Feedback: what stops me completing my Touch Local listing
Update: 10th Feb 2010 – response from Touch Local customer services (scroll down to read comments)
[Note: this original post was made in Nov 2008]
I got an email from Touch Local this morning saying that if I completed my profile, I stood a chance of winning £2000 cash.
The on-site copy reminds you that the more detailed information you provide about your business, the more chance you stand of creating confidence in prospects. A quick glance showed my profile is a depressing 11% complete.
The kind of information required to complete your profile is on one level perfectly logical. On another level though, it’s a complete turn off.
I suddenly found myself faced with what could be an hour’s work to complete a profile on a promise of benefits about which I’m already dubious – to provide the kind of information that I’ve already spent a great deal of time and effort compiling here on our site.
A listing that requires a lot of effort is off-putting particularly when the benefits are moot, to say the least. One that requires all that effort AND duplicates what we’ve already spent time and energy on feels even more off-putting – especially considering the free listing will be plastered with Google ads for your competitors!
I just found myself making a snap judgment: can I be bothered to invest any more effort?
The answer was no.
Just a final update reflecting an email from Kris Lea at Touch Local today. Kris confirms that the following people in this thread have had their issues ‘resolved’
Paul Kelliher
J.R.
Lee Griffith
Keith Powell
That’s all folks! (cue the Loony Tunes music)
I’ve closed this thread to comments now.
Paul, I didn’t post your last comment because you have made your point really clearly already. I agree with some of the points you made in your email, though.
Everyone else, I hope that you get the issues resolved with TL. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to comment here.
Good afternoon,
I would like to thank again those people who have posted here and those who have contacted me following my previous post.
We continue to strive to provide excellent service to our clients and have appreciated the feedback we have received from everyone, including Sam.
If there is anyone who is still yet to contact me with regard to open issues or has further questions, please don’t hesitate to do so by emailing me at client.relations@touchlocal.com.
Otherwise, I thank you all again for your comments and time.
Many thanks
Fiona French
Hi, J – I hear what you’re saying. The only reason I’d close the thread is because (paradoxically) when a thread like this gets a lot of comments, it eventually affects my ranking for the keywords I really want to be found for. My advice to anyone about online reputation is that you need to find it, face it and fix it. I am glad that Touch Local have contacted some of the people in this thread but, in a spirit of honest feedback, I’m not sure they’ve really reached stage 2 in the process.
Here’s what I recommend to my clients (in a nutshell):
Find it: know what is out there that will damage your reputation (whether it’s what other people are saying or something you yourself are doing wrong)
Face it: be seen to acknowledge the situation and take responsibility for whatever mistakes you might have made in the situation
Fix it: be seen to be willing to do whatever it takes to make amends / negotiate a resolution
I’ve given Touch Local this advice freely and have offered them this same thread as a platform for them to demonstrate their willingness to handle the problem. Beyond that, it’s up to them. In my experience, the most powerful tool you have in rebuilding your reputation is having the courage and the humility to admit your mistakes. In the spirit of open and honest feedback, I can’t say that I’ve sensed that in TL’s public responses so far.
Hello Sam,
I would ask that you don’t close it just yet. It seems to me that the only reason any action has been taken for anyone is solely because of this site and the damage being done to TL’s reputation. If you close it I really don’t think there will be such a reason for them to resolve any other cases.
If we hadn’t all found this site I doubt if anyone would have had a refund and I’m sure would have had much more trouble in getting anything resolved.
I haven’t heard anything back from them other than a confirmation of receipt of my email, and that was only after I emailed them using the instructions on here. They’ve had my evidence and letter of complaint for six weeks now.
I am very pleased to hear that Keith.
My point about online reputation was (and is) that in Social Media, you can’t ignore your unhappy customers. If you do, they *will* punish you for not listening to them. What I did was to catch the reaction to what TL did – and by doing so brought it to their attention. I hope that I did it in a fair, responsible and skillful way that made a positive resolution and the repair of their reputation more rather than less likely. My motivation has always been to help people look at that difficult feedback and wherever possible, take steps to put it right. My payoff is quite simple: I genuinely like to see people happy and problems resolved and it’s a great way of showing (rather than ‘telling’) what I do.
I’m planning a site ‘makeover’ in the next week and am hoping that TL will post again before I close the comments on this thread. I think it’s to their credit that they’ve picked up this problem, made contact, asked for advice and taken it – all in the spirit of resolving the problems outlined in this thread. Similarly, Laskers have also taken the time to make contact and resolve any misunderstandings in this issue.
Call me old-fashioned, but that warms the cockles of me old ‘eart
Good Morning, This should be my last post concerning Touch Local, but I have added the site to my favourites and will be returning on a regular basis.
This Morning at 10.05am my problem with Touch Local is over, I recieved as promised by Fiona French, a letter confirming that I do not owe any moneys to Touch Local, and that Laskers has been contacted and told to cancel their part, along with an apology to me for any inconvience caused,
Now I have a letter confirming that there was nothing owed on my part, I shall be holding on to it for the foreseeable future, just to be sure.
I hope everyone else who has posted here and elsewhere has the same result, and gets their problem solved.
Without Sam Bringing this problem to light in a public forum, I beleive that I would still have the initial problem, and would still be making phone calls and exploring my legal options by now and suffering in silence, so a very big thankyou to Sam and all at mukaumedia,
I must also add, that it seems once the right person becomes involved (as happens so often) the red tape gets cut and common sense prevails, so I need to say a big thankyou to Fiona at Touch Local for addressing and resolving my problem promptly.
anyway thats it from me, for now.
cheers
Keith
I had a productive chat today with Richard – one of the Directors at Laskers.
I’m pleased to say that he fully understood the unhappiness that people in this thread must have felt to be sent demands for money that they didn’t believe they owed.
For the record, Richard’s call went a long way to restoring my confidence in Laskers who, as I’ve said throughout, have had a difficult situation to handle in this matter.
All in all, I commend both companies for taking the time to face an uncomfortable barrage of criticism and demonstrating the willingness to take action to put things right.
Well done Keith, that’s great news. Good to see that TL seem to be doing the honourable thing with at least some of their customers. I am still waiting to hear from them following a confirmation of receipt of my email. I live in hope.
That sounds great, Keith. It’s very good to see that TL are taking some steps to put this right.
I’ve also suggested to TL that it might be useful for them at some point to account for how things got to this place; what mistakes they might have made (if any) and what they’ve learned from the process.
‘Acknowledge, Apologise, Act’ says the online reputation management community. I’d agree – I think it’s the best (and only) way to repair temporary reputation problems.
Hi again Sam, just a quick update.
Fiona rang me yesterday but alas i missed the call, but I did get another today. She seems very genuine and without going into too much detail, we spoke for 5 mins and basically the conclusion arrived at was, that she would contact Laskers and terminate their involvement, and close the account with no further question, plus e-mail a letter and sending a hard copy through the post, stating that I owe TL nothing, and the account is now closed, with nothing more payable.
Once the confirmation is received, I will post again thanking Fiona for her commitment to solve this problem and to right the wrongs, and to thank you once again for making it all happen.
Hope that your discussions with FF at TL are productive, J. Whenever I hear (either from TL or from readers here) of the situation being happily resolved, I’ll post a note so that people can see when the issue has been dealt with.
Difficult position for Laskers, really. They get the accounts handed over and do what they’re hired to do – demand money. If you inherit accounts that are in some kind of dispute that’s a bit of ‘poisoned chalice’…. but then again, that is the terrain that comes with making your living from collections, I suppose.
Just thought i would give update after being contacted by Lasker over a month ago demanding £515 I have just received an email from them again demanding the £515 addressed to Sir/Madam which seems very unprofessional from a debt collection company. I have since sent my contact details to Fiona French and await her contact.
Thanks for the comment, Gary. If you feel you’re in dispute with TL, why not take them up on their offer in this thread to hear any concerns you have? Contact Fiona French at client.relations@touchlocal.com. Under these circumstances I think it’s unlikely that your feedback will be ignored.
