Mar 13 2008
Yodel = Google?
Our receptionist put a call through today which she announced “I have M____ from Google on the line”.
A call from Google is one that you probably should take right? Could be something to do with your AdWords or AdSense account, or something even more exciting.
When the call came through I asked M_____ whether I could help with the enquiry. She said I couldn’t, as she’s been talking to someone else about our advertising. So I took a message for the person to call M_____ from “Google” (I checked twice, but stopped short of getting her to spell it 😉 ) and the number to return her call.
It turns out the call was not from Google at all, but from a company called Yodelâ„¢. Yodel are an authorised Google AdWords reseller (the first one authorised in Australia, so their about page tells me), and a Google AdWords qualified company.
I just wonder if “authorisation” extends to presenting oneself as an employee of Google?
Reading the Google Advertising Professionals Rules (and she purports to be an AdWords qualified Individual) it seems this is frowned upon.
You agree and must notify your customers that you are not employed, endorsed or approved by, or a contractor of, Google or any of its affiliates. PARTICIPATING IN THE GOOGLE ADVERTISING PROFESSIONAL PROGRAM IS A PRIVILEGE THAT MAY BE TERMINATED BY GOOGLE AT ANY TIME FOR ANY OR NO REASON.
Hmmm.
114 Responses to “Yodel = Google?”
bit dodgy aye?
Bettina’s last blog post..Phone Etiquette?
FYI I sent an email to the Adwords Australia office pointing them to this post so they can investigate
Neerav’s last blog post..Worlds Largest Aircraft Graveyard: Tucson Arizona (USA) (1 comment/s)
Is that the net version of Mutton dressed as lamb???
Bit dodgy and I wonder how far they are prepared to push the boundaries??????
Gemisht’s last blog post..Waiting for Pandora
Underhand tactics?
Jeremy Jacobs’s last blog post..Some people!
Report them and then never use their company again. If they are going to misrepresent themselves in order to win your business, they are not the kind of people you want in charge of your business advertisers. There are much more reputable companies out there.
As for being an Adwords Company, all that means is that they paid out a bunch of money to Google and a number of their employees took a test about using Google AdWords. It looks good on your letterhead and on your website, but experience wise it means crap.
Riayn’s last blog post..Cultured, like yoghurt
They need someone to grammar check their own ad copy : )
“1st Official Australian AdWord’s Professional’s – Get Online Today!”
Christine Parfitt’s last blog post..Format For Local Business Results Changed
UM…. they are the largest resellers in AU and NZ! over 4000 managed accounts!
Let’s see their biggest competitor has 400 managed campaigns.
And a Authorised reseller for Google AdWords! YEAH OK im sure you simply pay Google to get that right? like Google need money?
And what about Meg? what you copied and pasted about Google qualified company is all good but you forgot one thing! They are an authorised reseller not just qualified, they are completely different.
I’m not defending them but they run my account and has increased my online rev by 750%. and every written here makes no sense except what Meg “says” happen.
Leave them alone and target someone who is doing wrong. Not Yodel they make you money if you give them half a chance.
Zeebee
Firstly, it’s nice when you leave a comment on a blog to disclose that you actually work for the company in question (yes IP addresses are logged with comments and yours came from fulfilnet.com.au – owner of the yodel brand) and not pretend that you are a client – it’s deceptive.
Secondly, I have edited your first comment because you were quite rude to another commenter.
Thirdly, what I copied and pasted is from the rules of being an “AdWords Qualified Individual”, which the woman in question claims she is. Working for an Authorised Reseller or a qualified company is irrelevant. She should not represent that she is FROM Google. A less knowledgeable person would be easily misled.
Fourthly, which bit doesn’t make sense? I took the call, I know what happened. And in all telephone conversations this woman said she was from Google. It was not until the written material was emailed that it even mentioned Yodel. That, to me, is deceptive – and wrong.
Lastly, it’s great that Yodel have experienced such success. I have no knowledge of the company’s operations apart from the deception of this representative, which may well be (and I sincerely hope) isolated to this one individual.
Hi zeebee
I think it’s great that your online revenue has INCREASED by 750%. I’m assuming that your revenue started pretty low because from what I have read you also work for yodel (I know what it’s like to have to work a 2nd job).
UNLESS of course your comment above is a load of crap and you aren’t a yodel client at all but one the people who call businesses at random and tell them you work for Google.
Really zeebee, next time you want to mislead people go to an internet cafe, pay five bucks and do it from there, rather than do it from an IP registered to the company you are pretending to be a client of. At least that way we can at least see that you are making a bit of an effort.
Regards
Steve Jobs, no wait….. I think I’ll pretend to be Bill Gates today.
Zeebee,
I saw your original comment and would just like to reply by saying that I work in the online advertising industry in Australia, so I actually do know what I am talking about.
My comments about paying Google was not in relation to Yodel being a reseller, but was in relation to Yodel being an Adwords Qualified Company. I work for one too, so I know how that qualification was gotten – you must have two employees to take the Google Adwords Personal Qualifications test (it costs US$50 for an individual to sit the test) and you must run your advertising through Google for 90 days spending at least $1,000.
Rules are all here – http://adwords.google.com/support/select/professionals/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=18572
So in effect you are paying Google to get it this qualification. Nice little money earner for them.
But there is much more to running a successful search campaign then simply earning a qualification from Google.
Riayn’s last blog post..Cultured, like yoghurt
Re the “increased by 750%” comment. Let’s say my revenue was $1, and now I have $7.50. Wow, a 750% increase. Percentages, by themselves and without the context of the base level of the timeframe, are totally meaningless.
Stilgherrian’s last blog post..links for 2008-03-15
The ‘supposed client’ Zeebee would have done much better to realize his folly and admit to his mistake here and make sure it does not happen again. That would have earned him some respect in the community. People don’t realize how powerful the blogosphere is today in making or breaking reputations.
Nicole Price’s last blog post..Wanna Look Like a Celebrity?
Quite funny that Zeebee havent answered yet to all ur points guys… Seems that his compagny also sucks at reputation management… First rule is to tell the truth about who you are…
Mr Web Video Producer’s last blog post..Sharing revenues program
Hi Guys,
I work for Yodel Australia and our head office is based in North Ryde, Sydney NSW. As a representative of Yodel Australia, I would like to address some of the views and concerns raised in this conversation.
Yodel is currently in the 3rd year of our strategic alliance with Google Australia, and this is because of our continued success in providing quality AdWords management to local Australian businesses. Our processes are completely optimised and refined to provide advertising services to over 7000 clients in Australia and New Zealand. We are also proud to announce that our sales force has been given approval to resell into South Africa, Ireland and the UK.
The key reason for why we’ve been given approval for international expansion is due to the fact that we can replicate our successful local leadership. Yodel deploys a model of sales engagement with Australians that simply clicks!
Our sales staff are put through an extensive 2 week training course of how behave and interact with clients. Each sales rep is trained on how to effectively represent our company, our Google alliance and our product offering. They also complete some vigorous written testing (much similar to the actual Google Advertising Professional GAP) and this is before they are even allowed near a phone.
We practice being completely upfront and we always represent ourselves as Yodel, the 1st Authorised Reseller of Google AdWords in Australia. I can personally attest to this because of what’s on stake. If we were ever convicted of misrepresenting ourselves as anyone other than Yodel, Google has the right to immediately terminate our alliance and we would no longer be allowed to display our credibility. This alone would be disastrous for a company such as ours (As fellow AdWords Resellers would agree). Google has every right to protect is global brand and we make sure that we play along…
Simply put, we are an honest company and we always follow “the rule book†of approaching all potential clients. This is shown in our participation as an ADMA member, or the Australian Direct Marketing Association. Being an ADMA member means we follow Call Centre guidlines as specified in http://www.adma.com.au/asp/index.asp?pgid=1987. Like all major call centres like Virgin, GE Money & Optus, we also record on our calls for quality control and training purposes.
We’re about to go into our 4th year of providing our professionally managed Google services to Australia and countries beyond. At least Google Australia seems to think we are doing a good job.
I would be more than happy to answer any further questions you may have. Feel free to give us a call on 1800 732 724. Or you can email me on hduong@yodel.com.au
Yodel Australia is an Authorised Reseller of the Google AdWords program http://adwords.google.com
p.s. im not sure of who ‘zeebee’ is, but they were never employed by Yodel or approved to represent us in this blog forum. However if you have the IP address and web-log recorded for this person, ill be more than happy to investigate if you are able to supply it.
