearly enough to you. The key phrase of acupuncture east London can be a domain name but in this instance we are using it as a phrase, along with other ones relevant to your business and location, which will appear at various points in your website. It is phrases like this which form part of the optimisation of your site and which will help it to get rankings on the internet.
If this is your only cause for concern then I cannot see why you would want to cancel a service which, because of the short length of time you have had it, you haven’t even given the chance to work. If your account is the one I have found then you are already achieving rankings on the first pages of google for a variety of your keywords which is great for only 4 weeks worth of promotion. It is also worthwhile mentioning that both your website and directory listings have also achieved several hundred hits each in February. Whilst it would be unrealistic to expect that all of these will convert directly to business there will be a proportion them that will contact you and hopefully you will then be able to in turn convert them into business.
Mrs E, I’m sorry that you appear to have experienced problems with the package you purchased and sadly from the information given it really is impossible to identify your account but I am very surprised that you have struggled to contact us. Our website is prominent on the internet and features full contact details and you will also have had a contact number and possibly email provided by the sales person during the sale.
The welcome packs are usually processed the same day or the day after and as an extra way to ensure that customers receive then we always send them by email as well. The service commitment that you received didn’t sign is not the contract for the package. The document relates to taking payments by direct debit from a bank account as well as regular card payments, however payments are covered in full in the terms and conditions as well as appearing in several other places in the documents mailed in the Welcome Pack.
Have you checked the statistics package with regards to the volume of enquiries that have received? We offer customer several different ways of monitoring the interest generated from their promotional package which include an 0845 number with an identifying “whisper” before the call is connected as well as statistics information for the number of people who have seen your listing online and that have viewed your website. I do not accept that our customer service is lousy, we have a tried and tested system in place for dealing with support issues which means that we resolve around 95% of our customer service issues first time.
Without specifically looking at your account it would be difficult to comment on your individual situation regarding the outstanding debt on your account. But it is reasonable to say that we, as a business and you as a business customer have entered into an agreement where we each have obligations to each other. There are occasions when things do go wrong, and I can promise that we do our utmost to make sure these issues are resolved and should a customer still wish to cancel we will always review it, however we will not cancel packages purely because someone has changed their mind.
Amberg, unfortunately you don’t really go into any detail whatsoever about the issues you feel you have which makes it very difficult to comment. I am confident that if you have been in touch with our team here they will have already looked into your request to cancel.
It may be that you have not heard the reply that you wanted to hear but please remember that we always put our customers needs first and are happy to look again at your account with a view to trying to ensure that it meets your expectations. If you are still experiencing problem s then please let me know and I will arrange to have the matter looked into for you. Please call out support line on 0845 338 0500 or email me at ad@customerstreet.com. I look forward to hearing from you.
Hi Dianne, I feel that to say you got “sucked” into being a customer of ours is misleading. You had a choice, as all our customers do and the decision to take out a service through us was your decision. Also I think it is fair to say that you were already an existing customer of Customer Street before you took out a premium design website package with us. If you were unhappy with the service at this point then I would question why you felt compelled to buy another service form a company who had already not delivered the service you expected.
As your business has purchased a bespoke service there is no requirement offer a cooling off period and as you are already an exiting customer you would be aware of the terms and conditions surrounding our service which had already been sent to you when you first took up the service. This said you would still receive a copy of the terms and conditions again within the Welcome Pack for the premium design website which accompany the invoice we sent to you.
When anyone purchases a website it is reasonable to ask for some input from the customer with regards to design, content etc, this is discussed at the point of sale as well as being confirmed in the checklist we send out to you in the Welcome Pack. Although I cant locate your account to check dates etc it is reasonable for our design team to check on issues regarding layout, content positioning etc in order to try to make sure that the customers expectations are met. It may have been one of the rare occasions when our system has been offline, but this obviously didn’t stop us to check on the layout as we don’t need a design system for this. If anything I would suggest tat this shows our staff as being proactive rather than reactive when it came to the design of your site.