I was talked into taking an ad with touch local in 2008. The same problem occured as everyone else and I cancelled by letter and phone. Low and behold 2 years later i receive the letter from laskers.
I have contacted Trading Standards and they advised to tell laskers that the amount in in dispute and therefore under oft guidelines they are no longer allowed to pursue the debt and have to refer the case back to touch local.
In addition when laskers contacted me they said that i have already paid touch local £800 which i have not. Their take seems to be that you have already paid this much why not pay the rest. it seems touch local can’t even get their accounts right let alone the advertising.
Good to hear, K and thanks for the kind words.
Hi Sam, I have supplied my contact details and a brief overview of my problems to Fiona French, and will update the site when there is any news, but one thing is for sure, without your efforts here, we would have all thought that it is an individual problem, but by bringing us all together this site has created a mouthpiece – and, fingers crossed solutions.
For advice on the above contact Consumer Advice
with your complaints about Touch local on
08454040506
e-mail advice@consumerdirect-westmidlands.gov.uk
Hi Brian – thanks for the comment. I edited the phone number out because you seem to have missed that this thread is about Touch Local, not Thompson Local and I’ve not got time to check whether or not it connects to Consumer Direct. Your advice is good of course: anyone who is unhappy with a product or service received from a company can always contact Consumer Direct about it.
FYI – TouchLocal assure me that they are willing and ready to speak to anyone involved in this thread and currently in contact with two of the people who have posted.
Hi after reading such a lot of bad comments about Thompson Local I wonder if any of those people who have left their comments would like to contact Consumer Direct with their reports and complaints about Thompson Local on – [edited]
Someone there is waiting to hear from you and help you with your complaints.
Brian Phillips
Thanks for responding, Fiona – I hope this works out to the benefit of everyone involved.
For those of you who have posted here about a poor customer experience with TL, please be sure to contact Fiona and see if she can resolve your situation to your satisfaction.
In the interests of fairness, can I ask that if you think that TL handles your complaint well from this point, please consider taking a moment to comment back here and let other people know. In the unlikely event that they don’t, the same, of course applies.
Hello,
My name is Fiona French and I am the Client Services Manager at TouchLocal.
First of all, I would like to thank everyone on this site for taking the time to pass on their comments. I would also like to thank Sam Deeks from mu:kau media for his time, feedback and suggestions.
I was very concerned to read some of the feedback that has been raised by both existing and previous clients. We take client satisfaction extremely seriously, and subsequently we have tried to resolve where possible first hand the issues raised by business owners on this forum. However, we have unfortunately been unable to contact all of those clients who left feedback as we cannot identify their contact details solely from their site user name.
To this end, could I ask that anyone with open issues please email me your contact details along with your preferred method and time of contact to client.relations@touchlocal.com marked urgent and for my attention and I shall respond accordingly.
Many thanks
Fiona French
Client Services Manager
Touch Local Ltd
J, Kris Lea Marketing Director from TouchLocal said he was going to send something through early this week, so as soon as I see it, I’ll let you know.
Still no news from TL or from Lasker which is pretty poor – they’ve got time to phone me up to try to sell me advertising but not to sort this out… I can only assume it’s because there’s so many customers in the same boat for them to deal with.
Hi Paul, REACH local? (scurries off to do a bit of research)… I’m sure no-one from this thread will be advertising with them, lols. I’m expecting some news from TouchLocal soon about how they’re addressing the issue here (or planning to). I hope you’re right – that they have called everyone here and put things right. I may know more early next week – and you can be sure that I’ll post it here.
Update: ReachLocal appears to be a recent arrival in the UK but there’s already a lot of ugly stuff online about them – some very polarised debate, including ReachLocal people piling in to defend the business.
It’s a minefield, as I’ve said before because – if you read any of the really technical arguments flying around – it’s clear that these companies are selling a complex proposition to punters who haven’t a hope in hell’s chance of understanding how all of this works. That is a recipe for trouble.
hi everyone
im back !!
there is another [edited] company to be warey of (REACH LOCAL) yeh i know ,called me today ,she used to work for yell.com ,obviosley started to slag of yell.com ,new all my details because she i assume had access to them before leaving ,(difference between them & our friends T/L)well there is none ,they look the same tell you there either run by google or owned by them ,bleat on about garenting clicks on your website ,recording every enquiry etc ,etc (i think she got a shock when i told her about T/L & how i was treated but then again that was he same reaction i got from the rep i had when i told her about premium solutions & look what happend then !!!
anyway im getting about 2-3 calls a week regarding internet advertising & most have the same or simular numbers as mentioned above ,that gives an engaged tone when you phone back …anyway i assume most of you have received that apoligey phone call from T/L as there have not been many posts !!! beware REACH LOCAL you have been warned (cheers)
[Editor note: TouchLocal's Marketing Manager Kris Lea emailed to say "I can confirm that Paul's case has been resolved and all outstanding arrears have been written off"]
Hi Chris. Two scams in one day? That’s good going!
‘First Connect’ don’t seem to exist. The only reference to the phone number is on a site called http://www.phonespamfilter.com. Hmm.
Not sure I’d suspect TL though lols.
BTW – I had a chat with the Marketing Director of TouchLocal today, so expect some response here very shortly.
I am now wondering if I am on a [edited] list !!
THEY ?? have tried to [edited] me twice in 2 days
Yesterday BT ? called saying I had money outstanding on my landline account. If I did not clear the debt of 27 pounds they would cut of the connection. Obviously if I had given card details they could of cleared account !!
Reported incident to the police and BT who said it is a common con and are investigating
Then today had a phone call from – first connect – promising that my website would appear on first page of google when people enquired for tilers in colchester, and I could have the first month free as a trial period . THE PATER CERTAINLY RANG A BELL !!I didnt fall for it this time the tel number was 01614257541 which is certainly not local to me.
Are touch local selling details or trying again under a different guise???
No problem Tim, point taken
well as my last post states ive finished and paid the whole. Not going to post my details work or other (dont want a letter saying i havent paid). Its over, but i just felt i had to say that my money has been better spent else where.
Thanks for writing back Sam.
Tim, thanks for posting. I edited your comment for two reasons:
1) your email address gives the impression that you created it specifically to rant at TL
2) no-one else on this thread has slagged off TL and recommended a competitor in the same line.
Other people posting on here give their real email addresses or links to their sites and don’t recommend competitors. I’m all for companies being accountable but I believe equally in fairness.
Interestingly, I’m going to be talking to the Head of Marketing at TL today or tomorrow about all this feedback.
Will keep you posted.
i spent 2500 on a avdert with tl, got F all. Still paid it. [Edited] Dont spend with TL.
Be interesting to see. Any of the other folks here heard anything? (…sound of tumbleweeds…)
Was phoned by someone from TL today – finally, I thought, getting back to me about the letter I sent two weeks ago. Turns out it was someone checking that my details were correct who had no idea of any of my situation. She said she would get someone to call me….
I used to work for touch local and I sugest that no-one goes near them – it is all huge [edited] and they bully customers into going onto the site by advertising their major competitors next to the free listing.
We were also encouraged to say that we were direct partners with Google which is a complete lie and we also guaranteed clicks to peoples' sites. There is only one way to guarantee anything and that's to do it yourself! (I dont need to tell you what they were doing).
This is just a heads up keep away, the company has no repeat business and is just blagging loads of new business to make the company appealing to buy!
I have documented and reported my case to Trading Standards, and having left it 2 weeks to hear from TL I phoned them. They confirmed that they had received my letter, with documented evidence of breach of contract, but that the supervisor wasn’t available and would contact me today. I live in hope, especially if someone has seen the light and helped out at least one wronged customer.
Well done Paul. Does that put me back in lead position of mosted owed?!
I’m pleased to hear that Paul. Sounds like a good move from TouchLocal and I’m sure it will send a positive signal.