My thinking is that he/she was a Rogue Blogger out to cause some trouble 😉
Hai
I have responded to your comment via email (which you have since acknowledged), informing you of the employee in question (who you say is no longer employed) and also the identity of Zeebee (who you say shares the same IP address as you, but is not an employee).
Nice sales pitch – no wonder you are the marketing manger 😉
YOU ALL HAVE A LOT OF TIME ON YOUR HANDS…
DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE IN YOUR LIVES PLEASE
KIND REGARDS,
JACK
PS DONT REPLY TO THIS AS I WILL NEVER JUMP ON TO THIS AGAIN
CHEERS
I have had a campaign running with Yodel and was called yesterday to see if I wanted to renew my campaign of $8 per day to which I agreed to. This morning I found that $1,012 had been taken out of my bank account. I was not informed of what the full cost or length of time for the renewal would be and when the amount would be taken out of my bank account. My campaign does not finish for another two weeks. I have called Yodel and demanded that they put the money back into my account which they won’t do because they said I agreed to the renewal. Yes, I did agree to the renewal but I was not informed about anything, cost or length of renewal etc. I was informed today when I rang to complain that their reason for taking the money out last night was that it is two weeks to Christmas and there won’t be anyone in the office to renew my campaign. I have put in an offical complaint and was told it would be 14 days before a decision will be made (guess what, that’s Christmas and nobody will be there). It has left me very short for my mortgage and I will incur fees for not having sufficient funds in my account. If they had mentioned to me that $1,012 would be taken out of my account last night, I would have said forget about it because I don’t have the funds at the moment and would perhaps start again in the new year. Merry Xmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi “Jack” from Yodel, it’s a shame you’re not coming back – perhaps as a representative from Yodel you might be able to assist “Not Happy” with their dilemma.
“Not Happy” – you should have been provided with a Customer Service Agreement at some stage. Usually this stipulates that you must be given X days notice (often 7 days) of the drawing date and amount. That probably doesn’t help you with your current pickle though
That’s rough.
Thanks Meg. I’m going to fight to the end!!!
To “Not Happy”,
I’m sorry to hear about your dilemma. I can have a Customer Care rep contact you immediately to discuss this and give you an update of whats going on.
Please email our Customer Care Manager on customercare@yodel.com.au with your details & I can personally overlook this situation for you. If you also have your invoice number for the renewal of your Google AdWords subscription that can really help too.
Our Customer Care officers to review any case that appear before them. Our set procedures/SLA’s (or Service Level Agreement) is to respond to AND resolve any case within a 14 day period. Hopefully this means at the most, your complaint will be resolved within 14 days. In most instances, we often resolve them much sooner than that.
For the ‘Customer Service Agreement’, you would have received our registration form on signing up; as well as on your renewal. Our client consultants however are very flexible in arranging your payment with “how much” and “what date” it comes out of your account. With most of our managed campaigns, we often take the amount upfront to make sure we have full control over your Google spending. The benefit of this is that our account managers can maximise your exposure on Google by adjusting your daily budget at any point.
For example, we often detect traffic surges that will affect your normal Google campaign – you could reach your budget early and be offline, potentially missing out on sales. We plan for this in advance… Our account manager can quickly contact you, advise you of this opportunity and adjust your spending without any disruption to your advertising.
Either way “Not Happy”, it sounds like this has really inconvenienced you a lot, so definitely get in contact with us so we can arrange something for you.
Thank you for voicing your complaint, As Yodel’s representative its important that we can identify issues like this and address them as quickly as possible. (I like to see myself as ‘Mr-FixIT’ for Yodel :D)
Call us on 1800 SEARCH (732 724) and ask for our Customer Care team if you have any further questions.
Cheers,
Hai Duong
P.S Jack, I don’t know who you are, but your not really contributing anything appropriate or relevant to this blog. I think Meg would totally agree on this, but your childish comments don’t really belong on a forum such as this.
Hai, the matter has been sorted, Yodel have refunded my money, as I’m sure they saw they were in the wrong.
“If you also have your invoice number for the renewal of your Google AdWords subscription that can really help too” – I never received an invoice for the renewal. The money was taken out that day, so therefore no invoice was sent first.
Not Happy,
I’m glad to hear that it was resolved quickly for you. I’ll follow up on the invoice number for you as well.
Please email us on customercare@yodel.com.au if you haven’t received it within 5 days.
Cheers,
Hai Duong
Dear Hai,
A Yodel represenitive contacted me about doing business with Yodel. She did not mis-represent herself and was helpful. I was looking for info about the company before I signed on and I came across this blog. I like the way way you followed through with the customer ” not happy ” I have researched this company and I feel totally confident. I will be signing the paper work tomorrow and getting it going. I will let Meg know how its going
Sincerely
Joe C.
I was given the hard-sell to sign up on trial, failing to make a commitment I was offered a fantastic ‘one day only’ offer which I agreed to as it was nearly double the credit value.
money was withdrawn instantly, and then all of sudden I find myself calling… ‘where’s my campaign, you’ve taken my money, what’s happening etc…?’ A month goes by before it even gets lauched and it’s not correct. I make numerous calls, nobody returns these in a hurry, then I find out I’v been ripped off for my credit value. The salesman denies ever offering me the deal and that’s as far as it goes. Nobody knows anything about it or even wants to return my calls to explain why I was lied to and why there is no record of my ‘special offer’.
So i’ve requested that the account be cancelled and I know it has been from the email I received… but yet I have not received a single penny nor a phone call to tell me what’s going on!!! It’s not professional and I wonder what ‘fair trades’ might have to say when I am forced to call them over the matter. I don’t want to have to ask a 3rd time for my money… i’m sure that I won’t get a return call this time either. I will keep you posted and let you know how this all pans out!
Well, now I’m completely confused. Is there anyone out there, legitimately operaing a small business, that can honestly testify as to some positive results from using this company, Yodel? Love to hear from you!
Steer clear of Yodel at all costs! They are the worst, company I have EVER dealt with.
I was referred to Yodel by a friend who works there about 6 months ago.
I already had an Adwords Campaign that was working well and thought they could improve it… BIG MISTAKE!
I explained to the sales person and my account manager exactly what I wanted namely, keyword research, split testing different landing pages, conversion tracking, and reduced CPC. They assured me this was no problem.
I was also promised that they would “work closely” with me and send me monthly reports.
Not only did I never receive a report (despite numerous phone calls asking for one), they never returned my calls. In fact one time I got hold of someone there who informed me (in a jovial manner) that my account manager “never returns calls.”
Not only that, but they also messed up my account while transferring it to their servers to the extent that it was inaccessible for a whole month!
After about 3 months my enquiries started dropping off significantly, so I decided to look for my ad on Google. It had fallen to the 2nd page! It took 3 phone calls to get hold of the account manager (as she “never returns calls”) who had NO IDEA about it.
What was I paying them for, seriously?
THEN, after still not receiving any reports (this is 3 months into it) I discover that they had not even put tracking codes on my website, not only that, but they were linking my Ad to the WRONG WEBPAGE!
The account manager then told me that they will give me one month free advertising and that she will call me once a week with status reports and send me my mystical report on a weekly basis. I was ok with that but told her that this was the last straw.
2 weeks pass and I received ZERO phone calls from her and no reports either – the Ad was also still pointing at the wrong webpage.
I called first thing the next day to cancel my account with them. I told them that I wanted my Adwords account given back to me ASAP and to keep their management fee and simply refund the remainder of the balance they had taken initially.
The rep told me I would have my account back that afternoon but the refund would take two weeks and that before the process could start, I needed to send an email (which would supposedly be read by the CEO) stating why I cancelled – which I did.
After yet another week of calling them everyday to see why they havent done what they are supposed to do, I get a letter in the mail stating that my refund has been declined because they never guaranteed any results in the first place and that if I wanted to take it further I needed to have my legal department contact their legal department.
Of course you cant guarantee results if you dont actually do anything!
This is for a $120 refund which of course they know is not worth pursuing legal action for!
After another few days, having STILL not yet been given my Adwords account back, I call them and refuse to get off the phone until I have access to my account. They blamed Google for ALL the previous problems and promptly gave my account back.
All in all it was nothing but a MASSIVE headache dealing with Yodel.
-My cost per click DOUBLED
-My cost per enquiry TRIPLED
-I never once received a report showing me what was going on with my account
-There was ZERO attempt to optimise the campaign. All Yodel did was to throw all my keywords into the same campaign. They didnt even seperate them into Adgroups!
-Conversion tracking was never delivered upon
-They are the absolute WORST when it comes to customer service, they dont even return phone calls – nor care to see why their customers are upset
-After screwing around for 4 months they refused to refund the remainder of my balance (after I told them they can keep their management fee). It’s great to know that they value $120 more than their own reputation.