With regards to responses to your promotion via our directories and initial website service you will have had them, have you checked the statistics package via your online customer control panel? The control panel provides plenty of useful statistical information which goes into great detail and allows you to see which search engines spiders have visited your site, ip addressed of those who have viewed the site as well as the number of times your advert has been viewed.
I don’t believe that the site has been mis sold, if a customer cancels their service with Customer Street then they can take a copy of the site with them, depending on the age and style of the site it may mean that there is very little change, the customer can then upload it to a new hosting service elsewhere and its business as usual. It may be that if it is one of the more modern sites which are even more effective at achieving exposure on the net, then you will be more restricted. You will be able to take a copy of the site but due to how it is constructed it will not be as easy to make amendments to. Either way there is no ongoing monthly fee payable.
The premium design site is fully optimised at the point it is signed off and is made live and both the site and your directory listing can work independently so you don’t need the listings to have the site. However we also use the directories and links from your listings to help drive traffic to your site, therefore you will see a reduction of traffic to your site over a period of time. Like wise if you don’t take a copy of your site before the hosting is cancelled at the point the package is ceased then you will unfortunately lose your site. This is nothing to do with Customer Street being awkward, it is just a fact of internet life that any website needs hosting and without a copy of it once its taken down its gone.
With regards to your domain name not renewing you will find that relates to the fact that we will not renew it as part of your package, given that you are the registered owner of the domain you will be contacted prior to renewal by nominet to check if you still require it or not.
Your last comment regarding not being given an access code for a site, again I cant comment on this specific case but as a generalisation if a customer has an outstanding balance on an account then we will not allow a customer to have full access to taking the site until the account is cleared.
Idrivesom, when we sell a promotional package our staff make it very clear that in order to offer the opportunity to achieve rankings on search engines for your website we need to have control over it, and, in relation to our service it means that we need to have built the site so that we can ensure it is fully optimised.
Up to the point when our support team were asked to redirect the site we had built for you to your own site you had been achieving a good level of site hits, we do not have information beyond this point so we cannot now say how your site is faring. Your listing stats also have produced good volumes of viewings and visitors seeing your listing are still clicking on your website link.
At the time when you purchased the package you were given one of our new RS3 websites which, as the software is web based, was editable by MAC users, there are also notes on your file which indicate that you had accessed the ftp information to make alterations quite soon after taking the package out.
The Welcome Pack sent out initially details the first steps that you need to take in order to get the service fully set up for yourself, part of this easily accessible guide covers forwarding emails form your site, once we were notified you were having issues with this our support team quickly assisted you by doing this set up feature on your behalf.
I’m sorry that you seem to be dissatisfied with the service but from your account notes everything that you have asked about has been dealt with appropriately and quickly and with the exception that you prefer your own site to the one we provided as part of the package.
I too have been sent a letter from a debt agency, and have until this week to pay up for a service that was never provided. I dont know what to do, I really do not want a bad debt on my Company, but how can these people get away with this? If they get £500 for each company that they have managed to get a verbal contract from then they must be earning a fortune from poor unsuspecting people like myself. Dont even speak to these people.
Do not give any payment details to these people. They will pester you, day after day with phone calls. It'll be a pushy sales person who is calling you between fag breaks. They promise to generate work, they promise everything just to get your card details. 6 months now & not a single job generated through these *******! My first year being self employed, I suppose I was vunerable & nieve. Please everyone- Customer Street is not the answer. Garbage, total waste of money. I tried to cancel after only 24 hrs but I was told- no cooling off period. Is this lawful?
Hi, I signed up with customer street on the 11/08/08 and I was told I would get lots of business this in fact has been the total opposite.
I was led to believe I would recieve a welcome pack to sign (which I did) and I was also led to believe that until I signed it it was not binding.
They also lied to me when I asked "is this a rolling contract" the answer was "no" which in fact it is!
which I found out after reading the terms and conditions.
I cancelled the contract by telephone within two days followed by a recorded delivery letter.
I recieved a reply saying I could not cancel it and basically was stuck with it for a further 12 months.
I was shocked to find they took my first months payment using the debit card details I gave them for the deposit,
so I cancelled my card to stop them taking any more.
