Comments for Oklahoma to Beijing: Living in China http://china.blog.beijingdiscoverytours.com Beijing Discovery Tours website supplemental blog Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:10:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 Comment on Citysearch Click Fraud Warning by admin http://china.blog.beijingdiscoverytours.com/2007/12/04/citysearch-click-fraud-warning/#comment-285 admin Sat, 17 May 2008 09:56:38 +0000 http://china.blog.beijingdiscoverytours.com/2007/12/04/citysearch-click-fraud-warning/#comment-285 Very nice to hear from you Mark. I've talked with Becky, and her mother is an attorney and may be interested in pursuing this. If we get something going I will be sure and contact you. To further update my situation, the collection agency that Citysearch turned my account over to was extremely nice once I explained the situation to them, and immediately closed the collection account and apologized. The very next day, Citysearch AGAIN charged my credit card for $107, once again committing fraud as those charges were completely unauthorized. I called my credit card company, and they said that I could dispute the charges again but there would be nothing that they could do to keep Citysearch from charging my card again, so they recommended that I cancel my credit card and they would give me a new card with a new number. So I had to go to all of my different accounts that were automatically billed to that credit card and change the billing to a new credit card, all because Citysearch could not be trusted to stop billing my previous credit card. It is absolutely ridiculous and incredible that a supposedly legitimate company like Citysearch would attempt to conduct business in this manner. Very nice to hear from you Mark. I’ve talked with Becky, and her mother is an attorney and may be interested in pursuing this. If we get something going I will be sure and contact you. To further update my situation, the collection agency that Citysearch turned my account over to was extremely nice once I explained the situation to them, and immediately closed the collection account and apologized. The very next day, Citysearch AGAIN charged my credit card for $107, once again committing fraud as those charges were completely unauthorized. I called my credit card company, and they said that I could dispute the charges again but there would be nothing that they could do to keep Citysearch from charging my card again, so they recommended that I cancel my credit card and they would give me a new card with a new number. So I had to go to all of my different accounts that were automatically billed to that credit card and change the billing to a new credit card, all because Citysearch could not be trusted to stop billing my previous credit card. It is absolutely ridiculous and incredible that a supposedly legitimate company like Citysearch would attempt to conduct business in this manner.

]]> Comment on Citysearch Click Fraud Warning by mark http://china.blog.beijingdiscoverytours.com/2007/12/04/citysearch-click-fraud-warning/#comment-284 mark Sat, 17 May 2008 09:25:29 +0000 http://china.blog.beijingdiscoverytours.com/2007/12/04/citysearch-click-fraud-warning/#comment-284 Hi, I was just scammed by citysearch. So let's band together to bring them down. What's the next step? Mark Hi,
I was just scammed by citysearch.
So let’s band together to bring them down.
What’s the next step?

Mark

]]> Comment on Citysearch Click Fraud Warning by admin http://china.blog.beijingdiscoverytours.com/2007/12/04/citysearch-click-fraud-warning/#comment-38 admin Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:14:45 +0000 http://china.blog.beijingdiscoverytours.com/2007/12/04/citysearch-click-fraud-warning/#comment-38 So nice to hear from other people that have been scammed by Citysearch so that I know I am not just missing something here. And to update the situation, not only did Citysearch never respond to my complaints, they turned my account over to a collection agency and are trying to charge me an additional $25 collection fee! I had pretty much decided to just forget about them, since my credit card company had decided the dispute in my favor, but now that Citysearch has turned my business over to a collection agency, there may be damages to collect....I have written back to the collection agency and explained the situation, but if Citysearch continues to try to collect on this fraudulent debt then I will have no choice but to file a lawsuit against them, and it is just as easy to file a lawsuit with multiple plaintiffs as with only one. I would love to hear from more people who have been defrauded by Citysearch or any of the IAC companies like Ask.com, etc. So nice to hear from other people that have been scammed by Citysearch so that I know I am not just missing something here. And to update the situation, not only did Citysearch never respond to my complaints, they turned my account over to a collection agency and are trying to charge me an additional $25 collection fee! I had pretty much decided to just forget about them, since my credit card company had decided the dispute in my favor, but now that Citysearch has turned my business over to a collection agency, there may be damages to collect….I have written back to the collection agency and explained the situation, but if Citysearch continues to try to collect on this fraudulent debt then I will have no choice but to file a lawsuit against them, and it is just as easy to file a lawsuit with multiple plaintiffs as with only one. I would love to hear from more people who have been defrauded by Citysearch or any of the IAC companies like Ask.com, etc.