To top it all off I told them when I first started that I wanted to test them out before I refer my customers to them… Obviously they didnt care at all. The jokes on them though as I have started with a new company and have since referred them business totaling close to 12k
I signed on with yodle back in October 2008. To date I have spent over $4900.00 and my ROI was $300.00. The site they promised me was the worst elementary crap I have ever seen. It took 1+ mos. to get it up and running. They had no problem charging me $1700 + to join and then an additional $800 the same month because they have to charge you for the “next” month of advertising. That’s $2500.00 in one freaking month. I don’t know about you people but $2500.00 is a lot of money to me. It was a very bad experience. I tried to have them change my site only after weeks of them telling me “they know which sites convert and mine is a great one” bullshit. I emailed the pres. Court Cunningham, the next day I got a phone call form his 2nd in command. They credited my acct. over $700 and promised to keep it going until it started to show results. Well the $700.00 ran out and when I went to log in, my account had been terminated. Big freakin suprise. The whole reason I signed on with them was because they promised ” quality and guaranteed leads”. Bullshit, I was getting leads that were from people in different countries ! I own a small plumbing business, what the hell am I doing paying for some jackoff clicking through my site in India ?!!?! The whole thing was a disaster, and I suppose for some businesses it may work but not mine. They initially called me and started bashing Service Magic, another site that I use and continue to use. They told me how much money I was wasting so I decided to give them a shot. Let me tell you all something, in the same time I was with yodle, my Service Magic acct. was running strong and produced over $6800.00 for my co. Thank god, it offset the money wasted on Yodle. All I can say is it didn’t work for me or my business and I would think twice before signing on. After looking through some of the Yodle websites, you really end up getting screwed unless you are willing to drop big money on a monthly basis. For the amount I spent I firmly believed I got screwed. They ought to change the name of their company to Blowdle.
I think I should point out that my experiences relate to an Australian Company called Yodel (yodel.com.au), not to be confused with the New York based company Yodle (yodle.com).
The two businesses offer a similar service, but as far as I can tell, they are not associated.
As a competitor to Yodel it would be quite easy to jump on the Yodel bashing band wagon. Believe me I want to. My wife’s company has also been affected by them.
It would also be easy for me to wave my flag and say “call me – I rock”.
But I figure you all need some help in your thinking. SO I present the following.
Based on my experience, (10 years) even though a click is say only $0.25c – $2.00 (e.g.), turning clicks into CUSTOMERS is actually bloody hard work and the actual costs need to be understood and are always higher.
In fact you can expect the TRUE cost of acquiring a customer can be from $10 – $500 and this depends on a few things.
1. You have to have a good website with a clear message that talks directly to your visitor. If it looks shithouse, people will NOT call or email or buy online.
2. Whilst you don’t have to sell online to make it work, you have to be able to MEASURE the success. As Adwords dudes, we can measure the clicks and them emails and the purchases online, but YOU have to measure the phone calls and the foot traffic. Ask “Where did you hear about us” when they ring or walk in and WRITE IT DOWN.
3. The TRUE cost of acquiring a CUSTOMER is ALL of your click costs for the month (paid to Google), PLUS the cost of your Adwords Management (ME), plus the costs of your website (divided by 12 months), plus the cost of any development on the site (mostly included with good Adwords Managers) ALL divided by the number of customers the campaign gets over the line.
4. How much your goods or services are, where else you advertise, whether you can buy online, how competitive industry you are in, how much profit you make.
5. Whether you have the time to write great copy and place it on a page that visitors from search ads land on that gets them over the line and ends up reducing your costs and increasing your potential leads.
NOTE – ALL CLICKS ARE POTENTIAL LEADS AND NOT CUSTOMERS
So with that in mind – here is a model (example only)
Consumables ($100 ticket items)
Total Monthly Spend with Google $500
Total Monthly Management Fee $500
Total Website Costs per Year ($2400) $200 mth
Development cost on average $100
Total Monthly Web investment $1300.00
You got 1000 clicks at 50c a click (hence the $500 spend)
Of this 1000, 26 turned into customers
So that means you spent $1300 to get 26 customers ($50 a customer)
You Products sell for $100, profit is $50, wholesale cost is $50, acquisition $50
SO – you made no money this month. (Broke even)
So with that in mind – here is a ANOTHER model (example only)
Landscaping ($40,000 ticket items)
Total Monthly Spend with Google $500
Total Monthly Management Fee $500
Total Website Costs per Year ($2400) $200 mth
Development cost on average $100
Total Monthly Web investment $1300.00
You got 500 clicks at $1 a click (hence the $500 spend)
Of this 500, 0 turned into customers
It took 3 months to get a customer from the web
So that means you spent $3900 to get 1 customer ($3900 a customer)
You Products sell for $40000, profit is $8000, cost is $42000, acquisition $3900
SO – you made $4100 this month.
In Summary
1. DONT THINK THE WEB IS GOING TO TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS OVERNIGHT
2. IT IS HARD WORK AND TAKE PARTNERSHIP NOT DRIBS AND DRABS
3. GET A PARTNER YOU CAN TRUST WITH YOUR BUSINESS
4. GET, KEEP, DEVELOP, MONITOR E.T.C A BUSINESS MODEL LIKE ABOVE
5. GET IN IT FOR THE LONG TERM
and don’t just sign up to anything
Cheers
Paul
Ridsy, that is very sensible advice – thanks.
Yes, Thankx Ridsy –
Your advice was well received, however, I’m still at a loss as to know what to do…. So many Advertiser’s have approached me & advised that they can offer Google AdWords to assist/boost my campaign, yet none are too specific when it comes to proving results… so, I stiill need some guidance, from someone, Please!!
To date, I’ve been approached (several times) by truelocal.com.au & numerous other similar advertisers. They ALL, despite assurances, fail to deliver the requested info. as requested, via email, in respect to their proven results…
They’re all good at talking on the phone & not backing it up in writing!
Hey, is there someone out there that can point me in the right direction for a relaible, affordable Trades/Services Directory (Vic., Aust.) that can really deliver results… ‘Love to hear from someone that’s enjoyed some real success with such an Organisation (other than “Yodel”, thankx).
Babbs – call me on 0295318000 – i might know a few places.
Its Hai here, Yodel’s representative for this discussion.
I’d like to clarify that Yodle Inc and Yodel Australia Pty Ltd are completely separate companies. There is no affiliation between us and them what so ever. Geographically, we are worlds apart; Yodle was formed in New York and Yodel was created in Sydney. Yodle operates in the USA and provides online marketing services to Americans SME’s. Yodel is an Australian based company that only services Australian and New Zealand SME’s.
In this case, Yodle = yodel? not exactly..
Yodel is Australia’s 1st Authorised Reseller of AdWords and we’ve been here since 2006, providing online marketing services to thousands of Australian small to medium sized businesses. I hope this clears up any confusion on this blog as to whether concerned customers are confusing us with another AdWords service provider. I can understand if this is so because we both offer very similar services.
If you would like us to address any more concerns about your service for Yodel Australia. please call us on 1800 SEARCH or alternatively, email one of our customer care reps at customercare@yodel.com.au
Kind regards,
Hai Duong
This company scammed me into some crap i have never received an have made unauthorized withdrawals from my credit card,
BEWARE AND STAY AWAY
Hi Guys
I’d like to let everyone know that I have recently moved on from Yodel and I will no longer be their representative for this forum.
cheers everyone!
Hai
NOT HAPPY back again. Yet again Yodel have stuffed me up. You’d think I would have learnt from the first time. This time I agreed to do a six month renewal – this was three weeks before my campaign stopped. I gave them my credit card details and of course they took the money didn’t they. On Monday (easter) I did a google search and no ad, Tuesday did another google search and no ad. Phoned Yodel to be told someone would ring me back. Someone rang me back and then said someone else would have to ring me back. Of course no-one called back. I rang again and firstly was told that they were experiencing delays in processing renewals – I said three weeks!!!! I was then put on to another person who then told me my renewal had been processed three weeks ago and that because my renewal fell on a public holiday – Easter Monday – it didn’t go through. I then mentioned that Tuesday wasn’t a public holiday and it still wasn’t there. I told them I was sick and tired of their bullshit excuses and blatant lies. They said my ad would be up on the Tuesday afternoon. As no-one had phoned me back and still no ad by 4.50pm I telephoned once again and yet again no-one has phoned me back. It is now Wednesday and no ad still. I have given them until 12.00noon today to sort it out and offer me some form of compensation (their first offer was two days free!!) or I will be demanding a refund. Someone was also supposed to be monitoring my keywords and phoning me back every couple of days. Guess what – never heard from them again! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH I will be reporting them to the appropriate authority.