When I approached my bank to cancel my card they made efforts to re coop the money (for the monthly payments)
that in my opinion was taken by default, and the deposit which in my opinion was miss-sold.
Customer street replied to my bank and my bank forwarded it to me. They say in this letter
I had a FIVE DAY COOLING OFF PERIOD! So why can I not cancel it!
The company firstly claimed that the letter didn't exist and it was impossible because everything is logged, but later admitted it was a mistake.
The only mistake was that I trustingly gave them my debit card details in the first place.
I have been in touch with trading standards but they could offer me no help as this is a business to business contract and it not covered by distance selling regulations or the consumer credit act.
I have had several calls from various people in the company over the last couple of months
asking for the monthly payments which they claim are in arrears and they seemingly are in
total shock when tell them that I have cancelled it and nobody from the company has told them.
I have recently recieved a letter from a debt collection company asking for payment which
I intend to ignore, So take me to court and bring it on, I will wipe the floor with you!
company name; BT customer street
Hello everybody,
Im new to the whole internet thing and evidently am alot more nieve than i thought, as i have been done by BT Customer Street for £150 and £35 per month for something thats not as it was described to me. I am now desperatly trawling sites like this to see if anyone knows how to get out of this companies apparent "contract", which i havent signed and cannot see how I have entered into. I have requested them to cancel the "contract" and they say that im tied in for twelve months despite them telling me originally it was only for six months, this is one of many discrepancies from what i was told to what i have recieved. If anyone knows what i should be doing next please leave a reply, thanks.
I got fooled into signing up to BT Customer Street on Friday, but even at the time I wasn't sure about it - should have trusted my instincts - but they are obviously preying on small businesses setting up who are worried about not finding enough clients.
The salesman was very pushy, and saying how he could put me at the top of search engines when people typed in 'acupuncture east london', which is the area I practice, but since then I have typed this into google and someone already has the .com domain name.
I paid 206.89 on my credit card - the set up fee plus a month subscription, then I looked and found loads of negative feedback online from people.
I called on Monday to cancel which I was told I could not do as I have agreed to a business to business contract, so the normal distance buying laws don't apply, so I am not sure where I stand now. It was obviously stupid for me to give my details over the phone without seeing anything in writing.
I am hoping now to be able to get my money back through my credit card company, but I'm not sure if that will be possible either.
Has anyone had any luck with cancelling their service and getting a refund?
First of all, I would advise anyone considering doing any business with this company
...DON'T !
I received a telephone call from a Chris McGann (Sales) in Apr 2008, who pressurised me into giving my debit card details, in order to receive EPC leads through a web site which they would develop in order to enhance my business.
He stated that an information pack (which I requested and which details contained within were key to whether I proceeded or not) would be sent that day and that I would have a 5 day cooling off period, should I change my mind.
The result was...pack received after two weeks, this despite trying without success to contact the company when nothing had arrived after 2 days.
Now 'tied' into a contract...they already have £704.40 of my money. This despite the Customer Street Information Pack Service Commitment page stating and I quote..’Where you have purchased a monthly service, by signing this document you understand that you are giving authority to Customer Street to collect amounts due from your credit card account’ and the fact that I signed absolutely nothing at the time and have since signed nothing agreeing to this money being taken.
Having been promised 20 leads per month at the outset, leads received to date have totalled absolutely none, let alone any business, together with a poor web site, lousy customer service, misleading and inaccurate information and no resolution to the problems detailed in the two letters addressed to Director, Stuart Forrest (July & Sept 2008) detailing our concerns and problems since the April and this excluding the many conversations my husband and myself have had with company personnel (who will remain nameless). Regretably Customer Street seem to only state the contrary and would appear to be well skilled in ‘twisting’ matters / conversations around.
Matters needless to say are still unresolved and have reached a point whereby they are requesting a further amount of £557.04 till the end of the 12 month period. They have stated that if this money is not received, they will be referring me to a Debt Collection Agency for recovery and I would then be taken to court.
