- CITYSEARCH DOESN'T SUCK SO MUCH TODAY
Ok so today they don't suck so bad.
Well I have to say I'm pretty impressed/amazed. Within 24 hours of my post and only telling a few friends about what happened, I got a call from a high up employee at citysearch who will remain anonymous by request. He apologized for my experience and made it clear that they were not taking this lightly. I was told that my additional $200 would be refunded and as a gesture of good faith I was offered a free year account with all the bells and whistles I normally wouldn't want to pay for.
I can't believe all this happened within a day but that's the nature of this beast we call "the Internets" (well that's what GW calls it at least).
I really felt like he appreciated what I had to say and going forward wants to fix citysearch's internal workings to avoid this from happening again..I really hope that's the case and other people don't have to deal with what I did, because it was pretty awful experience when the shit was going down.
This should serve as a lesson to companies to treat their customers with more respect particularly from the ground up..their employees who are actually dealing with the customers on a one-to-one basis....not just the supervisors who have to come in and sweep up the mess.
power to da people!
posted by Daniel @ 4:16 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
That's awesome. Too bad that didn't happen with my Kinkos post. But I don't think anyone there, even at the top, really gives a shit.
I've use Citysearch for years and you not to be rude but need to do your homework, it's quite obvious you don't know anything about the internet. 1st 30 bucks on google boy o boy that will bring you some great traffic! Yeah right, $30 on google is really going to compete with all the other photographers already advertising on google in NYC, boy you'll do great! With internet search engines all of them including Citysearch you have the ability to have all connections mapped back to your website, especially common with virtual businesses. So you could have a million dollar budget with Citysearch or another search engine making millions of dollars and NOT ONE SOUL WOULD KNOW THAT THEY FOUND YOU ON CITYSEARCH SEARCHING OUTSIDE OF CITYSEARCH OR WHATEVER OTHER SEARCH ENGINES YOUR ADVERTISING WITH......Why??? Because search engines pull from all over the internet not just a google or yahoo or Citysearch they could be pulling from anywhere on the internet and your advertiser's search engine would map back relevant searches it encounters to your website //Some search engines are better at this than others\\ I realize you were expecting them to make you a page on their search engine rather than mapping all traffic to your website. BUT this is a miscommunication/misunderstanding between you and that advertisers representative. END OF STORY!!!!!!
I feel you both equally to blame here, and you bad mouthing search engines, buddy I've been building a search engine of my own...and I have to say I feel like throwing in the towel at times because of emotional, unwilling to learn or simply unable to learn, thick fucks like you!!!
If you slandered me like that and I had the money that these larger businesses have, I'd fucking sue shit out of you, not give the stupid, stupid winning unreasonable fucking baby; free shit. Obviously they only did it to shut you up, it sounds like more than a few people were trying to help you. I would think maybe someone could of explained how things work. Give you back your money because you're unreasonable, and start from scratch maybe but to give you a year free; I don't know about that one. Shit let me have a year free I'd like that. But you know why I'm not to envious of your year free, it is because with another one of my businesses that I advertise in different places. I FUCKING UNDERSTAND THAT ADVERTISING IS ABOUT MAKING MONEY FOR MY BUSINESS, NOT JUST DOING IT BECAUSE OTHERS ARE AND I DON'T HAVE, FUCKING CLUE ONE, WHAT ADVERTISING IS ALL ABOUT. YES THERE'S A WAY TO MAKE MONEY ADVERTISING AND A WAY TO LOOSE MONEY ADVERTISING. Dude go back to kindergarten, and sit in the corner all by yourself with your own personal set of blocks, because you're the rude out of control dysfunctional family kid who disrupts the whole class. You feel so ripped off by what happened to this day, I can tell. Don't ever buy anything again with out understanding what you're buying or investing in. Maybe you wouldn't feel so ripped off. You're probably one of those people that gets ripped off all the time, and the real people ripping you off you think are your best friends. Wake up! I had a friend like you I always tried to help him when he needed it, but the people who used the shit out of him he thought they were his best friends. Why don't you go buy some genuine rip-off thing so you can actually be right when you say you got ripped off. I know go wire transfer money to nigerian internet scams if you haven't already.
I agree with Daniel in CITYSEARCH's unprofessionalism as far as response and it seems like no one knows who is in charge or CITYSEARCH seems like CITYSEARCH don't care about taking care of customer or potential customers especially when competitors or hostile customers are seeking revenge. I send 3 emails to CITYSEARCH and finally had to call to get in touch with someone at CITYSEARCH.