I’ve no axe to grind in this issue. My only interest – one that I’m up front about – is professional; from an online reputation management perspective because that’s what I do (it’s my 2nd job in fact). My posts sometimes act like fly paper in that unhappy customers stick to them.
Sometimes, with out-and-out scams (like Expo Guide and WBD) I do it deliberately, motivated by the desire to save a few small business people from paying £1000 to overseas crooks.
Others, like the TouchLocal post are first and foremost carefully written bits of feedback based on my own experience. I posted that over a year ago and – as I’m mentioned before – nowhere in it did I make any suggestion that TouchLocal was a scam. Only recently was there a surge of people searching for that phrase. Did I create that surge? No. It has nothing to do with me. It’s entirely the result of a series of business decisions by TL and the response of their unhappy customers.
For a company, I’m sure it feels awful to suddenly come across a pile of angry customers posting their grievances in one place online. That goes without saying. But on the plus side at least it’s here, in one place where the moderator (me) isn’t interested in taking sides – and at least the issue has come light before it can do any further damage.
Hard as it is to look at difficult feedback, you can rest assured that it’s better to take the opportunity to resolve this kind of issue – and be seen to resolve it – than to just leave these unhappy customers telling all and sundry at every opportunity how bad your service is.
The folks at TouchLocal are more than welcome to post here if it will help clarify and resolve things to everyone’s advantage.
hopefully this should be my last post !!!
i received a call from T/L yesterday & finaly was able to speak to someone who would let me explain all my problems with everything & to my suprise but gratefully accepted they have decided to cancel the debt …now im not going to make any comments on why the decision was made ,obviously im happy ,although im still receiving silly & childish text messages from the rep.
i will also add that this site has possibly helped well at least i know its being read as my rep keeps comenting about it !!!!! so thank you for letting me (post)GOOD LUCK TO YOU ALL
regards paul
[Editor note: TouchLocal's Marketing Manager Kris Lea emailed to say "I can confirm that Paul's case has been resolved and all outstanding arrears have been written off"]
From where I stand, that’s a well-put, clear piece of feedback, to your credit Chris. I’d be pleased if a dissatisfied customer of mine gave me such clear and respectful ‘heads up’ on what I was doing wrong.
Hi all
I would like to reply to the rep from T/L.
I know that you probably do have good customers and there are also probably customers who do not want to pay, we all get those, but there are also customers who were told that they could cancel a contract after “X” amount of time, that being done, T/L still send out “Collection company” letters a year, 14 months down the line, then when you call and ask about it you are told “just pay up”, so T/L Rep if I was to send you a letter saying that you owed me £50.00 would you pay without question, T/L had all the details so, could have taken the money, it is an “oversight” on their part and an oversight that they do not seem to want to put right, there has been no letters, no emails, no phone calls, to let anyone know that the various amounts were outstanding, I know that if someone owes me money, I send them two letters asking for “Payment”, then if I hear nothing then, I contact a collection company. T/L have gone about this all the wrong way, I know there will be no apology from them, nothing to help sort out the bad feelings people have about them.
As for the comment “If a customer has been chased for payment” well it would have been nice for them to chase me, then I would not have to deal with the obnoxious people or person at “Lasker Collections”.
I would also like to say that, I was with T/L for a year, I always ask people “where did you get my details from” not one told me from T/L, I also advertised with Yell.com, this company you see advertising their service on TV, in the papers, on the radio, people know they are there, T/L on the other hand do not advertise anywhere.
The promises about how many hits you will get a day, well I am not saying that anyone does, but I could sit and “hit on” peoples web sites all day if I was making money from it. I know that you cannot guarantee jobs, that is down to the company its self, but you could at least get one person to call. If anyone has failed to “complete the contract”, I would have to say that would be T/L themselves.
I believe if you look at all the comments on here, we are all after the same thing and that would be “Customer Service” its easy to take our money, or not in my case, but when it comes to sorting it out, nothing, I can only say from my personal experience that I would not touch T/L again and I would advise others not to either. But that is my personal opinion and not the opinion of this web site.
So T/L rep I hope that you can go into the office and ask your supervisor to have a look here then he can ask the powers to be if you can have a “Customer Service Department” who will actually call people back and sort out problems.
Thanks
Chris
Ps. Would love to know if the customer who informed you called to cancel after reading here?
I too have received a demand from Lasker Collections for £97.97 dted 16/01/10 even though I cancelled my useless advertising with touch local. they are probably one and the same Company! Anyone checked this out? I am not paying anything, and reporting them to Trading Standards.
well at last
someone or possibly two(gumbo)comments from T/L
1st in my case the contract i was told could be cancelled within 30 days ,i cancelled by phone; in writing cancelled my direct debit i was told i would only have the service (inharnsed listing /sponser heading )while i was paying ..fair enough my reasons for cancelling were just (promised things would be put right ie wrong logo wrong phone no..anyway (grumbo)my rep then got upset/annoyed that i had cancelled direct with T/L and had not cotacted her ,she seemed only intrested in talking over me (see earlier posts); i think tried the ‘we will give you a month free card’ which i declined (despite her saying i accepted )hope you have that recorded !!!!
well you have not because i did not agree !! then after a couple of weeks as quick as i was on air i was off £200 odd wasted no enquires nothing ,but that is not my main concern what i was promissed or not is between me & the rep but i think there are a few more people were told/sold the idea .
my main beef as ive stated which even today is that, like many, there is absolutly zero corrispondance from anyone at T/L nothing confirming cancelation ,nothing to remind me we are not conforming with the contract ,no reminders ,no statements nothing at all …i just thought they could not be botherd ,so (nothing but professional )(joke) more like !! then to finaly receive a debt collectors letter 14 months later is an absolute disrace (you mention about the economic climate ,is that why you are trying to get money from honest working people ,because T/L are feeling the pinch (join the club) ….you may have been a rep for T/L but to say and its your right & duty to say how wonderfull you are but there are plenty of others that disagree..(gumbo) whoever you are ..my rep did her job well enough to sell me her product ,but i felt i could not get a word in & unlike her im not rude & do not like butting in or constantly talking over people ,
yes i should have not bought the advert if i was unhappy !!thats why when i felt i was with an unprofessional outfit i contacted them straight away & not her then when got wind of that she was back on to me ect,ect.just the other day she sent me insulting text messages (very professinal)by the way nicola ive kept the messages so if/when this ends up in court it im sure will only help my case ….finaly the guy ive been speaking to at trading standards has had almost 20 complaints at his office alone ,he has suggested like i have getting touch with watchdog !!
[Editor note: TouchLocal's Marketing Manager Kris Lea emailed to say "I can confirm that Paul's case has been resolved and all outstanding arrears have been written off"]
Thanks for your comment. You’re right – there are two sides to every story.
I’m struck by the wording of your comment: “If a customer has been chased for payment it will be because they have entered into a contract and have failed to complete that contract”.
What does “failing to complete that contract” mean? Does it mean people who don’t want your service after a certain point and simply decide to stop paying? Or could it mean people who don’t want your services after a certain point, believe they can cancel, think they’ve done so and therefore stop paying?
Either way, unless you’re suggesting that all these people simply set out to use services without paying for them, it points to a lot of people deciding that your service doesn’t represent the value they initially hoped it might and wanting out. Smart move? Try to keep them, if you can’t, learn from them how to improve your service – and let them go with good grace.
But to hold on to them, whether because no-one’s hearing their requests to go or, worse, because you’ve got a contract saying they’ve got to stay, then surely you’re storing up trouble? And that’s where I think the real reputation danger lies – the risk of being perceived as a company willing to squeeze money out of unhappy customers.
I don’t think for one minute that TL set out to do that, but that isn’t to say it hasn’t somehow ended up being that way.
Paul, If she was so annoying, why did you buy? Can only blame yourself really!!
I would like to add a comment on this site, I have just spent a long time reading this feedback and felt the urge to leave some information.
