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:
info serve used google keywords to demonstrate my best keywords in the tourism business and based on the fact that for every 10 hits google get yahoo gets 7 I signed up for 6 months and paid £240 for 4 phrases. I discovered that the ratio was not 7/10 but 1/25 and cancelled the next working day, they refused a refund and said the 7/10 was a rough estimate. I am now trying to claim the money back from my credit card company. Stay away from this company
It's a real shame to see that the majority use these sites to complain. So I have some good news about this company... yippee!
Infoserve/cityvisitor Group have always done me proud! I have been advertising with them now for many years and I will continue to do so. Why?... because it works!
I am listed on Yahoo! Local... not prolific but it does deliver a return on investment. I am also on city-visitor... wow, works a treat and delivers good enquiries which mostly result in business.
Infoserve are an honest company who have been around for many years. I started using them back in 2000!
They offer simple yet effective advertising solutions for a great price.
I am a driving instructor in the UK, after leaving a franchise business I decided to start out on my own as an independent instructor. Being quite computer savy I was able to build my own website, and submit it to the major search engines. Then I got a cold call from a guy called Abz at Infoserve, telling me that he had seen my website and that he doubted very much that I would get a high ranking on google, but for £300 I could have a Yahoo Local Keysite bundle. This would give me a featured priority spot on Yahoo listing for 6 months and also highly SEO optimised 1 page landing page (keysite) which would guarantee me first page google for three keywords in my area.
This sounded like a good idea so I bought it, I was told it would take 2 - 3 weeks for the site to go online. After 3 weeks nothing. So I called him nd sent a few emails. I was assured it would be online soon, it was almost finished. A week later I called again, I expressed concern that the agreed domain name hadn't even been purchased yet. Again I was assured "yes it will have been purchased by now" After 6 weeks it still is not online, and funnily enough they wont take my phone calls. I know that the domain hadn't been purchased as I have just purchased it myself. So at best this company is incompetent in the extreme, and at worse, flirting on the border with lies.
The Yahoo local listing was online within a few days, but it was a complete waste of time. Not one of my customers same to me through this Yahoo local listing. I am a fairly computer savy person, been using the internet since the early days of Compuserve and AOL, and to be honest I never even knew Yahoo Local existed, I have never used it. I always goes straight to the search engine and search.
Fortunately I purchased this package through my credit card, so am going to complain to my credit card company for undelivered goods/services/broken contract. To see if I can get a full refund.
Received a cold call from a sales rep from infoserve.com telling me how beneficial it was for me to get my business listed in Yahoo local business listing.
After about an hour listening to this guy high pressure sales pitch telling me over and over how I would gain loads of more work from this he came down from £225 to £100 for a 6mths Yahoo local business listing!!!
I was shocked infoserve Ltd were pressure selling Yahoo local listing product as Yahoo is a very well respected brand. Guess now know why infoserve seems to be in financial trouble and no longer working with Google and surmise it maybe due to their sales tactics.
After my experience I certainly would not buy anything from Infoserve Ltd
I have just got off the phone with infoserve as they wanted me to renew my contract. While we were dicussing the price I heard clapping and cheering in the background. According to the salesman thats what happens when they make a sale (lifts morale). Am I being hyper sensitive or do you agree that this is totally unprofessional. I just fealt that I was being ripped off so I cancelled everything. How would you feel if I sold you something and cheered as you walked out of the door.
I went on Yahoo Local in three areas based on the recent search statistics the sales guy gave me. When the listings went live, I received statistics on number of impressions etc. Although there was no guarantee, I don't for one minute believe that the number of searches went down by 98% from the day they took my money!
I complained, and the response was basically, our sales guy wouldn't give out those inflated figures, we record our calls but not all of them and we don't have a record of that one - how convenient. Basically, I got nowhere. A few months later, someone in the same industry as me contacted me asking about my ads - he had been fed the same fake figures by the same sales guy.
From my experience, Infoserve employ a bunch cowboys who will say anything to get their commission. Once they have your money, they don't care. I certainly won't be touching these rip-off merchants again!
In November last year I was sold two products by an Infoserve unsolicited sales call. I was told they would help me improve the website for my small and recession struggling photography business. I had to arrange a BACS transfer which took a while to do, and could not get their sales staff off the phone, chasing me 2 to 3 times a day for the payment to ensure the sale went through.
Once paid though, it was as though I no longer existed. My e mails and calls were ignored, one product (Yahoo local) was wrongly published with omissions and mistakes, and the other product - the keyword management report - I never received. I chased, called, e mailed - nothing. I've finally got in touch with their customer services who effectively hid behind their terms and conditions, saying that they had done nothing wrong, that i didn't have anything in writing to prove anything and that they could do nothing to address my complaints. Some customer service !!
I have also just today found out that the sales staff who sold me one of the products told me a pack of lies in order to clinch the deal, telling me that they would insert the keywords to my site as part of the package- i now find out that I have to pay another £50 PER PAGE for the privileged ! . I have seen the report for the first time this afternoon and am appalled at the lack of detail and quality of the contents. I was offered a discount on the original list price, but even with the discount I now realise that it was a complete and utter waste of money.
