Outrank.com BBB rating explanation from their CEO.

General Inspection Topics Special Deals for InterNACHI Inspectors
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Hi Nick
I have been speaking to a lot of members and I just wanted to address some of the questions they have about the BBB rating of Profit Fuel, Below is an explanation from my CEO, when the same questions came up. Thanks for making this available.

The 84 complaints with the BBB were not all resolved - the majority were administratively closed."- The facts: 59 of the 84 complaints are listed as “Resolved” and 25 were listed as “Administratively Closed”. From the BBB website, “Administratively Closed” means “BBB determined that despite the company’s reasonable effort to address complaint issues, the consumer remained dissatisfied” or that we agreed to arbitration or mediation and the customer declined. Also from the BBB website, “On February 7th, 2008 the company met with BBB and expressed a willingness to reduce complaint volume and increase customer satisfaction.” This would not be the response of a company that is not interested in customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the vast majority of the complaints have been on our previous directory products, not Outrank. We used to sell directory products, both for Yahoo and on behalf of our own directories on an annual contract basis. One of the reasons we went away from contracts is that they cause much more skepticism and anger in customers, particularly in those that don’t fully understand what it is they have purchased. Furthermore, the relative value of the Outrank product for the price compared to any other advertising product we’ve offered in the past is amazing.

Every single complaint ever brought to the BBB has been addressed by us. What I did not realize when we signed up with them is that they use the ratio of complaints to EMPLOYEES to come up with their ratings! Given that we had 50 employees at the time, and given that we had 84 complaints that is not so good a ratio. The real problem is that the way they are deriving their ratings, while it may work for the vast majority of customers, is NONSENSICAL for us. We have 84 complaints and 15,444 customers over the same period. That is a very small complaint rate of 1/2 of 1%! Furthermore, we have made millions of phone calls to small businesses. While we would prefer to have zero complaints, in light of the scale of business we are doing, that rate of complaints is actually quite good.

Respectfully,
Edward Cantu
Advertising Consultant
ECantu@outrank.com
512-637-6446
877-332-4321 ext 6446
www.outrank.com
www.profitfuel.com

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Interesting. I wonder how it is that Outrank seems to be contacting so many of us???

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Why wouldn’t they be able to contact so many of you? If you are an InterNACHI member, your business contact information is listed on thousands of public sites including the bottom of the home page of www.nachi.org

Their phone pitch is horrible BTW.

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:d :d :d

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So Nick, is it true that you are working with them to negotiate better rates for NACHI members? That is what they say in their sales pitch…are they lying?

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Yes. The way this stuff works is that when it comes down to brass tacks, I have no authority to prevent a vendor from calling you on your publicly listed business phone number. Given that, what I normally try to cut us an exclusive deal so that members who want the service, end up saving money.

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I got the call yesterday and the Salesman was actually very nice on the phone. I told him my SEO and Google page rank were fine and I did not need his service.

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So in a nutshell, based on what I’m reading, it appears to be that their customers are ignorant (sign contracts that they don’t understand) and unreasonable (can’t be satisfied by reasonable offers) and the BBB’s fault because their rating system is bad.

Glad we got that clarification.

9

I’ve never heard of Outrank before, or their search engine optimization campaigns so I can’t speak much about them.

However, I work with Yodle and we have one of the best SEO programs out there. We used to have a 6 month guarantee that we’d have out clients on the first page within 6 months or we’ll optimize for free until we do. We never had to honor that, and were so successful in quickly getting our clients to the first page we now offer a 90-day guarantee we’ll have you on the first page for at least on of the terms we’re optimizing for.

We don’t go for huge quantity of backlinks, but focus on efforts on professionally written articles, video content, and creating business profiles complete with your specialties (and keywords we are optimizing for) on our network of over 150 partner sites–yellowpages, superpages, manta, citysearch, etc.

I’ll gladly set up an online meeting for anyone interested in seeing how it works.

-Ben Christoph
857-244-2914
bchristoph@yodle.com

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It is nice to hear such brilliant voices on the phone from outrank.com Throughout their entire presentation of their services I could sense that these people had honest intentions, and they were making plenty of sales to live on. They were in no hurry to make more sales, so means they don’t have to pressure you into anything against your own volition.

It’s an interesting position that outrank and their affiliates have on the entire countryside. There is an huge gap between what their people know, and what you people don’t know about the internet. This is where they plan to serve everyone that may not be up to date in the area of internet advertising. This service is not for anyone else though.

Now read their contract carefully, or you may make a critical error that will make a difference in what you expect out of outrank.com’s services. The wrong expectations surely lead us to disappointment.

Keep track of details. For instance their contract specifies “a keyword” that applies to your company’s field of expertise in combination with the name of the local city will bring your website to a “high ranking” listing in the web searches.

What is key for you to understand is what “a keyword” and “high rank” implies. I don’t mean to sound an alarm otherwise. Outrank.com’s contract is 100% legal.