I work for Touch and have done for over 3 years and yes before you ask I AM a sales rep.
Firstly in reference to how I found the post a customer of mine who advertisies and is more than happy with his product contacted me and informed about it.
Some of the comments on this page are fair and some are totally ridiculous!! Touch Local has a great HONEST salesforce and offer a good oppourtunity to attract new customers to your businesses.
Do not be put off by these comments, it is a simple proposal….. entertain the idea & pitch, digest and if you feel it is for your company then take advantage of the product(s) (NO DIFFERENT TO ANY OTHER FORM OF ADVERTISING SURELY?)
If a customer has been chased for payment it will be becuase they have entered into a contract and have failed to complete that contract (surely if it happened the other way round, you would chase a customer to pay you? No?) I am not trying to provoke arguments I am simply saying as an honest and fair sales rep that there are 2 sides to every story and some of the things customers say to get out of paying for adverts is simply astonishing especially in this recent economic climate.
In regards to the Client services team they are nothing but professional and are always willing to help if needed. Regards
Fortunately I declined the paid advertising options offered to me by T/L. i’m glad I did having found this forum.
As a new business I am bombarded with people trying to sell me quick fixes to get my business off the ground. It’s incredibly frustrating recieving so many calls from people selling mailing lists, web diretories and advertising space. There are also trade associations that require membership fees to boot.
I’ve told those people that are trying to sell me advertising that if they tuly believe it will work, why not give it to me for 3 months free? If I was to see real results then I’d be mad not to continue. None have called me back as yet though
I’m actually removing my free listings from many sites. Instead, I have added a ‘people we work with page’ to our site and am offering free reciprocal links to my customers and some suppliers.
I can’t understand T/L’s approach to customers. My view has always been that if you treat your customers correctly and offer a good service, or product, you will keep them for the long term. After all, the most important part to any company is the customer, it’s really hard to do business without them.
One thing I really recommend a company can do is to join something like http://www.getsatisfaction.com
I think it’s a fantastic idea. TL, seriously worth looking at.
You create an account and give some of your people the responsibility of monitoring it. Then, you put a ‘GetSatisfaction’ badge on your site.
If something goes wrong, customers will go there and ask their question or request support. You pick it up and handle it before it overheats.
It’s a very encouraging system, well worth a look. See which companies are there using it and how they’re using it.
well finaly the rep that i named on a previous post was upset with what ive put about her (although she has not mentioned once in her many text’s 5 in total)about T/L ,her text’s were rude & she insulted me twice ,once regarding my age !!(very unproffesional) all she seemed worried about was her own skin & how this could ruin her career (i think shes doing that herself by working for T/L)as far as LASKERS ive a very good inforcing officer currently checking them out ,he is about the highest you can go regarding debt collecting & has assured me not to take any notice of the threterning letter as he thinks there just chancers who are out to get comission from T/L ,anyway im happy to go to court & with the amountcomplaints & investigations to trading standards if there not carefull my lovely young rep will be looking for a new job as T/L will end up on watchdog !!!!!(watch this space)
[Editor note: TouchLocal's Marketing Manager Kris Lea emailed to say "I can confirm that Paul's case has been resolved and all outstanding arrears have been written off"]
‘
Heh heh glad to see you still got a sense of humour, Chris
“All we want is to be able to get these matters sorted out in a professional manner”.
Sounds like a reasonable request to me. How about it, the powers that be in Touch Local? Why not talk to these people; listen to what went wrong for them and see what can be done to put it right? The one thing that they all seem to be saying is that TL didn’t listen.
A willingness to do that now would, I’m sure, be appreciated – and create a positive impression.
Hi all
Hope you are all well, just a quick note on the message left by Mr. Chris Curtis… “Lasker Collections” is a new company started on 17/11/2009 by a Mr. Vedanund. Hauradhur, it is a Private Limited Company with 2 shares at £1 per share. Now if we all club together and buy both shares, all our problems will be solved.
Have been in touch with “Touch Local” asking for a copy of my account with them and as yet I have had no reply, I see more and more people are slowly getting to know about both companies.
It would be nice if both parties would sit up and listen, all we want, is to be able to get these matters sorted out in a professional manner, instead of someone on the phone at “Laskers” telling us that “We have to pay, what car do we own, are we worth suing” I know if I was a director at this company, I would be looking at who is answering the phones and the manner in which they talk to people, as for Touch Local” well who knows, they look like they have just sold on the so called debts to the collection company, just so that they do not have to sort out the oversights on their part, with regard to the claims they make, we all know that we will not be on the front page of “Google” but at least one contact would have been nice, all we got was a box with their cards in.
I know that I have learnt from this whole experience, I know now, I can and will just say “NO” to pushy reps.
I will keep you all updated on any response from TL or Lasker
Regards all
Chris.
I’ve reported both of the companies to my local Trading Standards office so I will see what they have to say about it.
Any updates anyone?
J, thanks for the comment. I’ve always felt that a sign of a really good restaurant is the way its management and staff are trained to bend over backwards to ensure that the customer who expresses dissatisfaction isn’t made to feel in any way uncomfortable for having done so.
When you’ve experienced this being done well and being done badly (as I have) you know exactly how huge the difference is – and how warm and rosy you feel about the restaurant that made you feel you had every right to ask for it to be the way you wanted it. That special touch creates a good feeling that spreads a long, long way.
No, please feel free to keep posting Paul.
Rest assured I’m not defending TouchLocal in any way. I also didn’t write my original post to take sides with anyone, just to share my experience. As someone who works in online reputation I’m hopeful that TL and Laskers would see this as an opportunity to resolve the situation to your – and their – benefit. Hope that happens!
Paul – sorry you’re in the same boat as me in terms of being in the very high debt mark, and yes you win!
I took legal advice from the Federation of Small Businesses and a company can chase debts for up to 6 years without contacting you apparently (although we can clearly see from here the damage done to their reputation is probably a much bigger cost to them than if they actually managed to recoup what they are trying to claim).
I was advised that the first thing to do was to take it up with Touch Local (which I tried to do and left messages but no one has contacted me) so I have posted in my proof of their Breach of Contract which is why I ended (or tried to end) my contract. I will call Trading Standards tomorrow as well as I feel they are not only breaching contracts, over selling and under delivering, but because of the really poor levels of customer service and communication. They are clearly letting down quite a few customers (and perhaps there are many, many happy ones, but if there were I don’t think they would trying to hound unhappy ones) and rather than apologise and make amends, they are trying to make money and chase after what is not rightly owed to them.
I own a restaurant, and if there is the slightest bit of dissastifaction from a customer I don’t hesitate to take money off their bill or comp the whole thing as reputation is everything to me. I would not go chasing down the road after them with the heavies if they didn’t want to pay for a poor product or service and this is exactly what TL are doing by trying to intimidate small businesses with a debt collection agency.
What astounds me the most is that TL don’t contact you at all for the money before trying to threaten you with DC agencies which seems like a school bully who relies on his meat head side kicks to do the dirty work for them.
I will be keeping my legal advisors informed of any progression, but the last thing I am going to do is be intidated by these lot.
Good luck everyone, and let’s please keep the information flowing.
hi sam
yes its me again
ive read both your stuart & your coments with intrest my beef with T/L has never been how much work they have promised or leads (which they did by the way !) it was the manner & un professional way the treated me after the visit from there rep then the cancellation of the contract then without a letter or corospondance for 14 months have a (so called) debt collector (ive found out a liitle more about these chancers) im not stupid i understand that no one can garentee you work ,im with Yell & TD and some weeks i get 10-15 calls some weeks 0 its the unprofessional way T/L go about there business ,by the way i googled touch local to contact them & saw the touch local scam as an option & was interested in what other people had encounterd ,it now seems as though people will be deffending T/L next…. if you wish me not to leave anymore comments i will ..
regards paul kelliher
[Editor note: TouchLocal's Marketing Manager Kris Lea emailed to say "I can confirm that Paul's case has been resolved and all outstanding arrears have been written off"]
Like most of the previous entries , after four months thought I had cancelled TL then 1 year later received a letter from lasker collections for the oustanding months ( not a winner only for 203.58 )
on looking on the web today it looked as if Lasker Collections has only been formed recently ( perhaps by touch loacl ??? )
Their website is very basic !!! Also it appeared to me as if touch local website seems to be having problems have they been pulled by Google or perhaps trading standards .