I posted my comment a while back, about 13 posts ago, “unhappy customer”, without elaborating too much, Yodel had stuffed me around for months, took my money, failed to return my calls, uploaded my page with incorrect content and worst of all lied to me about the offer I had signed up for and then denied making that offer initially to avoid having to reward me with $600 credit value for my $321 Trial Package.
Terrible, terrible company to trust with your money and your business. Soon as they take your money that’s as far as their commitment goes in my experience.
Anyhow, after failing to receive any refund and after weeks of calling and emailing I simply just decided to go through Department of Fair Trades in NSW. It’s so simple and easy, you just visit their website and fill the form out online and the department take care of it for you! They called Yodel and INSTANTLY the money returned to my account in full. Fair trades then called me to check the outcome and it was solved in a matter of 3 days of lodging an official complaint.
I encourage every one of you business owner’s out there who have been screwed over by Yodel to take my advice and let Fair Trades NSW (or whichever state) deal with your complaint because they on the other hand take claims very seriously, they do chase things up for you, they do return your calls and they do get results, where Yodel simply do not!
At least you will get your money back. Afterall Yodel simply pushes the boundaries and use stand over tactics to impression us all that they are in control of our money and that we have no say in what happens with it once it’s in their hands. A breach in a fair trades act ‘to deliver what you promise’ is an offence from a business to a paying customer and can have legal ramifications for the offending business. Department of Fair Trades is your first point of contact where money is involved. Get online and make your complaints and take action!
Well, I got a call from a Yodel rep in the last few weeks representing themselves as Google. I didn’t even know the rep was from Yodel until they emailed me a proposal afterwards.
DO NOT USE YODEL.
They do not return calls.
They do not let anyone with authority talk to customers.
Even if you have an issue that needs sort ing they direct you to a customer service agent who say they arent authorised to make decisions. You end up going around in circles.
If you ask for the General Manager they refer you to customer service. Then they have the hide to say if you want to contact the General Manager you need to put it in writing! Your joking!
They make excuses that the General Manager isn’t there for days on end.
They are quick to take your money but slow to refund it.
Never EVER even consider dealing with them. Its not worth the hassle.
Plenty of others seem to have the same issues…….
I am also having a range of issues with Yodel sadly. Can anyone please list of some reputable Australian Google Adwords Managers to fill the gap. It would be much appreciated.
Also, I genuinely hope I don’t have to use taxpayers money through The Department of Fair Trading to close the Yodel account, but may be forced to do so.
Please if you are reading this forum to decide whether or not to join YODEL, all i can say is don’t, you might as well just flush your money down the toilet. As well as this they have no hesitation in handing out your personal details to other third parties.
AND YES I WILL BE CONTACTING FAIR TRADING TODAY.
Hi Peter, I have been following this anti Yodel discussion since earlier this year.
If you are looking for someone who is a) ethical b) honest c) contactable d) has a strategic mind e) actually writes ALL of the ads himself f) manages ALL of his clients himself g) is the Managing Partner of the company h) sticks to a budget i) sets expectations about the whole thing j) lets the data speak k) offers no false promises l) in all cases to date, has managed to increase conversion to sale for all of his 22 clients m) is actually a grown up
Then call Paul in Sydney 02 9531 8000 Option 2
Ridsy
Will I ever learn!!! Obviously not. Yodel have stuffed me up yet again. We got my ad going after them promising all sorts of things. I have to check every day to see that it is appearing. Last Saturday and Sunday the ad did not appear. I emailed them and of course they don’t work weekends, and rang on the Monday, to be told someone would get back to me. You got it – no-one called me. At 4.30 I called and was told that there was something the matter with Google that weekend and they would add two days to my account. This weekend, AGAIN, it is not appearing and I have told them that I want a refund or I would be going to the Office of Fair Trading. I said to them that they are supposed to be making my life easier, not harder by having to check the ad is there and then spending time on the phone, writing emails etc etc. Enough is enough. You may hear World War III start on Monday!!!
Same thing is happening to me NO ADS SHOWING UP
I am not one bit impressed with yodel, firstly I am not getting the clicks and got told that I have to spend at least at a minimum the $200 per month to even get to first page and that is $600 for 3months minimum period. This is total bs because I have ran my own key words on google for the past 4 years and I have had top spots, it’s just that I haven’t had the time to do it all myself. Yes and I have trusted them. I am so p/d off I am going to try and get my money back.
My delema is that I cannot run anything on google while these guys are running stuff for me, well if I could see the ads then they would be IMO. But google may not see it that way and ban me or something so I have been told.
Don’t go with Yodel is all I can say. Their key word reports are useless and when you ask for more in depth reports they say they will see what they can do. They know what they can do… by the looks nothing except for take your money. Darn I have been caught too, I had a bad feeling when the $600 came straight out of my bank so fast and upfront for 3months. Yep it didn’t feel right should have trusted my gut instincts.
(I am posting this comment on behalf of Joe Hachem, as there seems to be an issue with submitting comments)
Hi All,
My name is Joe Hachem and I’ve been working for Yodel Australia for over 3 years in my role as an Online Business Coordinator. I am available to discuss and answer any queries or concerns you may have regarding your Google/Yahoo account on behalf of Yodel Australia.
Yodel Australia is renowned as Google’s largest official reseller with over 5000 clients live on Google in both Australia and international regions including New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland. With such a large client base, the Yodel team are on board to assist and welcome any feedback you may have regarding our products/services.
If you have any further issues you may contact our customer care department by email: customercare@yodel.com.au or alternatively my direct email address: jhachem@yodel.com.au
I will endeavor to assist with your enquires in a prompt and professional manner.
Best regards,
Joe Hachem
Online Business Coordinator
Ok, something must be SERIOUSLY wrong here. I got a report in the email a short time ago and I can tell you right now, I am FURIOUS!!!!!!
This is the first month I have been with Yodel, and from the look of things it will also be my last. The smooth talking sales guys promised me that for my $300 a month ($900 upfront mind you) I would have excellent exposure and start seeing my ads appear highly. Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I had a measly 13 clicks for the month with no conversions at all. Still, somehow, they overspent for the month on top of my management fee. I did some BASIC maths, and it just doesn’t add up!! Where is all MY money going Yodel? Can someone explain to me?
There are keywords appearing on the report that I told them to pause weeks ago too – this just isn’t good enough.
Sorry to hear about your probs Michelle. I am still waiting tapping my foot. If you cancel with them it takes 14 working days for them to review your request. Obviously the pile is quite high. If I gave customer service like that I would be out of business long ago.
This waiting thing is crazy and if I don’t hear from them right on time then it’s to the ACCC, I am not going to mess around.
I think it is funny how on 11/25/08 post, it says they have 7000 customers. The post from 5/25 says they have 5000. Did they really lose 2000 in 6 months? I guess all of these complaints are verified.
So glad to find this blog, I was researching this company because they keep calling me and told me they were “blah blah from Google” I was like wtf?
Got a phone call 2 days ago, don’t know how they got my number, told them I am busy with a client and call me back in 3 hours. 5 minutes later another sales called me, another 5 minutes later someone called me again! I told them someone already called me, they were like ‘Oh?’
Over the past 2 days I got like 10 phone calls from them, told them to email me the details so I can think about it… Hopefully that’s not a mistake cos I don’t want to end up getting spam from them!
Thanks for everyone that share their experience here. I hate companies which hard sale like this and it looks like they ain’t worth the time anyway.
Great to find this forum.
I’m sitting in NZ, when I get the call this morning (I’ve actually heard of Yodel, and I’m in the process of looking at some consultancy – probably more focused on conversion than traffic) so I say I’ll take the call.
Luke says he is from Yodel, and that Google has asked them to call the SMEs with adwords accounts. Firstly he tries to make out he is in NZ (but heese accent gives him away). Then after a bit of dancing it turns out he has got our details by clicking through our ad and going to the contact us page.
Damn good telesales guy, but pushy enough to make me uncomfortable and very cagey about where they make their margin with someone like us who already has an adwords account and is spending $3-500 per month. The idea that I can outsource it to someone who knows what they are doing and earns their cut through a rebate from Google is appealing, but I guess it is too good to be true.
Michelle’s comment really got me thinking, and this is probably some advice I can give from my own experience. I see a lot of unhappy customers here who are with this SEM agency, and it really makes me feel bad that other professional search agencies might be getting a bad ‘overall’ image with the services this particular company provides.