The whole matter has been one of extreme inconvienience, much wasted time, still remains very upsetting and to cap it all after all this I am still getting sales people from the company contacting me asking if I want to sign up and do business with Customer Street, who I am still desperately trying to see the back of !
DO NOT DEAL WITH THIS COMPANY! Got involved in a deal which hasn't been ANY good but is costing a hell of a lot. Was grossly misled by the sales advisor, and just want out of the contract now. Am stuck and don't know what to do, DO NOT LET YOURSELF BE TEMPTED INTO A SIMILAR SITUATION!
i deal with customer street as well. i am a soul trader and i had the same phone call that they can keep me in the first page of google so off we went took my money and have they done that no I'm more on the 4.5.6 page of google which is no use to any 1 why am i spending or should i say wasting my money on them when they haven't stuck to what they said they are going to do. i phone and they tell me they didn't say they would put me on the first page of google they said they would put me on google which is a lie so i am waiting for a phone call Friday 16th to see what the out come is going to be I'm pretty much fed up with them and if my problem isn't sorted out with them i shall no longer do business with them and spend my money else where they told me when i done my website that the keywords was wrong because i was on the second page and couldn't get to the first page so they changed it around to get me higher and now I'm worse of
Add a comment about this blagger
Visitors to the site are reminded that the details contained within user comments are uncorroborated and as such should not be read as fact but as the opinion of the person who left the comment.
Comments:
their legal team have sent me a document outlining the defense against my claims. one point i raised was that there are many other people in the same position as myself who have been mis-sold a service by BT Customer St. their response was that they have no knowledge of this and i have no evidence to suggest so. i included links to several of the many webpages where people have complained about them, however this does not seem to be substantial enough. if anyone would be willing to briefly outline their complaint and send it to me i would be very grateful. maybe we can finally expose this company for how they have exploited many small businesses and get some justice.
please send your replies to David@DavAshMusic.com
I am a small business person running a holistic bodywork business, and I was sold this package over the phone with persuasive sales tactics that promised state of the art web design and professional support with writing copy, and all sorts of cunning search engine tricks to get my customers to find me. What they delivered was truly pathetic. The advertising copy was ridiculous, and the design was very cheap and boring. They then tell you to write and design the site yourself, having sold you a 'service'. Nine months afterwards, I have received ONE client from this website.
I called to cancel the day after I agreed to the package on the phone (they have no record of that call - but have records of all my other calls). They told me that I couldn't cancel, because as a business contract, there was no cooling off period. It seems that they were breaking the law therefore, and I am going to pursue them for the money they have taken off me.
I find their business practices highly unethical. They don't seem to realise that the people they target, iridologists, osteopaths, counsellors, life coaches, herbalists and so on do work under a serious code of ethics whilst serving the public. When we have an unsatisfied customer, we refund their fee. It takes a lot of money, time and effort to train in your chosen craft, and then to get exploited by a company that operates a ineffective service that you cannot get out of paying for for a year because of a 5 minute decision is enough to make you worse than sick.
I have decided to go to my MP about this, and now I have seen how many people have suffered, I will not stop until I get my money back.
These people need to be brought to justice and I intend to do it soon.
Rob
Street. The websites they have created are to a
very poor standard and are not representative of
me or my company. I already had my own website
set up that is perfect but with their aggressive
sales techniques and impressive promises I was pushed into parting with a large amount of money.
I want out of this contract but I don't know who
to complain to or who to contact as there is no
information about this on their website.
Please help.
My advice would be to not pay them and wait for it to go to a debt collection and just pay them and ask them to cancel the contract with customer street. Easier than going to court.
The volume of sales calls that we make mean it is impossible to listen to every call made each day but calls are randomly sampled throughout the day and if a member of the sales team are promoting something that is not factually correct then we will always take immediate steps to make sure this is addressed. We value our brand and reputation as being able to deliver an award wining service which is pushing our market leading innovation in the promotion of small businesses ever higher.
Other than changing your mind was there any other reason for wanting to cancel the package? I am not sure how you could make a decision that we had lied to you and could not deliver the product that you were sold in the space of less thank a day. As ever though I am happy to have your individual account reviewed and look forward to hearing from you with your account details.