[Editors comment: it was working fine when I tried it just now - Fri]
I was doing the due diligence thing when I found your site. Just wanted to tick that box for you [Thank you - S]
Also, alot of the complaints Ive read have been about TL sales guys promising x number of hits hits & problems cancelling when those hits failed to materialise.
The guy that called me today had a totally different approach. He was talking about how many orders I would need through my website to make the fee worth paying. Frankly, its not that many but after reading all the negativity about TL I dont think I’ll be taking them up on their (what seems like a reasonable)offer.
Everything thats been said about TL here and elsewhere has damaged my view of the whole business listings industry.
I will do more research into that & invest my £800 in something else for now.
Any suggestions?
Thanks for the excellent long comment, Stuart. Some good sound advice there from someone who seems to know what they’re talking about.
I do want to make an important point first. In your comment you say:
Fact 1: This post doesn’t have the heading ‘TouchLocal scam” – the title is ‘TouchLocal: feedback” and was a post about my own experience of choosing not to complete my free listing with them. Nowhere in the post do I use the word ‘scam’ or suggest they are a scam.
Fact 2: If you just Google ‘TouchLocal’ you will find this post on P11 of the search results with the title “Touch Local: Feedback” and the summary “Feedback: what stops me completing my Touch Local listing I got an email from Touch Local this morning saying that if I completed my profile, I stood a.”.
Fact 3: People ARE Googling ‘TouchLocal scam” and arriving here via the search results. My blog search engine stats tell me that, as do the comments here.
There is no Google heading ‘TouchLocal scam” and just about the only way that you – or anyone else – is likely to ‘come across’ this post (other than possibly an occasional ‘recent comment’ link on my website front page) is to Google the phrase ‘Touch Local scam”.
And realistically the only people searching for ‘TouchLocal scam’ will be the following:
• unhappy TouchLocal customers (evidenced by several comments here)
• suspicious prospects (evidenced by 1 comment here)
• other businesses doing ‘due diligence’ (no evidence here of that yet)
• online reputation management people like me (evidenced by my comments)
• representatives of TouchLocal or Laskers (no evidence here of that yet)
All of which, not unreasonably, leaves me wondering how did you come across this post? Which of the above best describes you?
In response to your comments, Stuart:
You’re right, online directories obviously do work for some people – and your list of free ones is a great resource for small businesses starting up. And as you hinted, whether paid or not, it doesn’t matter how much traffic you have going to your site; if you’re not set up to sell something or your product isn’t marketable you’re wasting your time and money.
Seems to me that the basic problem here, though, is that online directories are selling to the small business owner very often doesn’t understand what is and isn’t possible in online marketing. He just wants a positive impact on his bottom line.
You and I both know that no directory could – or should – promise to increase someone’s bottom line for the simple reason that they can’t. Even if it sends its clients loads of qualified traffic, a directory has no control over the quality of a businesses’ products or their ability (or lack of ability) to convert that traffic to enquiries or sales.
But the reality is that directory sales people are under a lot of pressure to sell their services in a highly competitive market. Can you imagine them taking the time to stress to a prospect that the one thing it can’t actually promise is the impact on the bottom line? Or – as your comments correctly suggest – that the level of benefit they’ll get really depends on the their ability to understand this one strategy as part of a wide range of web marketing concepts?
If my company chooses to sell a product to people who (let’s be honest) you or I could pretty easily predict are unlikely to get the benefit they hope they’re going to get for their money and are therefore likely to be pretty unhappy as a result, aren’t I just asking for trouble?
If I then don’t listen to those customers or work to put it right when they realise that the results aren’t coming in, then in this day and age, I’m guaranteeing trouble for myself.
If – after a year of doing nothing to resolve the problem – I then hand it to a collections agency, I’ll be looking at a reputation issue for two companies, not just one.
Unhappy customers will have their say in online social media whether a business likes it or not. Social media means you have to engage, not avoid. But like I always say, a high visible space where people are being critical of you is also a highly visible space you can win back people with what you do next. Depends on what outcome you want most, I guess.
Hi,
I came across this forum as the ‘Touch Local Scam’ Google heading intersted me.
To put an unbiased and objective view on this – I have spent the last 6 years being heavily involved in Online Directories, PPC, Affiliate Marketing and SEO so can approach this with a bit of authority.
Online Directories DO work but to be truly effective they need to be part of a complete online portfolio to produce the returns. There is never any guarantee with any advertising – PPC, Local Newspaper, TV, etc but in my experience if people are open minded about a multi media (yes even for SME businesses) then they will get returns. A great example is my father, who is a bricklayer had a listing on Yell.com and was receiving 2-3 calls per week at times despite only spending a couple of hundred pounds.
SME/Trade businesses have traditionally advertised in local press and a Yellow Pages/Thomson Directory which still produces results, however 44% of the people who use directories use BOTH a print medium and internet when choosing a business.
I have encountered Touch Local and from my experience they do a good job on their SEO to drive front page rankings, however like any sales organisation you will have ‘good’ sales people and ‘bad’ sales people, you must take each case on their own merits.
Free advice I can give people is that you need to be very open to new ideas and approach internet advertising in a different way. If you have paid good money for a website, you need to let people find it and to do that you need to be in as many places as possible. This does take time and a bit of money but if you approach it properly it can cost less than a large YP advert and a years (declining) local press advert.
In my opinion look at 2-3 different directories (Yell.com, ThomsonLocal.com, TL, etc) and find out the level of traffic to your type of business and base your decision on the amount of traffic. You then need to support this with whatever SEO you have had done, registering on FREE directories (FreeIndex, BT Tradespace, UKsmallbusiness directory, Hot Frog, Gum Tree, Viva Street, etc) and extremely important – go to Google Business Centre and register your details to feature in their local business searches (Maps Section on the front page).
Back this up with selective keyword/PPC campaigns around the type of work you specifically want. Overall you should be looking at an maximum annual cost of around £1500-2000 and a bit of time to set your own effective online campaign. To compare a good sized newspaper ad will cost around £50-100 per week!
Remember though, you can drive traffic to your site but you cannot guarantee sales/jobs.
I hope this advice has been useful and I’m happy to provide any impartial advice via email to stuartk5871@googlemail.com.
Keep in mind
(ps) damian
ive never heard of a contract over the phone mate !! taped or not ,they will very conveniently loose it or deny it .get it writing ,again after 14 months they are now saying it had to be by email !! see what im trying to get at !!
[Editor note: TouchLocal's Marketing Manager Kris Lea emailed to say "I can confirm that Paul's case has been resolved and all outstanding arrears have been written off"]
hi damian
well you can see only to well how T/L [edited] customers like us .the law in the uk is you have 30 days in which to can cancel your contract !! how ever cancelling with T/L seems to be an almost imposible task ,once they get there claws into you ,i promise you ,you will encounter trouble ,BUT if the website works for you & you get genuine feedback then £299.00 +vat for the year is not a bad risk (strange though as i took out an out a so called enhanced /listing & after they messed me around for a week then cancelled twice within the 30 days ,im being hounded for £2000 after 14 months of no contact & was only on air for 1 month !!!! unfortunetly there are only us who stumbled across this site to show how the [edited] works …. hope you will not regret you meeting with the T/L rep (GOOD LUCK ) may hear from you again no dought !!
[Editor note: TouchLocal's Marketing Manager Kris Lea emailed to say "I can confirm that Paul's case has been resolved and all outstanding arrears have been written off"]
Hi Damian, thanks for your comment.
