Another bad experience with Citysearch - Why can’t pay-per-click companies offer free trials?
April 6th, 2009I wrote an article about a bad experience I had with Citysearch in January of 2007 and since that time, have received many comments from readers detailing their experiences with Citysearch. Due to my bad experience, I haven’t had any interaction with Citysearch until recently, when one of their account executives (a salesperson) contacted me via email with an offer. Unfortunately, this experience wasn’t pleasant for me either. (As you read this article, which is lengthy, please understand that in my former pre-webdesigner life, I was a Directory of Quality for a fortune 500 company - and part of my job was to improve customer satisfaction and prevent engineers from cutting corners on quality. This perspective and past experience greatly influences my strong desire to help small business owners avoid getting caught up in online marketing schemes.)
The account executive offered me an opportunity to set up a “mutually beneficial” business relationship, whereby I’d refer my clients to Citysearch and in exchange, the Citysearch account executive would refer new website clients to me. These kinds of offers are not new to me, as I’ve also gotten them from Yellowpages.com sales people in the past.
I can’t honestly refer my clients to pay-per-click companies like Citysearch, Yellowpages.com or Dex, because of the personal experiences I’ve had and that my clients have had with them. And so after some thought, I responded to the Citysearch account executive with a pleasant, “no thanks.” I wrote that while I’d be happy to accept referral traffic from her, it would have to be with “no formal strings attached,” implying that I’d in no way be able to reciprocate.
A month went by, and I didn’t receive a response from the Citysearch account executive and I forgot about it. But then today, a month after sending me the initial solicitation and after apparently reading my blog article about Citysearch click fraud, the account executive sent me an angry email accusing me of “bashing” her company and was “shocked” that I responded to her email at all. Needless to say, it wasn’t a pleasant email for me to receive.
Rather than attack me, here’s how a representative of Citysearch who has found my blog article could have responded:
They could have read over the article carefully and seen that this issue isn’t just about me, but there are many folks out there with legitimate complaints about Citysearch and click fraud. They could have actually attempted to understand the issues and made an attempt to address them. Or they could say, yes, we’ve had issues in the past, but we’ve fixed them and to prove it, we’ll give you a free account for a month.
Wait, did I just say a free account?! Actually asking a pay-per-click company to prove that their claims will be true before signing a long term contract? Where would I get a crazy idea like this? Because I’m a certified Google AdWords consultant, and they give us these $100 coupons that we can give away to new clients so they can actually try out the service at no cost and no risk. If you don’t feel like the $100 was well spent, no problem. Some pay-per-click companies, like Google, let you do a test drive before you buy.
But not Citysearch (or Yellowpages.com or Dex or others). Their sales folks just tell us small business owners to trust them, that they’ve got lots of satisfied customers.
I once sat across a table from a Dex Online salesperson (at the request of a client) who, after I’d showed him clear evidence of poor quality clicks from Dex to their website, told me that yes, they had a problem but now it’s been fixed. The Dex sales person wanted my client to renew their annual contract. So I asked him to give them a free trial period to prove to my clients that this issue of poor click quality was indeed fixed. He said he couldn’t do that.
So I asked the Dex online salesperson how were we supposed to trust him? He had just admitted, after being showed hard website traffic data, that the clicks he had charged my client for during the past year, were worthless. And he was not only refusing to give them a refund, but wanted them to renew their contract based on his statement (with no supporting documentation) that the issue was now magically fixed? Without being willing to give my clients even a single month of free traffic as proof? Let’s review this. The sales person denied an issue. Then confronted with data, the sales person admits an issue existed. The sales person claims it’s fixed, but sorry, won’t give you either a refund for their past poor quality service or a free trial period for their new and improved services. Trust them, they say.
Trust sales folks? Seriously - give us a free trial period and let us small business website owners decide for ourselves. I’m sure there are some folks out there who like Citysearch and these other pay-per-click companies, but until a particular business owner in a particular market with a particular budget can see whether this type of advertising is cost-effective for them, I don’t think that it’s a one-size-fits-all “trust me it will work” online marketing solution.
If the Citysearch person was actually really interested in changing my opinion (and not just getting me to send her business blindly), why not offer me a free trial? I’d certainly write a blog article praising Citysearch if the new experience proved to be a good one. Remember my last experience was 2 years ago - a lot could have changed at Citysearch. And if the Citysearch account executive was 100% sure I’d love the service, then this would be at no risk to them. But rather than try to 1) understand my issues and 2) try to fix them or demonstrate they no longer exist, the account executive got angry and hostile with me.
So after two years of no contact with Citysearch - another bad experience. It’s a shame, because this could have been an opportunity for Citysearch to improve my opinion of their services. A missed opportunity indeed.
Jill--------------
J. Olkoski
Aldebaran Web Design, Seattle
Jill Olkoski has a BS in Engineering, a BS in Computer Science and an MA in Clinical Psychology. She delights in using her advanced technical and psychological skills to help small business owners develop cost-effective and successful websites.
April 8th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Hi Jill,
I did a search on customer services issues with Citysearch and found your blog. Nicely done. Unfortunately not much has changed at Citysearch and I find them to be a horrible company at best (based on customer service) and extortionists at worst because I cannot respond to any negative reviews about our company unless I am paying for their service. Any ideas about hot to contact a higher level sales/service executive. I am hoping that someone at the company would actually like to improve the customer experience.