In most cases Pay-per-click search is the largest single line in many web marketing budgets. To ensure your campaigns are healthy, I suggest you should do a PPC audit. This isn’t as HARD as it sounds — with the data in hand it might take an afternoon to complete! You’d be surprised by how often agencies report incorrect cost data. If you don’t have accurate cost data, you can’t run your campaigns correctly.
In 8 easy steps you’ll know if your campaigns working for you:
1. Pick a recent calendar month.
2. Ask your accounting department for your actual SEM advertising costs paid for that month (Google, Yahoo!7, MSN, etc). The accounting folks should pull these costs from the actual advertising invoices received from your agency (if you pay by invoice) or from the actual credit card statements (if you pay by credit card). Check the totals match the invoices.
3. Next, pull cost data for the same period for each engine by day from the engines themselves. Log in to the engine’s web management interfaces, or ask your agency to generate those reports.
4. Finally, gather cost data from your monthly search performance reports provided by your agency, your search management tool, or your in-house team.
5. Then, for each engine, in aggregate and by day, compare these three sets of cost data — costs as invoiced by the engines, costs as reported by the engines, and costs as reported by your search performance reports. Your account manager should be able to provide this if you ask them nicely 😉
6. These three sets of cost data should match. Due to rounding, credit card timing issues, timezone issues, clicks, etc. “match†here means “the same to within a few percent.â€
7. If the three sets of costs match up, in aggregate by engine and by day, congratulations.
8. If they don’t, roll up your sleeves and start digging in to see why…
Hope this helps anyone that feels that they aren’t getting the most from their advertising!
Cheers Frank,
Here’s an update everyone,
I am still trying to get my unspent money back from Yodel well some of it which is better than nothing hopefully. I stopped the campaign 1 week into it, on a renewal. Well the 14 days have happened to wait for my case to be reviewed and no show of an email or any form of contact from Yodel. Case??? review my case, it’s darn simple I am not happy and I want my unspent click money back, I don’t care about the money that has been already spent on clicks. But these people try to make everything just so complicated.
I ring them and the consultant is on the phone. Leave messages and nothing I don’t get a call back. Leave email messages and I don’t get an email back.
Ring their office once again and the person is on the phone. Ask to hold and get told they could be on the phone for a long time, please call back. I am then even more frustrated so I call back in 20mins and ask to speak to the person again and they are on the phone again. Time is money and I am wasting time on these people, I should send them a bill, but I know where that will get me.
So I ask to speak to someone else and there is only one other person, ask to speak to the GM and get told you need to speak to the consultant, ask if there is anyone else there and get told no there are only 2 consultants and the other one is on the phone.
Ring Dept of Fair trading and ask is there many complaints with Yodel and they say they can’t tell you because it’s a privacy issue. They ask me for contract info, well I don’t have any that I remember it was over 6mths ago when I first started with them. So until this get’s to critical stage where a media release is made with complaints then they will not say a word and no one will ever know.
All I can say they are really good at taking money and getting your money back is like trying to suck blood from a stone.
Now I am totally pissed off beyond all belief. I finally got a letter from Yodel mind you took 14 working days to say no when they were going to say no from the beginning and the answer is no I am not getting a refund. Basically they will not refund your money. I am spreading the word about them and I will advertise this amongst my contacts just what the go is.
They refer you to clauses on their website regarding terms of service and that is something that the sales representatives do not go through with you. I did at no time accept their terms, unless by saying I would go with them meant that I would be accepting all their terms, I have had enough of wasting my time on these pathetic people.
So everyone guess what I have pissed close on $600 up against a wall, wasted time on these people and got totally frustrated.
All I can say is make sure you know what the hell you are getting into first.
hello all, just stumbled onto this blog, pity i did not find it a few days ago.
i get a lot of calls from these people and finely thought i would give them ago as i spend around $1300.00 a month on add words.
they offered a 3 month test of my account, thought about it for a few days still had the rep ringing every day.
said ok i would give them ago and swapped information so my test would start in a weeks time . stuff me dead they took out almost $4000.00 in one go almost after i hung up the phone with no discussion on how it would be taken out and also with no authority to take out so much in 1 hit.
sent an email, well a few with no answer and have never heard from that rep again
had another rep ring me to sign up and gave him a blast and he said he would talk to his manager, got back to me and said bad luck they had taped me agreeing to the 3 month contract and that was that, got quite mad and they then offered to give back some of the money if i went ahead and they would withdraw it monthly.
but it would take 7 days to refund $3000.00 out of the $4000.00.
first off it is not legal to tape a phone conversation with out letting the second party know that you are doing it. they gave no information on how payment would be made just took the lot, it only takes 3 minutes to do a credit card refund not 7 working days. and also i am sure the law states that there is a 5 day cooling of period for phone salesmen and that no money can change hands untill after the 5 days.
they will have to do a dam good job to get my continued business after the way i have been treated.
then today i have received another 4 phone calls in 30 minutes from them trying to get my business again.
These people need A Current Affair onto them, the stories just keep getting worse, they are using stand over tactics, follow your gut instinct.
Dispute it with your credit card company and fast, tell them it was an unauthorised transaction to the value that they took out. Tell them you also have them on tape, 2 can play the same game.
Sad to say but this is the first of your troubles which will become many, but if you don’t care how your advertising monies get spent or value for money or good stats, then you will be happy with the service.
7 days is stalling tactics and I bet that is working days, just like the 14 working days for cancellations. Yes this is so that they can spend some of your money on clicks in case you decide to pull out.lol
You are not the first and certainly won’t be the last, tying up your cash flow for 3mths is bullshit. Fine if you don’t mind that much money being billed to your credit card immediately and you don’t miss it. They also charge a cancellation fee that is if they deem that you are worthy of a refund.
In my case I am not worthy of a refund and after they send you a letter the letter states that they will only discuss the matter further with your legal council, in other words get stuffed spend the rest of the money with us. Which means you have to get a lawyer and I could not be bothered, the amt outstanding is not worth it.
They will get free advertisement from me and that is worth it’s weight in gold in my book, they will get value for money with my advertising, way more than they should have refunded me. lol
As to them ringing and badgering you, they are pushy SOB’s just like they were with me and if they ever ring me again they will get the sharp end of the pineapple as you can tell I am still angry with them.
As a regular contributor to this fabulous debate and someone who has worked in this industry for 12 years I am making a bit of an offer to any business that has been affected by Yodel or anyone else simply curious about Adwords.
I will give you 1 months free advertising on Google. I will buy you $75 worth of Google Ads on MY CREDIT CARD and will set you up a new campaign, write new ads and at the end of the month, give you a report on how it all went.
There is NO catch, NO contract, NO risk and you are not obligated to do anything.
Why – because I am sick of Yodel making Adwords look bad.
The company is called Smart Web Marketing. I am the Managing Partner of the business. I have 34 clients that I work with and you can call them to make sure of my credentials.
If you feel the trust is already there then you can go here. http://smartwebmarketing.com.au/smartoffer_ORDER_FORM (Just ignore the 1000 bag purchase)
Cheers
Paul
02 9531 8000
– this offer will end June 30th, 2009.
having contacted the NSW Office of Fair Trading, i was informed that there was a 5-7 workday cooling of period for telephone sales (like door to door salesmen).
Yodel dont advertise this and i was told it is a breach of the fair trading act and a few other things they do.
no money transfers should take place until after the cooling off period, this is also a breach of the fair trading act as they took the money out as soon as i hung up the phone from them.
took the advice from the NSW Fair Trade people and sent an email terminating the agreement and giving 24hrs to refund all the money before contacting the bank and asking for a reversal on the grounds as it was not authorized.
will now wait 24hrs and see what happens, so far no contact from Yodel but i have received an automated read receipt of my termination of contract email.
also told by fair trade not to talk to them any more, every thing must be my email or mail so that it can be produced if this escalates.
This from Joe Hachem at Yodel
Hi All,
I have noticed that there has been a lot of issues and concerns arising from a few google adwords campaigns managed by Yodel Australia.
Thank you for those that have emailed me directly, I have taken direct action and these issues have been resolved.
I am available to discuss and answer any queries or concerns you may have regarding your Google account on behalf of Yodel Australia. You can email our customer care department at customercare@yodel.com.au and CC: my direct email: jhachem@yodel.com.au I will endeavor to assist with all your enquires personally in a prompt and professional manner.