You have extra pages on there already but I noted that one page unparticular has failed the seo rating because the content does not relate to your keyword and headings, density, descriptions etc are not to the right levels. We have optimised your first page and your site is now achieving a whole host of positions on the first page of Google under different search terms.
It is great that you have shown a keen interest in making amendments to your own site yourself but some of the changes that you have made will be viewed by Google as trying to “spam” them and can actually be doing your rankings more harm than good.
I have spoken to our SEO team who create our own directory websites and trade portals and have asked them to have a look at the site for you to make a few amendments which will pull together the benefits of the rapidsite with the content that you have already provided and we will be in contact shortly to discuss the changes that will be beneficial.
It is now impossible to slip through these procedures if there is a problem with a payment so all I can assume is that this must be a historic case. As with all our dealings with customers we make sure that those customers with older debt are listened to before proceeding with escalating the action taken.
We will only expect customers to pay for debt on their accounts when it is genuinely due and I can ensure that if you contact me I will personally have a look over your account and advise you how we will proceed. I hope to hear from you soon.
I have found your account our system and have also been able to listen to the sales call as well. I will ensure that we contact you directly to make sure we can get things to the point where you are happy. I can also confirm that I have listened to the sales call and our sales agent did confirm to you that there was the one off set up fee but also that there would be monthly fees of £29.95 plus vat which were due as part of the annual contract.
Don’t think you have been either “fooled” or “preyed on”. You have bought a market leading service for the promotion of small businesses which works on lots of different levels and also represents excellent value when trying to maximize your presence on the internet.
I can appreciate your concern regarding other things that you come across on the internet when researching companies you may want to do business with but I would exercise caution regarding taking everything that is leveled as criticism as being as being accurate. Someone reading your comment may assume that you have been misled, when in actual fact it appears that you have either misunderstood what you have bought or perhaps it may not have been explained clearly enough to you. The key phrase of acupuncture east London can be a domain name but in this instance we are using it as a phrase, along with other ones relevant to your business and location, which will appear at various points in your website. It is phrases like this which form part of the optimisation of your site and which will help it to get rankings on the internet.
If this is your only cause for concern then I cannot see why you would want to cancel a service which, because of the short length of time you have had it, you haven’t even given the chance to work. If your account is the one I have found then you are already achieving rankings on the first pages of google for a variety of your keywords which is great for only 4 weeks worth of promotion. It is also worthwhile mentioning that both your website and directory listings have also achieved several hundred hits each in February. Whilst it would be unrealistic to expect that all of these will convert directly to business there will be a proportion them that will contact you and hopefully you will then be able to in turn convert them into business.
The welcome packs are usually processed the same day or the day after and as an extra way to ensure that customers receive then we always send them by email as well. The service commitment that you received didn’t sign is not the contract for the package. The document relates to taking payments by direct debit from a bank account as well as regular card payments, however payments are covered in full in the terms and conditions as well as appearing in several other places in the documents mailed in the Welcome Pack.
Have you checked the statistics package with regards to the volume of enquiries that have received? We offer customer several different ways of monitoring the interest generated from their promotional package which include an 0845 number with an identifying “whisper” before the call is connected as well as statistics information for the number of people who have seen your listing online and that have viewed your website. I do not accept that our customer service is lousy, we have a tried and tested system in place for dealing with support issues which means that we resolve around 95% of our customer service issues first time.
Without specifically looking at your account it would be difficult to comment on your individual situation regarding the outstanding debt on your account. But it is reasonable to say that we, as a business and you as a business customer have entered into an agreement where we each have obligations to each other. There are occasions when things do go wrong, and I can promise that we do our utmost to make sure these issues are resolved and should a customer still wish to cancel we will always review it, however we will not cancel packages purely because someone has changed their mind.
It may be that you have not heard the reply that you wanted to hear but please remember that we always put our customers needs first and are happy to look again at your account with a view to trying to ensure that it meets your expectations. If you are still experiencing problem s then please let me know and I will arrange to have the matter looked into for you. Please call out support line on 0845 338 0500 or email me at ad@customerstreet.com. I look forward to hearing from you.