It’s not my position to advise whether or not you should take up TouchLocal’s services, that’s something only you can decide. TouchLocal will no doubt have plenty of happy customers as well as some unhappy ones.
My posts here are a kind of ‘fly paper’ that catches people who aren’t happy with some aspect of the products or services they’ve received from a company. On top of that, they’re usually even more unhappy because they feel they haven’t been listened to when things have gone wrong.
On a positive note, they also attract the companies in whose interest it clearly is to put right any issues that created these unhappy customers in the first place.
Look at it this way: highly visible online reputation problems are also great opportunities for highly-visible resolutions
You have started alarms bells ringing for me.
Eager to further my services, I too took up a free listing with Touch Local only to be contacted this week by a rep. He managed to persuade me to take up a 12 month enhanced contract with payements spread over 6 months. Total price involved £299 + VAT.
I am not new to this game but I must confess to having been duped on this occasion if all I read here is true. Am I correct that I have 7 days to cancel a contract which was conducted over the phone (and recorded). Any advice welcomed please.
I’ve left two comments on this site after hearing the complaints stories of other unfortunate traders. Although im not going to drop my guard regarding laskers ,im just woundering how much they know about T/L? I mean are they aware how this company are trying every [edited] they can to rip us of ,why do T/L wait over a year to try and con us ??!!
In my case i cancelled two times by phone in writing they then stoped my add which takes only a second to to do ,now they want over£2,000 for something ive not received !!
So although laskers have bought these so called debts they seem to not know the journey they have come to become a debt ,before sending threterning letters by law we must have corrispondance from T/L who have told me only 10 days ago that they do not have to !! trading standards have assured me they do!!
If i was owed £200 or £2000 i think i would not leave it a year to get it !!!! [edited] thats all T/L are ,roll on a court case with trading standards
[Editor note: TouchLocal's Marketing Manager Kris Lea emailed to say "I can confirm that Paul's case has been resolved and all outstanding arrears have been written off"]
Update: I received a call this afternoon from a Director of Laskers to let me know that both they, and as a result, TouchLocal are aware of the comments here.
It seems that both companies care about their reputations (which is good to hear). Laskers feel that some of the things people here have said are either unfair or untrue. TouchLocal may or may not dispute what people here have had to say.
Collections agencies dealing with disgruntled or angry customers are never likely to get a good reputation or, let’s face it, a fair hearing. But it’s hardly a surprise, is it?
In online reputation terms it doesn’t matter whether things are ‘true’ or not. The people who have commented here are clearly unhappy about the deal they’ve had.
So take this opportunity to do something to sort it out. Do something to make them happy. Something they may even talk about. They say you’re uncontactable, that you won’t listen. Now they’re here and now you’re here, so go overboard to listen.
Just owing someone money has never made me (or anyone else to my knowledge) go to Google and search for their company name with “scam” on the end. The fact that people are doing that means they feel that something has gone very badly wrong in the way TouchLocal has dealt with them.
That’s the message from the data I’m seeing. It’s not personal; it’s just how it is in the world of online reputation.
Thanks for the updates.
Chris, I will be in touch just been really busy this week.
Interesting news re. Laskers. I have a friend who is a Private Eye and have been considering inviting him to be part of these investigations. Seems like a good time to give him a call and see what he thinks.
Will let you know. What I do know is that doing a post on ‘Laskers Investigations’ is a good way to flush out some more unhappy TL customers. It seems quite common that people Google the so-called collections agency when they receive what they consider to be scammy demands.
If I do post about Laskers, we can expect them to take notice and, in turn, TL.
Just a note about Lasker, they say on their web site that they members of the “Credit Services Association”. Well I would like to share an email with you all from the CSA…….
Well theres a surprise I awaiting replies from the two other associations they claim to be members of
Hi all
Chris here again, well I have been in touch with “touch local” and guess what the amount they say is £60.95 and “Lasker” have a totally different amount £62.30 okay its only a couple of quid, but come on if they cannot get that right, well, what hope do we have for all our accounts. I have been in touch with my local trading standards they told me that “The onus is on ‘Touch local’ to prove that I owe the money”.
May I suggest that everyone here contacts their local trading standards office the more that make it official the better chance we stand of clearing our names, after all, it is our credit rating that they are scr*wing with and it is hard enough out there as it is. I will no doubt be posting again with an up date. If you write to Lasker make sure that you tell them the “oversight” is on the part of “Touch local” and not you and that you will look into the matter and will contact them in a few weeks as the onus is on them to prove that you owe the money and not on us to prove that we don’t.
Good luck to you all and watch this space. Sam looking forward to hearing from you.
Chris.
hi fellow victims of T/L
i posted yesterday and was wondering does anyone know how we stand legally & how much power this so called debt collector have !! if we all stand firm and keep reporting T/L to the trading standards or even get some local newspaper coverage or even better contact watchdog to expose them for what they really are !!
i would be intrestead to here from anyone who has had any further dealings with (laskers)after the threaterning letters ,has anyone looked into who they are,,, they could just be a scare mounger or chancers who are trying there luck on the vunrable who are affraied to challenge in fear of reprisles (sorry dont mean to affend anybody its just we are the victims of [Edited]
paul
[Editor note: TouchLocal's Marketing Manager Kris Lea emailed to say "I can confirm that Paul's case has been resolved and all outstanding arrears have been written off"]
Hi John. Have you had any luck contacting TouchLocal itself? Be interested to know. I’m planning another post in the next day or so when I can get a moment or two to research a little further what’s going on.
Just to let you know, the number of Google searches on ‘TouchLocal scam’ bringing people to this site was 26 today so far and still rising. Tells you something, dunnit?
Keep us posted
Yes i am another victim of Touch local.
Same as all the above i took a 12 month contract, after they did not deliver what they promised contacted them stating i wished to cancel, they still took my first payment regardless i contacted them again and managed to get a refund direct to my back account.
I did not have any more contact with them for 12 months and then i received the same letter as everyone else from Lasker. I contacted Lasker who told me that i had paid £515 to touch local but still owed them £515 which Lasker are trying to collect. I am awaiting further developments. I will be keeping a eye on further posts on here.
Regards John
Let us know what happens, Paul. I’m currently seeing about 10 visitors a day coming here via Google searches for ‘Touchlocal scam’.
I wrote this post over a year ago – and you can see that suddenly, we’ve got a flood of very annoyed people feeling they’ve been scammed.
This could be because TL have all of a sudden put in place some collections policy which has resulted in an aggressive or clumsy move.
Either way, what the company can’t dispute is what the stats are telling us: people out there are suddenly searching for ‘TouchLocal scam’ – and that’s a turn for the worst in reputation terms.
Let us know what you do next, Paul
Like all the above
October 2008 i received a cold call from [edited]- a rep from touch local (a company id never heard of) telling me she was updating my free advert with them !!
If anyone has met nicola they will now only to well that once she starts talking she is so annoying – the fact she will never let you get a word in…[edited] ! She would not take no for an answer and wanted to call round to see me to tell me all about how great TouchLocal were and ‘how they could get me so much work that i would never have to advertise with YP/TD again’.
Well round she came with all the deals ect/ect and yes like a fool i thought ‘too good to be true’… was told that i could cancel if not happy within i think 30 days. Within a week i could see how unprofessional they were, they were using an association logo as my own ,when complaining they took 2 days to remove it then i realised my phone number was wrong ,so i phoned and spoke to a woman who was no help at all ,got back to the rep who blew her top at me over the phone for going over her head !!!
She then offered me a month free ,it was then that i rang the office to cancel ,i was told i had to put this writting which i did i also cancelled any direct debits with them ,i stayed on air with them until that period that i paid for elapsed. This was october/november 2008=====fast forward to christmas eve 2009 and what drops on me a mat (no not a xmas card from T/L) a threatening letter from LASKER COLLECTIONS – wait for it – £2,158.00 (i think im the highest so far !!)