Best Regards
Joe Hachem
Online Business Coordinator
well Yodel have refunded the whole amount in full, happy with that.
they did hold onto the money for a while but they did come through in the end.
thanks all
Scrubber – thanks for reporting back
I received a call a few weeks ago from what appeared to be an agent from Google. I was told that Google had asked them to contact their clients to have their campaign optimised and managed.
I accpeted their offer since they made out it was coming from Google. I quickly found out this wasn’t the case and cancelled my account. A couple of days later my credit card was charged anyway.
I then called these clowns telling them that my account had been cancelled but my card charged anyway and to please do a refund. I was then told it was “company policy” that the refund go through a 14 working day review! Giving them the benefit of the doubt in the end I let it go.
Surprise, surprise. The 14 days have now elapsed and no refund so I gave them another call. Apparently my refund has been approved (aren’t I lucky) but it will take another 7 working days to be processed. A total of 1 month after the transaction.
I strongly urge anyone considering using Yodel’s services to think twice and then a third time. Charging someones card even after they have cancelled their account and then taking a whole month to refund the amount is not the work of a reputable business.
Although, I haven’t even got my money back yet so I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself. If anyone has any suggestions on how or who I can report this sort of thing to I would love to hear from you.
i contacted the NSW office of fair trading and was informed that there is a mandatory cooling of period for all telecommunication sales of 10 days.
no money should be touched untill after this cooling of period. it is illegal to do so.
contact the NSW office of fair trading ( state of origin of the call ).
very helpful.
I was called by a Yodel representative about 30 seconds after I updated my business entry on HotFrog. I was suspicious about the timing. When I asked the rep “How do I know you are not a scammer?” he told me he was from Yodel. When he asked for my contact details, I told him that they were on my website. BUT instead of reading my address from my website, he told me the address I had just updated on HotFrogger (There was a slight, but significant, difference between the two sites). When challenged he claimed that they have a tie-in with HotFrog.
We finished the conversation by him emailing me a Yodel order form.
Thank you to everyone on this forum, you have just saved me aggrevation and expense as I will NOT be taking up their offer to manage my Google AdWords campaign.
I am sooooo pleased I found this blog. Yodel have been hounding us to sign up with them for the last 6 months. As I had already started my online adwords through google I was rather reluctant as I did not want to give control to someone else as well as it being a tight stretch for our budget. Anyway my adwords were not performing as well as I had hoped so my husband nearly caved. A rep was meant to phone back today. Had to pay x amount deposit and 3 instalments. After reading in depth this blog I will be telling hubby NO WAY. Thanks very much everyone for the updates on what Yodel is all about. I definately will be finding other ways to advertise.
I have also advertised with Yodel and I also have blown close to $600 for 3 months of Google Adwords. About 6 weeks in now and have not had a single call regarding the website, which is no surprise as the website is absolutely crap. They have done a monthly report claiming a great deal of hits but they have not turned into clicks.
I also had over 1 mths mucking around after I had paid them before the site was launched.
They send you proofs full of spelling mistakes, they don’t return your calls, they basically con you into believing they are experts in the field when they are only spin doctors and scam artists. Do not wait your time or your money on them, if you want to give $600 away find a needy charity, because you will not get value for money from them.
hello carolyn.
not one to normally tout business’s
but i contacted Ridsy from a few messages above and was very surprised at how he handled his business and have let him access my account to help me as my spend is $1300 a month with add words.
his address is
http://smartwebmarketing.com.au
john
Scrubber
Good luck with using a company that employs “Scab Marketing” to try and obtain clientele. He now has (35) happy clients. Anyone who uses this forum for financial gain has questionable ethics. The real point of this is to share information on a topic. These type of tactics question the whole validity of this forum. How many of these posts have been done by a competitor of the Company in question? Do your research. Everyone is selling “adwords” and the right people are available for you business. “Google” is not going anywhere.
From Yodel:
Hi All,
We have been looking at resolving these issues individually one at a time and we’ll endeavor to assist with your enquires in a prompt and professional manner.
If you have any further issues you may contact our customer care department by email: customercare@yodel.com.au or our Free customer care hotline on 1800 732 724, press 2 then 6.
Best Regards
Joe Hachem
Online Business Coordinator
This is typical of Yodel.
They are watching any bad press and posting comments so they look like they are responsible.
After my last post they emailed directly and offered to respond personally to the issues.
Problem was the damage was already done. They caused the damage with no customer service and a failure to address they mistake they made.
They say their open and want to help, but you can’t get past a customer service clerk. They say their the only people to talk to yet they have no authority to make any decisions. They are obviously told by the Manager/Director to shield them from customers and issues.
In my 20 years of business I have never had a customer service clerk shout down the phone at me and abuse me – the customer. Yodel did.
Sorry Yodel you can keep on trying to make out your here to help but remember you made the mess your in.
Well much to my surprise I am recieving a credit today and confirmation has come through.
I contacted Joe even though my letter from them stated that I was not to contact them again regarding this matter unless it was my legal council. This is total and utter rubbish, I decided in this case I was my own legal council and I had the right to contact them.
All I was wanting was the outstanding monies which were unspent, less the cancellation fee. The cancellation fee is their terms which is fair enough and getting something back is better than having it sit there for 12mths and they keep the rest of my money as I am managing my own clicks myself. Just means I have to be more on the ball with it.
It has taken all of 2 working days to sort this which is unreal, things can happen if the right person is onto it.
So Joe thank you very much for sorting this out so promptly, you know such a pity this wasn’t sorted out in the first place and you guys would not have got such bad press. Well I suppose we all have to learn by our mistakes and I know you are only the messenger. Cheers…
To Ridsy,
Are you really offering up potentially thousands of your own dollars, or simply taking advantage of Google’s “$75 free to new advertisers” stimulus offer?
Seems like quite a coincidence.
Yodel Australia got me as well. Agreed to try their service and got charged for 3 months of advertising in one lump sum within minutes.
Communication was extremely poor quality and patchy. Within a day i decided to terminate. They had not done any advertising at that point, so have not actually provided a service of any kind.
Since then they have referred to various delay tactics (they call them ‘refund policies’).
First I had to call and explain verbally, then write and explain my reasons in writing too, then wait… … and nothing happened. So i called Yodel Australia and was told that there is a 14 business day (~3 week ) period while they “assess my reasons for a refund”…. …and nothing happened. When i called Yodel Australia they told me that there was another 7 business day (~1.5 week) while it was processed… …and again nothing has happened.
Search around and you will find out what Yodel Australia’s reputation is like. I have not found anything positive about them, except on their own site or written by their own employees.
My own reasons for not using them are:
1- Found that they cannot spell my name or my company name (both simple) correctly on invoices or emails, which does not bode well for advertising copy.
2- Found out how bad their reputation really is. Lying about being Google and other shoddy practices.
3- Experienced their shocking customer service and streams of misinformation.
T
YODEL CONTACTS
For those struggling to get through the Yodel run around, here are some company contacts that will help you through.
Their Youtube videos indicate that key people within the business are
Paul Harvell – Managing Director
David Mayman – Unknown (FulfilNet Director – Parent Company)
Michael Gerardis – General Manager
Kynan Albassit – New Sales Manager
Matt Walker – Internet Sales Consultant
David Thew – Corporate Accounts Executive
Hai Duong – Marketing Manager
Natasha Howard – Yodel Accounts Manager
Janty Mohammed – Business Development Manager
Pierre Ajram – Referral Channel Manager
email address provided info@yodel.com.au
Terry,
I recommend you place a call to your state department responsible for consumer protection.
Under NSW law,
“you have a ‘cooling-off’ period of five business days during which you can choose to cancel a sale over $100″
-NSW Office of Fair Trading
IMPORTANT TO NOTE,
Yodel deliberately implement stalling tactics to avoid loss of sales within the cooling off period.
The cooling off period is 5 BUSINESS DAYS. This can be done by POST, FAX or EMAIL.
You’ll receive only the email address of the salesperson who sold you to cancel via. This isn’t enough.
To ascertain the correct email address, you’ll need to call their Toll Free number. You’ll then be redirected and hung up and lead on.
This is performed in the hope the buyer will abdicate their rights in frustration.
The best method of overcoming this issue is to visit their website, send REGISTERED POST to their office.
REGISTERED POST – CONFIRMS THEY’VE RECEIVED YOUR MESSAGE and CANT HIDE BEHIND YOU DIDN’T SEND IT ON TIME.
Outline of Yodel Business Model
1. Sell clients Google Adword budgets (campaigns) at a variable price (X). (ie. X could be 300, 600, 900, etc).
2. Define a campaign length at START. 30 days, 90 days, 180, 365 days. (Y)
3. Divide X by Y = Z “Daily Budgetâ€. Daily budget is the pre-determined limit any business can receive in clicks on any per day.
