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| Adficient SilverScope Promotion Adwords Suspension Crook, False Representation, Deceit & Extortion Bridgedon, Missouri |
| 5th of Jan, 2012 by User124813 |
Hello, I know Adficient to be running a deceptive scam operation, and the owner is quite the ruthless conniver you'd come to expect out of any modern day Internet scammer. After getting involved with them, they stole almost $14k between myself and my affiliate, filed a baseless lawsuit against my company... and, yes, they lost. It all started with one of my affiliates, who was new to Adwords at the time. He got banned and was looking for a way back on. He found Adficient through a Google paid search result. Some time later, I had expressed the suspension of my own account to him, and so he referred me to Adficient. I hired the company and they charged me U.S. $3500 to restore my banned Adwords account, or my money back. After five months of being very patient with Adficient and their shenanigans as to why the account was continuously inactive, I got fed up with the stagnant water and threw in
the towel. I normally wouldn't have been so patient, but there was a continuous sense of false hope that the shrewd owner kept painting in my mind. The days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months. I would receive a phone call/E-mail from Adficient once or twice per week, but they always provided the same exact excuse each time. Pure mind games based on knowing the importance of advertising on Google. "We're still waiting to hear back from Google, please note that we cannot control their response time" or "Google is off today", etc. Once I began figuring out the scam being pulled, I contacted my affiliate to advise him the company was as such, taking us for a pony ride. Simple evidence proves this company as one to be, that preys upon the naive, in exchange for their massive paydays. For example, at one point they told my
affiliate his niche was banned by the Adwords TOS, but then quickly stated "We have a special contact in the Adwords department who can help". Adficient proceeded to charge him $1,800 to create/approve said ad, which by the way, we later replicated in a friend's account and got approved by bypassing some of the Adwords filter triggers. A clever lie about having a "special contact" was constructed on Adficient's behalf, in order to justify the exorbitant, extortionate price tag of $1.8k for creating the ad. Please note: My affiliate had a signed contract with them to keep the account UNSLAPPED and running smoothly. If he had not signed this contract, Adficient's one-time fee was going to be between $10K - $25K per slap, so of course he signed the contract for a smaller monthly fee of $4,500-$5,500 per month to manage it. The affiliate's Google Adwords account was suspended after a few days and they still charged him the minimum fee per month regardless of the account's status, e.g. suspended = they still get paid their thousands to tell you "Still waiting to hear back from Google". Very cunning scheme to drag out time on the contract. Needless to say, my affiliate became so enraged by the many thousands of dollars that he had wasted trying to make his own account compliant for months and months, that he terminated his contract with Adficient that very day, and refused to pay any remaining sums due under his contract. At that time, Adficient's demeanor became unprofessional, hostile and abusive towards us. They made false claims against our companies, and even blackmailed us at one point. When my affiliate refused to pay the total sum owed for the final time, Adficient immediately filed suit locally against both our companies, which are independent corporations located outside of Adficient's registered state. In a petition filed in court, Adficient made several grossly unfounded and unenforceable claims against both companies, and even alleged that a "merchant-to-affiliate" relationship be deemed as a true "business partnership" by the courts, and my company be held liable for sums owed under the third party/independent contract they had with my affiliate! To otherwise twist the truth in so many directions in hopes of getting that big payday they were so eagerly expecting prior to the early termination of contracts for literally doing nothing to help unslap our Google Adwords accounts. End result? Their meager attempts at manipulating the cause to extract funds from my company for which they did not deserve to acquire, or had even worked for, proved quite unfruitful for them. Adficient's case was dismissed. To this day, my own Google Adwords account is still suspended. I'd paid Adficient a one-time fee of $3500 to have it unslapped or my money back. You guessed it, there is no money back guarantee. I have lost my $3500 Adficient Scam. I published this complaint because I would like raise awareness about what Adficient is doing, and to save potential future client(s) from going through the agony of being "screwed-and-sued" by this digital carpetbagger. Should people exercise their due diligence and discover this well-documented experience of an innocent third party beforehand, they'll surely steer clear of the Adficient Scam being run by Chris Hickman of Bridgedon, MO. I, on the other hand, understand that I've been scammed but will not drag this into courtrooms. I will however, make sure the entire World Wide Web is well informed of their deceptive business practices and reputation. |
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