As your business has purchased a bespoke service there is no requirement offer a cooling off period and as you are already an exiting customer you would be aware of the terms and conditions surrounding our service which had already been sent to you when you first took up the service. This said you would still receive a copy of the terms and conditions again within the Welcome Pack for the premium design website which accompany the invoice we sent to you.
When anyone purchases a website it is reasonable to ask for some input from the customer with regards to design, content etc, this is discussed at the point of sale as well as being confirmed in the checklist we send out to you in the Welcome Pack. Although I cant locate your account to check dates etc it is reasonable for our design team to check on issues regarding layout, content positioning etc in order to try to make sure that the customers expectations are met. It may have been one of the rare occasions when our system has been offline, but this obviously didn’t stop us to check on the layout as we don’t need a design system for this. If anything I would suggest tat this shows our staff as being proactive rather than reactive when it came to the design of your site.
With regards to responses to your promotion via our directories and initial website service you will have had them, have you checked the statistics package via your online customer control panel? The control panel provides plenty of useful statistical information which goes into great detail and allows you to see which search engines spiders have visited your site, ip addressed of those who have viewed the site as well as the number of times your advert has been viewed.
I don’t believe that the site has been mis sold, if a customer cancels their service with Customer Street then they can take a copy of the site with them, depending on the age and style of the site it may mean that there is very little change, the customer can then upload it to a new hosting service elsewhere and its business as usual. It may be that if it is one of the more modern sites which are even more effective at achieving exposure on the net, then you will be more restricted. You will be able to take a copy of the site but due to how it is constructed it will not be as easy to make amendments to. Either way there is no ongoing monthly fee payable.
The premium design site is fully optimised at the point it is signed off and is made live and both the site and your directory listing can work independently so you don’t need the listings to have the site. However we also use the directories and links from your listings to help drive traffic to your site, therefore you will see a reduction of traffic to your site over a period of time. Like wise if you don’t take a copy of your site before the hosting is cancelled at the point the package is ceased then you will unfortunately lose your site. This is nothing to do with Customer Street being awkward, it is just a fact of internet life that any website needs hosting and without a copy of it once its taken down its gone.
With regards to your domain name not renewing you will find that relates to the fact that we will not renew it as part of your package, given that you are the registered owner of the domain you will be contacted prior to renewal by nominet to check if you still require it or not.
Your last comment regarding not being given an access code for a site, again I cant comment on this specific case but as a generalisation if a customer has an outstanding balance on an account then we will not allow a customer to have full access to taking the site until the account is cleared.
Up to the point when our support team were asked to redirect the site we had built for you to your own site you had been achieving a good level of site hits, we do not have information beyond this point so we cannot now say how your site is faring. Your listing stats also have produced good volumes of viewings and visitors seeing your listing are still clicking on your website link.
At the time when you purchased the package you were given one of our new RS3 websites which, as the software is web based, was editable by MAC users, there are also notes on your file which indicate that you had accessed the ftp information to make alterations quite soon after taking the package out.
The Welcome Pack sent out initially details the first steps that you need to take in order to get the service fully set up for yourself, part of this easily accessible guide covers forwarding emails form your site, once we were notified you were having issues with this our support team quickly assisted you by doing this set up feature on your behalf.
I’m sorry that you seem to be dissatisfied with the service but from your account notes everything that you have asked about has been dealt with appropriately and quickly and with the exception that you prefer your own site to the one we provided as part of the package.
I was led to believe I would recieve a welcome pack to sign (which I did) and I was also led to believe that until I signed it it was not binding.
They also lied to me when I asked "is this a rolling contract" the answer was "no" which in fact it is!
which I found out after reading the terms and conditions.
I cancelled the contract by telephone within two days followed by a recorded delivery letter.
I recieved a reply saying I could not cancel it and basically was stuck with it for a further 12 months.
I was shocked to find they took my first months payment using the debit card details I gave them for the deposit,
so I cancelled my card to stop them taking any more.