4. Presume on average, $1 of the $5 budget is used. Yodel will keep those $4 as “FORFEIT CREDITâ€.
Example: Over 100 days, your business will receive only $100 of its advertising spend. Yodel will receive $400.
Yodel, in this example would receive 80% commission for your advertising dollars.
Hi,
I had dealings with Yodel and I feel terribly disappointed with their services and especially customer service. I was talking to someone in cancellations as I am fighting to get my money back; they took without my permission and he hung up on me, because I was demanding my money.
I am going to approach Current Affairs and Google Australia as well as their headquarters about Yodel. I’ll also ask other government body to help with investigation. I had feelings that I am not the only one!!!!
Would you join Current Affairs to teach this company some lessons?
H
Hannah, yes I would join your campaign, they need to be exposed, A Current Affair would be ideal. You must contact the department of fair trading in NSW, you can go online and lodge an online complaint, without even calling them. It’s very simple and you will get results in only a few days. The dept. will handle the affair on your behalf and get your money back. The more people who use the Fair trading service, the more negative exposure Yodel will receive.
In response to Mr Scab Marketing
Not everyone who posts their business credentials in a relevant forum is a scab marketer.
So anyway, onto happer thoughts, I am the managing partner of a web marketing firm. It really is a simple concept. I spend some time in social media and often look at what my competitors are doing.
I found this forum, got frustrated with Yodel making this industry look bad and offered to restore some credibility.
If thats scab marketing in your eyes, firstly, you are bitter and twisted, secondly I must be guilty as charged.
Happy days.
Paul
In response to the question about the $75 stimulus from Google.
No, I am not using that system to fund my offer of free 30 days PPC.
I am using $100 – paid for on Our Google Adwords Account using our company credit card and paying Google real money to promote your business.
I am also not charging the usual monthly management fees and set up costs.
Simply 30 days of free activity capped at $100 Gogole Spend with my fees waived.
Read this as you will.
Thanks
Paul
This is From “Scab Marketing” aka “Bitterly Twisted”
Ridsy,
As mentioned via email with Meg previously, I was employed with Yodel some (18) months ago. I do not have any ties to that business now and am not out to defend them. The Business I am running currently (not adwords related) is after the same type of client, so they could be seen as one of my competitors. Yes, they had and look like they still do have varying issues of customer service. This is not uncommon with Businesses requiring more than a handful of employees.
Ridsy, leave this for disgruntled customers. Your “ambulance chasing†lessens the reason for this forum and questions who is actually posting. If you have set up your own campaign as well as your clients, you should get enough business. With your expertise, this should start to help restore some credibility to adwords and your client base should grow.
What Yodel does do well is give anybody an opportunity to succeed in their business. If this forum is loaded with comments from Yodel’s competitors and that went some way to causing the loss of any jobs, I find that unfair. Or maybe that’s my “bitter and twisted†side.
Bitterly twisted (Thanks for my new alias!)
Bitter/ScabM
Your argument fails. I am simply responding when asked. Go start you own forum. You can then control comments yourself. Sorry, democracy, freedom yaddah yaddah.
We are a professsional firm and I have spent 12 years in online media and online publishing for the big end of town. So I think my comments here are well within ethical boundaries. As for your comments about people losing jobs…..it is simply laughable.
You should be ashamed.
Paul
This is From “Scab Marketing†aka “Bitterly Twisted†aka “forever Ashamed”
Paul,
Was not an argument to begin with. I would have thought that a “professsional (sic)” Company would not need to resort to joining in on this forum. Let people vent on the issue without your A-Z of how fantastic your Company is.
This forum is yours? Sorry, I didnt realise. This has forced me to hang up my bat for the season. The shame is too much to cope with.
Good luck to everyone and make sure you shop around. You might not require the “Big end of town” service, dependent on the size of your business.
Bitter/ScabM and forever Ashamed
Got a call from Jodie at Google last Friday. It took a while to get the information that she was actually from this company called Yodel. She sent me an email and followed up with a call that said they could save me money by making certain my ads were no burning my money sitting on page two?
When I asked her how I was burning money when no one was clicking, she was confused. I explained to her that she had just lied to me but that she should go ahead and give me a real reason I might use Yodel.
I was placed on hold for about a minute and a supervisor named Chris came on the line. He explained Jodie was a trainee. I expressed concern that a trainee may be given that sort of sale spiel with incorrect information… we all know they read from scripts…
anyway, he was as deceptive as she was. They pretend that they bring your ads to page one through their expertise on keywords. I was told I don’t know the keywords. I was also told by the supervisor that Yodel are the ONLY organisation that knows the keywords.
“I am the gatekeeper, are you the keymaster”?
Further to comments by Hannah, we are now in exactly the same spot with Yodel. We provided our credit card details to Yodel after being approached by tele marketers and deciding to try them out. They were to take out one months payment in advance but instead took out several thousand dollars from the card, have not started any services and are now stalling on repayment. Customer services talked about a ‘partial repayment’ and on doing my nuts they said they will put a repayment into the system but it would take up to 14 bus. days and require the General Managers review. I have pushed harder and now they do not reply at all. These guys have plenty of negative comment is listed on the web. Stay clear of them.
If anyone has The GM’s email (Paul Harvell) I would appreciate it.
Steve
contact the office of fair trading / consumer affairs NSW as this is the state where Yodel are located.
I did and was told what to say to yodel, there is a cooling off period where they must refund all money.
i followed consumer affairs advice and was refunded almost $4000 in full which they took out, also a clause where money cant be touched until after the cooling off period is finished.
what is funny is that i also had the charge reversed through my bank and it took 4 months for yodel to discover that they had refunded me and that the bank had had also reversed the payment, so i had their money for 4 months before i gave the bank the ok to refund it.
Hi Steve, I am not surprised that they are not calling you back. I had to chase them to solve my problem and once the man I spoke to hang up on me. I have my money back, however I am still willing to do something if I get back up. Perhaps you can call Current Affairs, as your case is recent and we’ll all contribute. Think about it, this has to be stopped! I would involve Google, too. I don’t think they are aware of how they are being represented by Yodel!
imagine 100-200 people a month having lets say $3000 – $4000 taken out of their account and held for 30 days (10-14 days trying to get their money back and 14 days to refund it) what do you think yodel could be earning on interest for $300,000 -$600,000 a month, no wonder they operate like this, they dont have to pay you back any interest do they.
that’s what this is all about, they business doesn’t obviously earn them living (surprise, surprise!), so they get it by keeping people’s money for 2-3 weeks.
Please everyone, go to the link below, the more of us the better
http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/feedback/default.aspx?formid=228
The below comment is from Michael Gerardis from Yodel Australia.
My name is Michael Gerardis and I am the General Manger of Yodel Australia. I would like to extend an invitation to any person that is having an issue with their Yodel campaigns to contact me so that your issues can be resolved. If we are not providing you the services that we promise, we will always refund your money.
My email address is mgerardis@yodel.com.au, you can call on 02 8870 3333, I may not always be available on the phone but I always reply to emails as soon as I possibly can.
There is movement at the office for the word is getting around ???????
How many of you have actually visited the site provided by Hannah and reported the story? I will do it but I want to know that I’m not alone. (I’m not a very good public speaker nor do I wish to appear on television – I would rather someone else put their hand up for that role).
This is message to Michael Gerardis.
Michael, you do refund people’s money after 2 weeks of keeping it in your account. We can too do the maths; this is what you’re making your living of, because you definitely don’t provide any service. Your receptionist has no manners; she is the rudest person I’ve ever spoken to. She is the “door” to your business! Your representative hang up on me, when I was asking for my money back… not to mention, that you guys pretending to be Goggles… do you want me to go on?
I don’t believe you didn’t know, these are common practices in Yodel.
Look how many of us are unhappy and how many we don’t know about.
Not nice, not fair and so unethical.
This is from Michael Gerardis (General Manager, Yodel Australia)
Hannah, some time ago the Managing Director also posted a comment and offered anyone to call or email him with concerns, not a single person posting on this forum did this. I would love to know who you were dealing with so that I can straighten this out for you. I can only go off the information that my staff and the customers that I speak to give me.
We have thousands of customers in Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland and South Africa that are happy with our service. While you may have had a bad experience, which I apologise for, I take offence at the fact you think that our business is unethical, to suggest that we are making money by holding back refunds is an outright lie.
You are free to contact me and discuss this further at any time, my phone number and email address is on the earlier post. If there is anyone else who has not had their money refunded in a timely manner, I repeat, please contact me.