Kevin
April 8th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Hi Kevin,
I’m not sure how to contact someone “higher” up the Citysearch food chain, other than to get on the phone and keep asking for someone. Or perhaps see if you can find some officer of the company either on the website or a news source. I used to work for Motorola, and when someone wrote a letter to our CEO it made our lives very painful. But again, I’d say that Motorola really did care about improving customer satisfaction, so this strategy might not work.
April 29th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Jill
Small business owner.
There is a new company by the name Local AdLink who soliticited my business.Sounded like City Search.But with more features.Like being able to upload coupons,video,etc. It does sound like a pay per click company piggy backing on Google though.
But is this a bad thing for one like me who has no internet presence? They offer at least a hub on their local
adlink page.Could you please offer some sound advice?
They charge 49. to 199.00 per month for ad packages.
April 30th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Hi Joey.
I’ve got no experience with Local AdLink, however I’ll give you some general guidelines for dealing with online advertising, especially pay-per-click that if you can avoid, you’ll probably have a happier experience:
- Avoid long term contracts. Get the shortest term possible, preferably with an ability to cancel at any time.
- Avoid relying on what salespeople promise. More often than not, they will abandon you after you sign up. Get all promises in writing.
- Track your traffic - you MUST have the ability to track your own results completely independently. Do not rely on them telling you what the results are. Install a tracking software (I prefer Web-Stat).
- Make sure you have control over the ad, what it says, and have the ability to change it.
- Read all the fine print…ALL of it.
If you have “no internet presence”, it’s certainly good to get listed in places where folks can find you. But there are also many directories that offer free listings. Not sure how to select one over the other, other than reading their contract carefully. But the most important thing, is to avoid long term commitments, and track your traffic independently, so you can see exactly what you’re getting for your money. It’s the only way to know what your return on investment is. And of course, from my perspective, the very best way to get an internet presence, is to have a good website, to attract FREE traffic from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. But it’s still important to get listed in local directories, even if you have a website.
June 5th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Hi Jill
I don’t see if this has been addressed (if it has sorry for redundancy). Can we ask Citysearch to remove our company. I am not advertising with them, are they allowed to have my company on their site without the owner’s permission? Thanks in advance!
June 5th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Hi Julia,
You know, it’s a great question. But in general, anyone can create a listing for your business on their website - because your business listing is probably public information - I’m not 100% sure, but this seems logical to me. I guess you could ask Citysearch to remove it, but if it’s not costing you anything, it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth. And it might, just might, bring you some traffic, albeit pretty slim. When I canceled my Citysearch account, they didn’t remove my listing, and I just left it alone. I don’t get any traffic, but figured it was doing me no harm.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Can anyone share the costs for having a Citysearch account? I have a new printing business I am starting and considering getting listed with them to help drive traffic but before I got tangled up with a sales rep I wanted to find out the potential costs. Any info you can provide would be helpful.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Hi CT,
The costs vary. Two years ago I tried out a $50 a month plan, but many others here paid much, much more. I’d strongly suggest using a more transparent pay per click service like Google AdWords that doesn’t require any contract or long term commitment. It’s the contract that is getting folks into trouble, because the sales folks promise the moon, but when the result don’t come, there’s no way to cancel the service.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:21 am
If you think things were bad before, they now have gotten even worse. Citysearch said that they have installed a new “platform”, and as a result they are behind on their credits and cancellations. They also disabled (at least for a month or two, I can’t check to see if its up now since I am no longer an advertiser) their old “account manager” page where you could check invoices and traffic. Despite the inability to credit or cancel accounts or post invoices, they still are billing advertisers, even weeks ahead of schedule in June. They charged my account for the past three months for an account I canceled in March. After I prevailed on three credit card disputes, they just today tried to charge my account for the entire amount (plus more, for a total of over $1,000) that was in dispute, without prior notice or any invoice. They did this despite my twice, in writing, withdrawing all authorization for them to charge my account. Luckily, I had changed my account number as they had done this previously in smaller amounts after each separate dispute was resolved in my favor. Worst advertising experience I’ve ever had.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Hi Brenna,
Thanks very much for sharing your experience. It does indeed sound like things have gone from bad to worse. It sounds like canceling or changing your credit card account number after you’ve canceled your Citysearch account was a very smart move. Again, thanks for sharing and I hope you prevail in this effort to leave Citysearch.
July 27th, 2009 at 7:40 am
they send me a bill which wasn’t true what do i do
July 27th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Hi Theodore,
You dispute the bill - probably with Citysearch and with your credit card company.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Hi Jill,
Thank you very much for posting this! I started my own company a year ago and have been looking for ways to market it online. Like you, I have used $50/mo budgets for certain companies. I was interested in using CitySearch because it would be a great way to get the business out there. However, I have been skeptical to being with regarding them and their inability to answer certain questions.
Aside from Google Adwords, what are some better options for people looking to market their brand? I know that you do not encourage CitySearch or Yellowpages? I am not an expert and do not know of many non pay-per-click options. Could you recommend a few?
Thanks!
August 12th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Hi Tanvier,
I’ll first disclose that I’m not at all a marketing expert, not by a long shot. I have read (and for the life of me I can’t remember where, it might have been in the Google AdWords Learning Center somewhere) that sometimes folks use Google AdWords and the content network to actually promote brands, versus get actual clicks. I’ve only had experiences (my own and via clients) with Google AdWords, YellowPages and Citysearch. Out of those three, I’d suggest doing some research into brand development using AdWords, other than that, I’m just not aware of a non-pay-per-click brand increasing product. But that certainly doesn’t mean it’s not out there - it’s just not part of the work I do, that’s all. Best of luck to you and great question!