Apparently although they do have my letter (I even believe that i cancelled on the phone as well) they needed a cancellation by email!! Well I’ve told both T/L & LASKER where they can go ,but obviously im concerned as im a sole trader and not a large company with a lot of clout.
I’ve been in contact with the rep who is trying to make allsorts up about i agreed to have a month free ect/ect (fiona french the so called manager )took 2 weeks to call and was so rude i had to put the phone down before i was arrested for abusive language. I’m not alone i can see ,so surely there is something that can be done?
My beef with them is that I’ve never received any correspondence for 14/15 months (oh yes sorry i think ive had two more reps cold call and both times i told them i was not intrested as ive already tried their site and it did not work.
Good luck to you all, I will let you know how things progress – regards Paul
[Editor note: TouchLocal's Marketing Manager Kris Lea emailed to say "I can confirm that Paul's case has been resolved and all outstanding arrears have been written off"]
Hi Keith, thanks for your comment.
If there’s one business I’d wouldn’t want to be involved in, it’s an online business directory. As far as I can see, it’s a minefield from the start.
Why? Because you can’t guarantee Google positioning and you can’t guarantee calls let alone sales. Despite that, the pressure to sell will inevitably lead to promises of unrealistic levels of return – and that means you’re almost certainly going to end up with some really unhappy customers.
A company’s online reputation depends as much – if not more – on how it is seen to respond to the complaints being made as it is on the substance of the things people are saying about it. Hopefully, TouchLocal will handle this feedback in a way that leaves you and anyone watching with a good impression. Even if there’s no possibility of keeping you as a customer, there’s every chance to leave you with a good impression with their approach.
How glad am I that I found this website!!!
in 2008 i took out an advertisment with touch local, on the same terms that most of the previous posts has mentioned, after the inital 3 months i received no calls from their local rate number and no work from it, I rand my advisor to say what a waste of time and money i thought it all was and cancelled on the spot as agreed in my signing on telephone call, this was in feb 2009.
Friday the 15 jan 2010 i get a letter from LASKERS demanding just short of £300.00 in seven days or they will send the boys around at cost to me, i rang laskers and got through to a bloke who said he was unable to help me but would arrange a direct-debit to clear the balance of a few months, i said no thanks and ended the call. i then rang touch local who were rude and most unhelpful, i thought this had been an oversight on their part, and basically being labeled guilty because i was unable to proove my innocence.
So i was just contemplating paying the amount, to save any hasstle, but then i thought i would have a look on the net to see if it was just me, now i know it isnt, i will be be ringing trading standards monday morning, so thanks to all of you i have decided to fight instead opt for the quite lifw
Wow. TouchLocal seem to be going overboard here – and everyone reporting the same kind of shennanigans. Chris, I’m going to email you because – if you’re willing – I’d like to get a fuller picture of this before I write my next post about TouchLocal. This is definitely worth following up.
What’s also interesting is that, despite TouchLocal having the top of Google flooded with their stuff, people are arriving here searching for ‘TouchLocal scam’.
If you’re reading this, TouchLocal, that information should tell you that you’ve clearly overstepped the mark in some way. The clock is now ticking on your ability to preserve your reputation. What are you going to do about it?
Let’s see who else comes by to share their story.
Thanks to everyone who has posted on here, I thought I was alone with the letter from “Lasker Collections”. I had exactly the same things, 12 month contract, no contacts from it, a total waste of £700, then the email saying that “they will be starting a new contract for me” so I called and told them “To cancel it”. So today I get in from work, low and behold a letter from the above collection company, when I calledf them they told me that “I had to pay or they will come around at the weekend and see if I am worth sueing”.
May I surggest that we all report them to local “trading standards” and with a little luck we can all win against these people. I will keep you all informed on how I get on. Chris
Guess what? Out of the blue today I also got a letter from Lasker Debt Collection agency. I thought I had cancelled my contract over a year ago (after 3 or 4 months of no business generated by Touch Local) and I cancelled the direct debit having spoken to the rep and telling them why.
Now they are claiming I owe £1,200 and they will start legal proceedings if we do not pay in 7 days. I couldn’t get through to anyone at Touch Local, but spoke to quite a rude man from the debt collection agency – guess they are busy at the moment. No one has contacted me in over a year to ask for payment or tell me that my contract wasn’t cancelled.
I don’t think we’ve received any customers at all from the site, they listed us in a different town with the wrong address! I certainly don’t intend to pay them any of this money as I made it pretty clear I was intending to cancel as they hadn’t held up their end of the contract – whether the rep ever told anyone or not I don’t know – conveniently there don’t seem to be any records and I can’t get hold of anyone!
I would love to know how everyone else gets on with Lasker. If none of us are willing to pay then surely they can’t afford to take everyone to court?
“Oversite” lols.
Do keep us informed, Steve, I’ve got more things to say about TouchLocal coming up too – about the way they stack the top of Google with their meaningless town and city categories – an effective way to push critical comments out of sight. Except, as your comment shows, people are using what I call the ‘customer/prospect code’ to find out the real stuff.
See this post for more information on that code and how to use it to dig the dirt on companies you suspect aren’t squeaky clean.
Hello just wanted to let people know that this afternoon in the post I received a letter from a debt collection agency (Lasker Collections) on behalf of Touch Local and they state I Owe them £190.93 and they state “non payment may have been an oversite on my behalf” and that if I dont pay they will send the heavys around Lol (my words).
Well the truth is that I, was under a contract which resulted in nil business over 12 months, 6 months ago that contract expired so I cancelled inc the direct debit.Now out of the blue i get this letter, Ive called but they are too busy to take my call,I,m sure that this is the tip of the iceburge, trouble wise but i shall update you all, steer clear folks
steve
Have to agree with you, lex. When all’s said and done, Google created Google to charge people to get to the top of a pile to sell their products – and that means who pays wins. The ‘organic’ stuff (everything other than Adwords) is just a clever ruse to get people playing the game in my book and filling the web with content which provides the real estate for Google to sell to advertisers
I met 2 Touch Local Reps tonight, v. nice, prof. sales people, conciencious people – it is a complete waste of time they said and as being good people, they are leaving the company (ha ha TL).
SEO – one word of advice for all as a web developer, create a Google Adwords Account and use it wisely, get yourself on as many free business directory listings as poss and link backs from other websites – esp Freeindex(a good one for UK sites) – and pray!! Pay for Adwords rather than anything else is my advice and remain in control of your budget!!!!
Do not ever believe any SEO company that says they can get to the top of Google – TOTAL rubbish unless your company’s website has been around for over 5 – 10 years or so etc etc – in which case you will be there already!!! I hope this helps guys…
I know that all companies above a certain size will have some unhappy customers, that’s the nature of the game.
As an online reputation management specialist, what interests me is not what went wrong in your product or service but how your unhappy customer ended up commenting here, on this blog, rather than talking to you.
People punish companies online with bad reviews not when something breaks or goes wrong, but when those companies subsequently don’t listen.
That’s the common message running through these comments. I’ve yet to see or hear a company take that feedback with grace and humility and actually do something useful and productive with it.
[...] Mind you, judging by the feedback coming in to this site, there are plenty of legal, ‘respectable’ online business directories it sounds like we ought to be looking into a bit deeper. [...]
in april 08 i sigjned a 12 month contract with touch local, i never recieved any business from them at all or any hits on my website, after the 12 months i cancelled my direct debit via email,to which i got no response then i rang them a month later telling them i’d had no reply, and they claimed they had never recieved this email. eventually i cancelled with them for the end of the 12 month contract that i had signed(almost a year ago now) and thought nothing more of it.
until this morning when i get a letter from a debt collectors demanding over £100 in unpaid direct debits. I cancelled the contract after the end of the 12 months, so they had the direct debit set up to take the money during that time. I have checked my bank statements and indeed the money was taken out of my account.