So much for the customer always being right! I cannot comment on the general performance of Infoserve as I'm just one customer, but from my one and only experience... I wouldn't recommend the company to anyone! I'd love to know if anyone else has had such a bad experience with Infoserve!
Got a renewal call from infoserve for my YahooLocal advert. I was going to cancel but the sales guy gave me the impression figures for the previous 3 months of "around" 1000, 800 & 700, which was better than I thought it was but after a reduction in price decided to renew but after the phone call I checked the impression figures emailed across to me monthly from infoserve found the figures to 87, 76 & 56, much lower than the quoted. I rang back within 10 minutes of receiving the intial call to cancel the contract & they kept fobbing me off. Jamie's in a meeting, Rachel is on the phone, I'm sorry I don't have a hold button on my phone so you'll have to call back, etc, etc. After numerous phonecalls, eventually get to through to my account manager who says that the original sales call was not recorded so they have no proof of the misquotion & that I probably got confused!!!! Insult to injury! & that they are unable to cancel the verbal contract without a whooping great cancellation fee of 35% (probably where they get most of their money from)
Anyway have spoken to trading standards on tel. 0113 2013607, they advised me the correct course of action to take so should be getting a full refund in the next 14 days.
Will keep you updated.
Please note Infoserve also do the CityVisitor advertsing. Take my advise & don't use either otherwise you'll have no end of problems!
TERRIBLE and LIERS...I renewed a advert with infoserve on the basis of the stats they gave me which have turned out to be utter rubbish and the figures were just pulled out of the hat. I questioned these with my so called account manager after i received a copy of my stats from google analytics and was informed that google analytics didnt pick up city-visitor as it was part of google. This was a complete Lie. I will not be renewing any longer and will simply write of the money i have wasted with them. Oh and as another point they call themselves account managers however they only call when they want money and neither the sales team or customer services dont call back when you have problems.
If your thinking of spending any money with them PLEASE think again
i am nicks partner we put the car hire listings on with info serve we aparently ended up with 5 grands worth of adverts for only 700 quid one of the workers at info serve was a junky he took our money put it into his own bank account he after getting caught out thats like 2 months of lies coming out of his mouth until i contacted info serve and the game was up info promised to sort us out which they havent if they think that letting us have the 5 grands worth of advertising for 700 quid there mistaken this has resulted in no bussines so i dont feel info serve can produce what they claim i wana stop others wasting there money
We were promised top listings, more enquiries than we could handle and a such a fantastic service we would be coming back for more. Nothing could be more from the truth, firstly the employee of Infoserve paid the money into his personal account, but the poor listings we have got have produced only 7 hits in the last month. This is the worst service I have ever come across and I just wish I had never heard of Infoserve. I highly recommend that you keep away from this company. Please contact me on info@carhirecarhire.com if you want more information or a copy of emails from the company to verify how bad their service is.
I run a company called Trade Windows Doors & Conservatories Ltd and earlier in January 2009 I was asked to submit a site and get listed on infoserve I agreed but when being sold by the salesman I was told the contract would not autorenew. That is where it all went wrong I asked for the listing to get confirmed and asked for an email to confirm it wouldnt be autorenewd which I received promptly from Richard Paget.
I got a call today 09 July 2009 asking me to renew because the traffic was not great I said no however they pestered me on the phone whilst getting the salesmanager in the back after saying no about 30 times they kept calling my phine saying I cant cancel and would be charged as I have gone over the 30 day period.
Suffice to say as a company owner this company really hurt the sentiments of a genuine customer there are many people posting on this site revoking the statements of this company I am in no doubt that they are employees.
WARNING sales man called me telling me how poor the quality of my own web site was www.caseyscars.co.uk and that he could build me a new site that would get found alot moore on google and giving me full contol of all content 24 hour a day useing their dynamic interface,payment was paid £690 site took 3 months to build wwwcaseyscarsnewport.co.uk,when i inspected site they had just made a poor copy of my old site which had out dated photos on,they sent me dynamic interface login details so i could change photos in the gallery,this would not work talked to angela macfee customers service she looked into problem and then told me that i was not in contol of gallery photos ,site is now not as sold total rip of company site was sold by deception DO NOT TRUST
I am pleased to say that we have resolved the issue with hotel09. We work very hard to give all our SME customers a good service and value for money, and it is on that basis that we have built our reputation.
A NIGHTMARE!
The worst people I have ever spoken to! To sell very quick, received 10 calls in 1 day to close the deal, after 1 month still didn't do what they suppose to do (listing and sponsored link on yahoo local). End of the story I paid for nothing. The worst is that Yahoo allows them to do so. I called millions time and still no listing or refund!
Do anyone knows how I can get the money back?
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:
Infoserve/cityvisitor Group have always done me proud! I have been advertising with them now for many years and I will continue to do so. Why?... because it works!
I am listed on Yahoo! Local... not prolific but it does deliver a return on investment. I am also on city-visitor... wow, works a treat and delivers good enquiries which mostly result in business.