I reviewed some disparaging and libelous remarks about my friends company and wrote CITYSEARCH a letter requesting that they review the posts outlining all the comments that violated CITYSEARCH's "Unacceptable Content Policy." They used my letter as Charmin and refused to remove or contact the posters to reevaluate those comments, in whole or even in part. CITYSEARCH refused to investigate the anonymouse post that we suspect is a competitor even though it's part of CITYSEARCH's unacceptable policy procedure...
Most legitimate companies will at least talk to you about what was said, ask for proof, but not CitySearch. CITYSEARCH just sends a blanket statement that their review committee thinks it's acceptable - period - end of statement.
I now have to talk to CITYSEARCH's Legal Department about this situation. About 10 emails and 5 calls is CITYSEARCH mode. Tire us out strategy. So I would beware and not advertise with CitySearch until something is clearly done with not only the advertisers, but what happens when negative posts are put on the website. No time limit to remove posts, no response or poor response, and mucho dollars for advertising if you decide to go with them.
CITYSEARCH's policies are going to affect more and more small businesses and CITYSEARCH's sales, especially since there is no time limit on when they will remove these comments and posts. Even the bbb allows complaints to remain for only 3 years.
What company would want to pay for CITYSEARCH's service with a policy that won't remove the posts when they are grossly offensive, misleading, and false.
Yeah! I want to advertise with that company and pay $200+! BEWARE OF CITYSEARCH.... DON'T ADVERTISE WITH CITYSEARCH.... CITYSEARCH IS NON-RESPONSIVE! CITYSEARCH IS NOT COOPERATIVE!
You are the 2nd person I have heard of getting an actual refund from Citysearch. Read my story by "Catperson" on ripoffreport.com
I was totally scammed by them. My sales rep "was on vacation" for a while ... AND his emails "bounced" for a while. What a joke this company is. YOu are fortunate. I have their collections agency bugging the crap out of me almost a YEAR after my credit card company dispute was found in MY favor. They never responded to my credit card company... i disputed over $700 for a 2 month JOKE of advertising with Citysearch. I won the dispute. Citysearch will NOT leave me alone. I have even been THREATENED by my sales rep via my HOME PHONE (Scarey@!), because I put his name in the Rip Off Report web report...
Citysearch customer service has been TERRIBLE to me. I think my next step is to pay my lawyer to SUE THEM for harrassment. I won my credit card dispute and it is ILLEGAL and against the Fair Trade Credit act for htem to keep bothering me with collection.
Anyhow..Steer clear. And you WERE fortunate to get a refund from them. I was treated like DIRT by their customer service (haha) team.
Thanks guys I Googled how much does city search cost when I found this thread because they don’t tell you until you fill out all the forms and give them your credit info. I WAS going to go for the premium service because I do get customers from them now and I thought well I can get more and stand out better. I will take my hard earned money else where after reading not only this but the many other stories out there. Sure some might be from people who are just imposable to please. We all run into them in business but I see a trend with the customer service. I have only two negative reviews over the years and they are about customer service that appeared soon after firing my front counter guy WHO was my customer service....hmmmm I was going to call them about it but now am not going to waste my time.
Stan Foster
Your initial thoughts were correct.
We used citysearch and the response was so bad I suspect the data we were fed by them on their use experience was completely bogus. After complaining they agreed to let us cancel and sent us email to this effect. Then then continued to charge and we called and complained. They claimed it was an error and would be fixed but amazingly enough, was never fixed.
We disputed credit card charges and city search issued a new charge. We disputed those after changing the credit card.
Now the guy who is suppose to take care of the problem claims he is and another guy is calling saying they will turn us over to collection. If we ask for a supervisor name, they refuse to give it. If we tell them we are going to tape the conversation they hang up.
This is not a legitimate business. Your situation was fixed by your blog. I wish I had a blog now.
we aware of citysearch they are money hungry and if you don't give them money they will post bad reviews to your profile!
No one cares especially if you're not a paid advertiser. They used to give you the ability to comment on reviews, my ex was posted negative reviews on there and I could not get them removed, even emailed them about the policies, etc... as the other poster did with his friend. The reviews were obvious that they were bogus but they stayed up... I at least had a rebuttal comment listed after it but they redid the site and took that ability away and deleted my comments. I don't trust them since they started the whole BEST OF contests... they try to suck businesses into doing Groupon type deals and I almost feel for it until they wanted way too much business information that I wanted to give them (banking, etc). I gave them bad site feedback and doubt they'll take it seriously, so I emailed them and asked them to delete the listing because the business was closed. I would rather have NO listing at all than a crappy one with inaccurate information that I can't change or get them to change.
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