I have never recieved a letter or phone call or email telling me i owe this money until i get the letter from the debt collector a year later. it’s not as if they couldnt get in contact with me….it’s an advertising website, every single possible way of getting in contact with me is plastered all over the profile.
So i ring up customer services, ’sorry we cant speak to you’, and they refused to let me speak to a manager.
I look through all my emails to find the contact details of the sales rep who i delt with at the start…surprise surprise she has left the company and the email address is no longer valid.
I am absolutly livid right now, they have had the money that i owed them (even though it was a complete waste of money!)
Now i have read your experiences at least i know i am not alone, and i will now also go to trading standards.
In 2009 our firm signed with TouchLocal, for a period of 3 months. We were approached by a very skilled sales person offering us as a promising possibility for company exposure.
After 2 months we noticed that we were getting nowhere close to what we were promised by TouchLocal sales and cancelled our account. We then had the opportunity to speak to Bred Pearlman, then National Sales Director, who agreed that we have been given misleading information and offered us 1 year free subscription as compensation.
Then in September 2009, TouchLocal started charging us again, for a service that we have already cancelled 12 months earlier!
After repeated failed attempts to talk to someone that would listen to our request to stop this nonsense, we then tried to contact Jon Withers, Touch Local’s new sales director. After leaving over 20 messages through his staff and leaving voice messages on his phone, we then have no choice but to report TouchLocal to Trading Standards and have instructed our solicitors to legally proceed against TouchLocal.
After wining this legal case, I intend disclose it to the general public through major regional and national media.
These sort of companies need to be stopped. They damage the reputation of all serious and ethical business as well as the reputation of this country.
C, thanks for the comment. Enjoyed looking through your site,btw, nice selection of clocks and barometers.
FYI – you could easily get way better Google visibility by just working out your site keywords/phrases and getting your web designer to add them to your pages. You’ve got a load of content here, most of it without any keywords that would connect you to the buying public = missed opportunity.
After reading these comments about Touch Local I would also like to ad my experience.
I also had the pushy sales man stating I’d got nothing to loose as they guaranteed the hits or your money back. Well, the hits never came so I took out my option to quit after 3 months. I have now been notified that my listing has been cancelled and that no further charges will be taken, but there is no mention of any refund. I can no longer view my stats record but the last time I checked it hadn’t amassed double figures and as for the suggested 5 orders a day well that was just more pie in the sky.
My advice is to steer clear of Touch Local they will tell you anything in order to get your money.
Thanks for your comment, J. I have to say, I’m not really surprised to hear your experience. Can’t help but think that the whole online business directory thing was always going to degenerate into a massive punch up at the same time as filling the top of Google with junk. You’re always likely to get false promises, pushy salesmen and claims about Google visibility that just don’t add up – and that’s the totally legit directories. Don’t even get me started on the out and out scams….
I’ve been watching this field for years, and it’s still full of people basically preying on other people who don’t have the experience to know what is and isn’t possible or feasible – but who all (understandably) want to sell more of their products or services.
Seriously, my advice is to spend your time and money on building real relationships with prospects or getting exposure in simple, tangible ways that you can see makes sense and don’t rely on some ‘wizard’ making you gobbledegook promises.
Hello!
I thought I would add my comment as a customer of Touch Local. DO NOT TOUCH them! I was contacted by a sales person after placing a free ad asking me to take up a paid listing, he reeled of a whole load of great sounding things, including being Google partners, having a free phone number on my page, and said I would have lots of hits to my site… none of which are true.
I asked the salesman if I wasn’t happy if I could cancel it, and he said it has been known after 3 months for people to cancel if they were not happy. So I went ahead. Until I realised I was not getting any hits to my site and not many impressions either. I rang up to cancel and then the trouble started. I was passed on by different people over the course of a week, then finally got them to send me their recorded conversation between themselves and me. I then got an awfully rude manager ring up the next day who in the end reduced my 12 month contract to a 3 month one.
The problems don’t end there. I read their T&C’s several times. In my contract it states that I should have a free phone number on my advert page, they have 4 weeks to set everything up, and then you can cancel your contract if you give them 7 days to sort the situation out and they fail to do so. So I rang them up after the 5 weeks, including my 7 day notice period, and I got a man telling me they no longer do the free phone number and I can not cancel my contract. Infact they hadn’t even read my 7 day notice email! I told him I wanted to speak to the manager again, as I was not told that there was no longer a free phone number, but I never heard back. During this time I contacted Trading Standards, and they have now written back for my permission to carry on with my case, so I have signed and sent the letter back to them.
They also messed my payment method up, as I changed to direct debit, and even rang them to check if I could email the form over because of the postal strikes, they said this was fine. Low and behold I got an email a few weeks later stating that my payment method failed!! I rang them up and it seems, even after me ringing them up telling them I was going to email my form over, they had not read the email AGAIN! This meant double the money had to be taken out the month after. What a completely incompetent and badly organised company!
Thanks for your comment, Lee. I wonder what TouchLocal would have to say to that? (BTW – I corrected your spelling).
I’ve heard too many sales pitches for business directory listings ranging from the well-meaning but ill-informed to the practically fraudulent.
The simple truth about Google is that no directory can *guarantee* useful positioning for your business keywords in the search results – especially if they are competitive and broad. Common sense should tell you that much.
In reality, you’re likely to find yourself in a brawl between clever SEO bloggers, affiliate marketers and the hundreds of national and local business directories trying to get a slice of the action. Whether or not the directory you end up buying in to stands any chance in that fight is down to a whole range of factors, most of them completely beyond the grasp of most online directory salesmen – and small business people.
There are plenty of people out there willing to sell you a dream of increased traffic and a boost to your bottom line and take your money and for most people, it’s a mug’s game.
I used to work for touch local and I sugest that no-one goes near them – it is all [edited] and they bully customers into going onto the site by advertising their major competitors next to the free listing.
We were also encouraged to say that we were direct partners with Google which is a complete lie and we also guaranteed clicks to peoples’ sites. There is only one way to guarantee anything and that’s to do it yourself! (I dont need to tell you what they were doing).
This is just a heads up keep away, the company has no repeat business and is just blagging loads of new business to make the company appealing to buy!
Nick, thanks for your response.
You’re right, content is king and Touch Local IS a way to get that content out there. Appreciate your distinction about ads only being on ‘free’ listings. I can see paid listings coming up under ’sponsored’ ads (PPC) and the click through goes straight to their listing without Google Ads.
One of the biggest mistakes we all make at some point is to assume that what we think are benefits actually are benefits in the minds of our prospects.
I’ve seen this time and time again in respect of directories offering a ‘free listing’. There’s a danger that what you think of as ‘free’ a) is incentive enough for me to give up time and personal data and b) buys you out from having to take seriously feedback to the contrary.
If you feel you need to generate revenue by putting competitor ads next to free listings, that’s your choice – but your argument about making a living doesn’t change the fact that those ads are still effectively a disincentive to someone putting the effort in to post a ‘free’ listing.
Telling me that it’s ‘err – free’ gives the impression that you think ‘free’ should be motivation enough and that I, the customer, am being stooopid by suggesting otherwise.
It isn’t for me – which was my original feedback. I hope that’s useful – and thanks again for entering into the conversation.
Hi from Touch Local!
Always good to get feedback from blogs and other forums.
Just a couple of points I’d like to share with anyone reading this:
Content is king! The more information you’re able to put on our site about your company, the better indexed you’ll be and the more traffic you’ll get. What we offer is a way to get that content onto the internet with minimal effort and in a way that will attract new clients to you.
But I appreciate that those open questions such as “What differentiates you from your competitors?” are quite daunting. We are working on developing more specific questions that are based on the category your business is in – that should make it easier to complete our forms.
For customers who buy one of our LeadFinder products, we also help promote their businesses by improving the SEO further and buying PPC ads.
As for the Google ads, please remember that your free listing is – err – free. And we’ve got to make a living! We don’t put these on the pages of paying customers, though.