When I approached my bank to cancel my card they made efforts to re coop the money (for the monthly payments)
that in my opinion was taken by default, and the deposit which in my opinion was miss-sold.
Customer street replied to my bank and my bank forwarded it to me. They say in this letter
I had a FIVE DAY COOLING OFF PERIOD! So why can I not cancel it!
The company firstly claimed that the letter didn't exist and it was impossible because everything is logged, but later admitted it was a mistake.
The only mistake was that I trustingly gave them my debit card details in the first place.
I have been in touch with trading standards but they could offer me no help as this is a business to business contract and it not covered by distance selling regulations or the consumer credit act.
I have had several calls from various people in the company over the last couple of months
asking for the monthly payments which they claim are in arrears and they seemingly are in
total shock when tell them that I have cancelled it and nobody from the company has told them.
I have recently recieved a letter from a debt collection company asking for payment which
I intend to ignore, So take me to court and bring it on, I will wipe the floor with you!
Hello everybody,
Im new to the whole internet thing and evidently am alot more nieve than i thought, as i have been done by BT Customer Street for £150 and £35 per month for something thats not as it was described to me. I am now desperatly trawling sites like this to see if anyone knows how to get out of this companies apparent "contract", which i havent signed and cannot see how I have entered into. I have requested them to cancel the "contract" and they say that im tied in for twelve months despite them telling me originally it was only for six months, this is one of many discrepancies from what i was told to what i have recieved. If anyone knows what i should be doing next please leave a reply, thanks.
The salesman was very pushy, and saying how he could put me at the top of search engines when people typed in 'acupuncture east london', which is the area I practice, but since then I have typed this into google and someone already has the .com domain name.
I paid 206.89 on my credit card - the set up fee plus a month subscription, then I looked and found loads of negative feedback online from people.
I called on Monday to cancel which I was told I could not do as I have agreed to a business to business contract, so the normal distance buying laws don't apply, so I am not sure where I stand now. It was obviously stupid for me to give my details over the phone without seeing anything in writing.
I am hoping now to be able to get my money back through my credit card company, but I'm not sure if that will be possible either.
Has anyone had any luck with cancelling their service and getting a refund?
wish i'd seen this stuff first!!!
First of all, I would advise anyone considering doing any business with this company
...DON'T !
I received a telephone call from a Chris McGann (Sales) in Apr 2008, who pressurised me into giving my debit card details, in order to receive EPC leads through a web site which they would develop in order to enhance my business.
He stated that an information pack (which I requested and which details contained within were key to whether I proceeded or not) would be sent that day and that I would have a 5 day cooling off period, should I change my mind.
The result was...pack received after two weeks, this despite trying without success to contact the company when nothing had arrived after 2 days.
Now 'tied' into a contract...they already have £704.40 of my money. This despite the Customer Street Information Pack Service Commitment page stating and I quote..’Where you have purchased a monthly service, by signing this document you understand that you are giving authority to Customer Street to collect amounts due from your credit card account’ and the fact that I signed absolutely nothing at the time and have since signed nothing agreeing to this money being taken.
Having been promised 20 leads per month at the outset, leads received to date have totalled absolutely none, let alone any business, together with a poor web site, lousy customer service, misleading and inaccurate information and no resolution to the problems detailed in the two letters addressed to Director, Stuart Forrest (July & Sept 2008) detailing our concerns and problems since the April and this excluding the many conversations my husband and myself have had with company personnel (who will remain nameless). Regretably Customer Street seem to only state the contrary and would appear to be well skilled in ‘twisting’ matters / conversations around.
Matters needless to say are still unresolved and have reached a point whereby they are requesting a further amount of £557.04 till the end of the 12 month period. They have stated that if this money is not received, they will be referring me to a Debt Collection Agency for recovery and I would then be taken to court.
The whole matter has been one of extreme inconvienience, much wasted time, still remains very upsetting and to cap it all after all this I am still getting sales people from the company contacting me asking if I want to sign up and do business with Customer Street, who I am still desperately trying to see the back of !
Mrs E.
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