A “high rank” in the search list means in legal terms that you get just what it says; a high rank. Don’t believe what any complainers say out there about outrank.com. You will be within the top 25% of thousands of web search pages. Anyone even our courts can say that is the definition of “OUTRANKING.” :slight_smile:

Now you do get a free website from them, but people that do not understand the internet and computers do not understand how long it takes to design a unique, charismatic website that is an expression of genuine connection between your services and your customers. This means that outrank.com gives you a generic website. You save time by not having to design a website yourself. You save money by not paying for a genuine website. They stick one together for you free of charge. :cool:

They give you their own phone number and not your service’s phone number, so that when customers call you, their calls must go through outrank.com’s system first. This way they can keep track of how many calls you are getting, and if need be, they can direct calls to another local service in your particular field of expertise.

Let’s say you are in the plumbing business, and you get a contract with the polite folks at outrank.com. You’ll get a website just like I explained, and it will have a domain name like chicagoplumber.com. Be careful though. If you only search for just any keywords related to plumbing, your website doesn’t come to the top. You didn’t do it right.

If you were search specifically for chicago plumber though,…well that’s not right either. You might not be on the Top Page. Put in chicagoplumber.com though which is the name of your free outrank website. Only click search, and you shall find. That’s outrank’s guarantee, and so it is that your free website shows at the top of the search list in flying colors.

No, not just anybody ever goes to outrank.com asking for much, but what outrank.com can come to you for is with everything that they promise only in writing, and that is a top listing on Bing, Yahoo, and Google for about $150 per month.

One last highlight about the outranking appeal of outrank.com’s succulent list of services. Please keep in mind that you may not know how the diternet works, so whatever they agree to over the phone and email may or may not be valid unless it is congruent with written terms within the written contract itself as per the contract’s clearly defining statement which specifies that as such.

Don’t waste your time anny longer. Gall now!!! 8-

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“call for action” knows an awlful lot about Outrank. I wonder why?:mrgreen:

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only thing missing were the pom poms.

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Top 25% (that is a laugh)
I could type a few lines of drivel and rank in the top 25%

Notice it said they give a outside number on the web page so they can basically control you and force you to pay up or lose your business.

They also direct business to your competition I see…HUH?

Remember to Gall now.:slight_smile:

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They have alot of Gall to ask us to Gall now.:smiley:

15

I’m involved with them now, sadly. I fell hook, line and sinker. The good thing is… I’m not a push over, they lied to me. They changed their definitions of scope of work after I paid them. When I called and asked to listen to the recording of the conversation, they only recorded the part where I “agreed”. Not the spiel leading up to it… Get a load of this

  • They promised to place me in positions 1-3 on the front page of Google, Yahoo and Bing organically AND locally
  • They said they would work for free until they maintain this deal.
  • **They said they would throw in my hometown city as a bonus city to be placed on the front page
    **

and then…

  • They placed me on the front page with a keyword “site:www(mywebadress.com)” which is absurd to begin with because that takes you directly to my site without any competition… and they considered this within the contract.
  • They placed my bonus home town city (where there is no other home inspector) on the front page of YahooLocal and considered it within the contractual arrangements. Two things are wrong here and they are:
  1. YahooLocal is different than “Yahoo” in that the searching area is limited to the city you type in when you search. So if Joe Shmoe wants to find my listing in his town of Whatchamacallit, CA he has to click on the “more” options in his browser to pull up a drop-down list, then clicks on “Local” to narrow the search results down to his area. That is different than Google, YAHOO and Bing. That is Google, YahooLocal and Bing.
  2. My “bonus city” where I live has 2 home inspectors and zero business. It’s easy to get on page one… but that’s a moot point considering I never agreed to anything about YahooLocal, I agreed to Yahoo.
  • The keywords they claim to be ranking on page #1 were ironically the same words in my domain name they provided. If you know anything about SEO, you know if you make a domain name titled “www.myshoesaresmelly.com” and then type in the search engine “my shoes are smelly” You will be ranked #1! It’s like magic!
  • They changed the original statement from “We will rank your listing on Google, yahoo and Bing in both Organic and Local” to “Organic or Local” A very small typo? I think not. I lose 50% exposure on page #1 with that little typo.

Is that enough or should I keep going?

Bottom line, I know SEO better than anyone I know who are savvy on computers. I can get a website on page one but it’s the maintenance involved to keep it there that I don;t have time for. I listened to what they told to me over the phone and for the price. For what they promised… it would have been worth it, but what I was told and what I received were two different things. I was simply lied to. I don’t have a lot of money. I am barely making ends meet.
I explained everything to their manager on the phone and after some yelling on my part, he discounted my price and gave me one month for free. Does that make the lie any better or does it just prolong it a little bit more? All I know is the phone has not rang one time yet and it’s been 70 days. According to my contractual arrangements, (which mean diddly squat to me at this point) if/when I cancel my subscription, I have to pay for one month of service. The total for everything with ZERO ROI will be $400.00. Did I mention I don’t have a lot of money? 400.00 bucks to me and my family can go a long way.

I would suggest not using this service. If any InterNACHI member needs help with SEO, send me a PM and I would be glad to point you to some useful, inexpensive and honest help.

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Ironically, practically everything you need to know about SEO can be had for free on…Google.