Infoserve are an honest company who have been around for many years. I started using them back in 2000!
They offer simple yet effective advertising solutions for a great price.
Do I recommend them? Absolutely!!!
Charles Leyland
MD YPH Ltd.
I am a driving instructor in the UK, after leaving a franchise business I decided to start out on my own as an independent instructor. Being quite computer savy I was able to build my own website, and submit it to the major search engines. Then I got a cold call from a guy called Abz at Infoserve, telling me that he had seen my website and that he doubted very much that I would get a high ranking on google, but for £300 I could have a Yahoo Local Keysite bundle. This would give me a featured priority spot on Yahoo listing for 6 months and also highly SEO optimised 1 page landing page (keysite) which would guarantee me first page google for three keywords in my area.
This sounded like a good idea so I bought it, I was told it would take 2 - 3 weeks for the site to go online. After 3 weeks nothing. So I called him nd sent a few emails. I was assured it would be online soon, it was almost finished. A week later I called again, I expressed concern that the agreed domain name hadn't even been purchased yet. Again I was assured "yes it will have been purchased by now" After 6 weeks it still is not online, and funnily enough they wont take my phone calls. I know that the domain hadn't been purchased as I have just purchased it myself. So at best this company is incompetent in the extreme, and at worse, flirting on the border with lies.
The Yahoo local listing was online within a few days, but it was a complete waste of time. Not one of my customers same to me through this Yahoo local listing. I am a fairly computer savy person, been using the internet since the early days of Compuserve and AOL, and to be honest I never even knew Yahoo Local existed, I have never used it. I always goes straight to the search engine and search.
Fortunately I purchased this package through my credit card, so am going to complain to my credit card company for undelivered goods/services/broken contract. To see if I can get a full refund.
My advice, stay well away from this company!
After about an hour listening to this guy high pressure sales pitch telling me over and over how I would gain loads of more work from this he came down from £225 to £100 for a 6mths Yahoo local business listing!!!
I was shocked infoserve Ltd were pressure selling Yahoo local listing product as Yahoo is a very well respected brand. Guess now know why infoserve seems to be in financial trouble and no longer working with Google and surmise it maybe due to their sales tactics.
After my experience I certainly would not buy anything from Infoserve Ltd
I went on Yahoo Local in three areas based on the recent search statistics the sales guy gave me. When the listings went live, I received statistics on number of impressions etc. Although there was no guarantee, I don't for one minute believe that the number of searches went down by 98% from the day they took my money!
I complained, and the response was basically, our sales guy wouldn't give out those inflated figures, we record our calls but not all of them and we don't have a record of that one - how convenient. Basically, I got nowhere. A few months later, someone in the same industry as me contacted me asking about my ads - he had been fed the same fake figures by the same sales guy.
From my experience, Infoserve employ a bunch cowboys who will say anything to get their commission. Once they have your money, they don't care. I certainly won't be touching these rip-off merchants again!
Once paid though, it was as though I no longer existed. My e mails and calls were ignored, one product (Yahoo local) was wrongly published with omissions and mistakes, and the other product - the keyword management report - I never received. I chased, called, e mailed - nothing. I've finally got in touch with their customer services who effectively hid behind their terms and conditions, saying that they had done nothing wrong, that i didn't have anything in writing to prove anything and that they could do nothing to address my complaints. Some customer service !!
I have also just today found out that the sales staff who sold me one of the products told me a pack of lies in order to clinch the deal, telling me that they would insert the keywords to my site as part of the package- i now find out that I have to pay another £50 PER PAGE for the privileged ! . I have seen the report for the first time this afternoon and am appalled at the lack of detail and quality of the contents. I was offered a discount on the original list price, but even with the discount I now realise that it was a complete and utter waste of money.
So much for the customer always being right! I cannot comment on the general performance of Infoserve as I'm just one customer, but from my one and only experience... I wouldn't recommend the company to anyone! I'd love to know if anyone else has had such a bad experience with Infoserve!
Anyway have spoken to trading standards on tel. 0113 2013607, they advised me the correct course of action to take so should be getting a full refund in the next 14 days.
Will keep you updated.
Please note Infoserve also do the CityVisitor advertsing. Take my advise & don't use either otherwise you'll have no end of problems!
If your thinking of spending any money with them PLEASE think again
I got a call today 09 July 2009 asking me to renew because the traffic was not great I said no however they pestered me on the phone whilst getting the salesmanager in the back after saying no about 30 times they kept calling my phine saying I cant cancel and would be charged as I have gone over the 30 day period.
Suffice to say as a company owner this company really hurt the sentiments of a genuine customer there are many people posting on this site revoking the statements of this company I am in no doubt that they are employees.
Steve Barnes
CEO
Infoserve Group Limited
The worst people I have ever spoken to! To sell very quick, received 10 calls in 1 day to close the deal, after 1 month still didn't do what they suppose to do (listing and sponsored link on yahoo local). End of the story I paid for nothing. The worst is that Yahoo allows them to do so. I called millions time and still no listing or refund!
Do anyone knows how I can get the money back?
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