]]> Comment on Citysearch Click Fraud Warning by Becky Crabb http://china.blog.beijingdiscoverytours.com/2007/12/04/citysearch-click-fraud-warning/#comment-37 Becky Crabb Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:48:34 +0000 http://china.blog.beijingdiscoverytours.com/2007/12/04/citysearch-click-fraud-warning/#comment-37 Hello, to all of my new taken atvantage of buddies!I am so mad and I have a really good story against City Search! Its late and I dont really feel like getting in detail tonight.F.Y.I my moyher is an attorney and a mean one here in Dallas Texas. She dosent really pay much attention to my complaints but with all of us pulling together I know we have a case against City Search and I am sure there are many more. Send me an email or a call 214-552-1408 Hello,

to all of my new taken atvantage of buddies!I am so mad and I have a really good story against City Search! Its late and I dont really feel like getting in detail tonight.F.Y.I my moyher is an attorney and a mean one here in Dallas Texas. She dosent really pay much attention to my complaints but with all of us pulling together I know we have a case against City Search and I am sure there are many more. Send me an email or a call 214-552-1408

]]> Comment on Citysearch Click Fraud Warning by James Reid http://china.blog.beijingdiscoverytours.com/2007/12/04/citysearch-click-fraud-warning/#comment-20 James Reid Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:58:07 +0000 http://china.blog.beijingdiscoverytours.com/2007/12/04/citysearch-click-fraud-warning/#comment-20 Hello, I just read your post and I am very interested in taking legal action against Citysearch. We started out with Citysearch in 2001 (paying $1 per click) and have had quite a few problems with them, including sales rep indescrepancies and unfair sales practices. When I told the sales rep at one of our initial meetings about our concern about not climbing up in the ranks and not receiving inquiries, he said not to worry because he, and others, would keep track of the clicks; and if the clicks were low, he and others would help out by clicking on our listing to increase the number of clicks we received and, thus, increase our ranking. I didn't like this approach and voiced my concern via emails and telephone calls. I have copies (somewhere in my older email database backups) of letters I have sent them regarding fraudulent practices and unfair pricing. Shortly afterwards, our initial sales rep was either let go or transferred. One of my other complaints, at the time, was I wasn't getting any tracking logs that I was told I could get. I told them that the amount of clicks I was charged for and the traffic reports I was (and still am) receiving from wundercounter.com didn't add up. I never did receive any reports or logs from Citysearch. I also told them I was not happy with the $1 dollar per click rate, especially because I had heard that others were paying below that rate. As a result from discussions with sales reps and regional execs, our rate was decreased to 35 cents per click about 4 years ago. Recently, our rates were raised to $1 per click. Again, I expressed that the traffic reports I was getting didn't come close to matching with their figures; and that if they insisted on raising my rates, I would have to decrease my budget ceiling. During that time, I did some research and discovered that Citysearch places customer listings in other cities way outside of their area to get more clicks. I did a search on our site name, moonshadowmassage.com, and discovered we were being listed in many other Citysearch directory cities, including San Francisco and Chicago. Since then, I have reduced my budget and have asked to be advertised locally, only. I have also asked for tracking logs, and have not been given them. Please let me know if you decide to go through with this. Thank you. James C. Reid Hello,

I just read your post and I am very interested in taking legal action against Citysearch. We started out with Citysearch in 2001 (paying $1 per click) and have had quite a few problems with them, including sales rep indescrepancies and unfair sales practices. When I told the sales rep at one of our initial meetings about our concern about not climbing up in the ranks and not receiving inquiries, he said not to worry because he, and others, would keep track of the clicks; and if the clicks were low, he and others would help out by clicking on our listing to increase the number of clicks we received and, thus, increase our ranking. I didn’t like this approach and voiced my concern via emails and telephone calls. I have copies (somewhere in my older email database backups) of letters I have sent them regarding fraudulent practices and unfair pricing. Shortly afterwards, our initial sales rep was either let go or transferred.

One of my other complaints, at the time, was I wasn’t getting any tracking logs that I was told I could get. I told them that the amount of clicks I was charged for and the traffic reports I was (and still am) receiving from wundercounter.com didn’t add up. I never did receive any reports or logs from Citysearch.

I also told them I was not happy with the $1 dollar per click rate, especially because I had heard that others were paying below that rate. As a result from discussions with sales reps and regional execs, our rate was decreased to 35 cents per click about 4 years ago.

Recently, our rates were raised to $1 per click. Again, I expressed that the traffic reports I was getting didn’t come close to matching with their figures; and that if they insisted on raising my rates, I would have to decrease my budget ceiling. During that time, I did some research and discovered that Citysearch places customer listings in other cities way outside of their area to get more clicks. I did a search on our site name, moonshadowmassage.com, and discovered we were being listed in many other Citysearch directory cities, including San Francisco and Chicago. Since then, I have reduced my budget and have asked to be advertised locally, only. I have also asked for tracking logs, and have not been given them.

Please let me know if you decide to go through with this. Thank you.

James C. Reid

]]>