Well, I guess people lost trust in your company, Michael. I am a good example of it.
I didn’t want to contact anyone else after dealing with a bunch of rude people; I didn’t want to expose myself to further mistreatment and disrespect.
How can you help me now? You took my money, didn’t provide the service, I have never achieved what I‘ve anticipated and planned for my business in terms of Internet…
Talking about unethical? Every company I am dealing with sends me notification before withdrawing MY MONEY OUT OF MY BANK ACCOUNT!
Unless agreed otherwise. You are the only one so far, who took my money despite me saying to your sales person, that I did not make decision as yet and I’ll call him when I am ready.
Took me three days to finally be able to talk to him (after I’ve discovered my money being taken), your receptionist refused to transfer me to anybody else but him, even when I was asking to be transferred to someone else, I end up getting his voice mail (I am not using his name purposely), she said that he is the only person taking care of my account etc., she put me on holds for extended periods of time, when I was trying to say something, she literary said to me “I am talking now†or “you listen to meâ€, your other men, who took over hang up on me…
Now, how can you expect me to believe or trust anyone in Yodel?
You assured me that my website address is going to be in the first 3 top ones, first page etc. I wasn’t ever able to find it, after 3rd page I used to give up, knowing that nobody goes any further than that with the search.
Please examine my website, http://www.inannaco.com
I never referred anyone to use it, I was to embarrass.
I never used it as a tool to sell my product. Person, who built it didn’t understand any English; I wasn’t able to communicate with her. She pasted the text I’ve provided with instructions for her in the brackets, I had to point it out few times before it was removed. Please ask your people to show you the reports, 3 clicks in 3 months, nobody called me when I suggested doing something about it, and nobody called back after I left messages. Only your sales person called me few times a day to renew my contract… And that’s not all.
But of course you didn’t know.
Yodel Yodel Yodel
Why can’t you guys simply admit that your customer care policy sucks and just fix it.
Calling people who can substantiate their claims liars, and proceeding to try and justify the unjustifiable only pours fuel on the fire and (in my opinion) makes you look like shonks.
I checked out the website you did for Hannah ( http://www.inannaco.com ). Are you guys for real or do you honestly think that businesses should tolerate that standard of “work”. I do understand that out-sourcing work to the sub continent lowers your overheads but guys, really….. couldn’t you at least make an effort?
as this blog only gets searched traffic, I wonder what Yodel would do if every one here had a small write up on their landing pages that redirected to this blog.
something like.
**** Have you been approached by Yodel Australia, if so click this link to to see the complaints made about this Company ****
and link it to this blog
i’m sure your not doing any thing wrong as your not saying anything about them.
I get 5000-6000 look through hits a month almost all from Australia, add that to the many thousands of hits spread out between all these people who have websites and are complaining about Yodel could potentially send 10’s of thousands of people to this blog to read about Yodel, I wonder how long their business would be able to operate.
the voice of the web is a wonderful tool
My Yodel horror story
I came across Yodel several months ago when I was looking at making my Google Adwords advertising more effective. I had used a company previously that specialised in Google Adwords and I thought I would try someone else. I decided to do a 3 months stint with Yodel. After using them for a few weeks I found that the number of sales through our website was actually less than when I was doing my own Adwords campaign. This isn’t the horror part!
At the end of 3 months I was contacted by Justin from Yodel asking if I’d like to continue with them. I told him that I hadn’t been happy with Yodel’s performance and that I was going to go back to doing my own Adwords campaigns. He said just think about it and I said I’d be in touch if I changed my mind.
A couple of days later I noticed a charge of $3257 on my credit card statement. I had no idea what the charge was for or who the recipient was. I contacted my bank and was told that it was Yodel. I was gobsmacked that they had just decided to charge my credit card for over $3200 without my authorisation. I tried contacting Yodel however it was Friday afternoon and there was no answer. On Monday morning I both called and emailed Yodel to find out what was going on. I was told that I needed to email them asking for a refund which I did immediately. I was told that refund requests could take up to 14 days but that my case would be made a priority. I heard nothing from them for around a week. During this time I emailed Yodel asking for an update. I was told that the General Manager (Anne Assad) needed to review the refund and authorise it. After 2 weeks I had still heard nothing. I contacted them via phone and email and only received the answer that I would be contacted once the matter had been reviewed.
Today I received a call from someone at Yodel and was told that my refund request had been denied! His reasoning for the denial was because I had not told them to cancel my account. According to them, after the initial 3 month period has expired they automatically charge you for another 3 months! I told him that I had told Justin (who contacted my about continuing with Yodel) that I DID NOT want to continue with Yodel and that I would contact them if I changed my mind. The man who spoke with me this morning argued with me for several minutes and was extremely rude. His explanation was that the automatic renewal of subscriptions is normal and ‘this is how all online marketing companies operate.’ I told him that this was absolute rubbish and that I would be taking further action.
Michael, It was Justin who took money out of my credit account without my authority a while back, I hadn’t even agreed to anything. I was lucky and did not have to wait the 14 days, it was back into my account the next day. I told them to destroy my credit card details. I was told that I should have received an email setting out what the amount was and what I was paying for. I had never received any such email. They didn’t have a leg to stand on. Good Luck!! Contact office of fair trading / consumer affairs NSW
Update:
I emailed Michael Gerardis (I obtained his name from this thread) letting him know what had happened. I received an email back shortly after saying that he was going to look into this and get back to me within the hour. He emailed me again about 15 minutes later, apologised for the way I’d been treated and stated that a refund would be granted today and he didn’t know why the other staff member had told me that the refund would be denied. I have also received a call from another staff member letting me know the refund was being done today. Michael Gerardis has also emailed me again apologising everything and offering for me to call him for any further assistance.
Hopefully the refund will happen quickly.
Now your refund will happen, because they do read this blog, however, Yodel once again demonstrated how they treat their customers. Helping themselves to people’s accounts and making unauthorised withdrawals. Disgusting!
Michael Gerardis knows who I am, but he never made any contact with me or responded to my last comment. I am not going to contact them too, as it’s rather in their interest to do so. I am taking further action, as this really has to stop. Is anyone going to support me????
Another story.
I also recently heard from Yodel. Thought I’d give them a go starting with a $50 budget per month. The money was taken out next day. No e-mail, no agreement sighted or signed.
They promised to call me to discuss keywords, no call.
They promised to have my adwords live in 5 days. Didn’t happen.
Took GST out of my $50, dropping my budget to $45. No mention of this.
The campaign they eventually put together was crap. The keywords were ones I was already using.
Tried to phone several times. Left messages, never called back, hung up on.
Compared to most on this forum, my problems are minimal but that’s not the point. Asked for a refund and was told today via e-mail my cancellation request has gone to Customer Service and they will contact me “shortly”.
Also informed them they do not have authority to withdraw any more funds.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Update 2: I have now received a full refund of the $3257.
it doesn’t make them any better, they’ll do it to another victim till legally stopped, I’ve asked for support, where are you all?
I offered my support to Hannah, anyone else going to put their hand up? It can’t be just us two?????
Interesting reading this stuff! Yodel is screwing with me too! Several days ago I signed up for 45 days on the phone and money was deducted – no invoice posted, confirmation email and no one contacting me to set up adwords – the editor apparently is meant to be corinne. I sent an email – no response. Tried to call – was hanged up by the operator. Called again and was transferred to a voicemail. I even got my mate who has adwords thru them – the operator hanged up on him too.
just following on with my experience… I have tried to get them to hook up my analytics – they won’t do it – they keep on saying that they are having difficulties. So I actually don’t know what clicks I’m getting except the generated report they email out to you each month. I also rarely see my ad come up on google as well. So yes – I think I’m being ripped!
Another thing – I mentioned about these forums to them and they said it was their competitors trying to bring them down! Well I’m officially letting people know I’m a real customer and most of the stuff I have seen on the forums has come true for me and some of my business friends. See my link to my website – I’m a professional wedding photographer in Melbourne!!
Daniel’s last blog post..Engagement in Fitzroy Gardens
I have received an email from Yodel stating the following:
Hi Everyone,
Please direct all enquiries to customercare@yodel.com.au and they’ll be dealt with in a prompt and professional manner.
Kind regards
Yodel
Don’t they have job tittles and names attached to it i.e. Customer Care Officer John Yodel?
Well, maybe not because they don’t provide customer care!
Hi Meg – why would you bother email customer care when they don’t respond or do what they say they are going to do? Its really pathetic posting that. Well – all I can say is that I have been without yodel for a couple of months now and business is great 😉
adelphia host name domain name…
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