Adficient.com / Chris Hickman

Hello,
My name is Mike, and I'm from Las Vegas. I'm here to provide an unbiased review of Adficient.com, which is based upon two recent documented experiences with this company.
Based on my experience, Adficient is cleverly running a deceptive scam operation, and the owner (Chris Hickman) is quite the ruthless conniver you'd come to expect out of any modern day Internet scammer. After being reeled in by the Owner, Chris Hickman, his company cleared myself and my affiliate of almost $14k, filed a frivolous lawsuit... and we'll get into that in more detail later.

The journey into this scam began with one of my affiliates, whom I usually have contact with before I launch a new product. He was new to Adwords and didn't have a good grasp on it -- he's mainly an SEO guy. He created some ads and could never get them approved and couldn't understand why. He searched the web on the topic and immediately found Adficient through a Google paid search result. Adficient came up as #1 on the paid search roster, which means they are willing to pay the most amount of money for one's click. This could mean one of two things: 1) Either you're very successful in your niche or 2)You're just a big scammer looking to cash in on something.

Before my product launch, my affiliate referred me to Adficient because he was under the impression that Adficient knew insiders at Google. So I hired the company based on this assumption and they charged me U.S. $3500 to restore my banned Adwords account or a 100% money back guarantee (per our signed contract).
I normally wouldn't have been so patient as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, but I too was told that Adficient had internal contacts and that my patience was appreciated. I would receive a phone call/E-mail from Chris Hickman once or twice per week, but he always provided the same exact excuse each time. He plays pure mind games based on knowing the importance of advertising on Google.

"We're still waiting to hear back from Google, please note that we cannot control their response time" says Hickman, or "Google is off today", etc.

Once I realized this was a total scam, I contacted my affiliate to advise him the company was as such, and taking us for a pony ride. Simple evidence proves this company as one to be, that preys upon the naive, in order to make a fast buck. Do you know why my affiliate initially believed Adficient when they told him about having special contacts at Google? Here's why:

My affiliate was using a keyword in his ad that was never going to be approved (this is why he contacted Adficient in the first place).

This is Adficient's initial 6 step process with my affiliate.

1) Affiliate contacts Adficient
2)Adficient assesses Affiliate's knowledge and intelligence of the topic.
3)Adficient realizes Affiliate is not educated on topic, and concocts a scam.
4) Adficient then tests scam, e.g., gets ad approved in a test account by manipulating ad text that by-passes Adwords filter checks.
5)Adficient has success with test scam, then proceeds to inform Affiliate they know insiders at Google to get Ad approved, but it will come at a cost.
6)Adficient then charges Affiliate $1,800 to "get the ad approved" by Adwords specialists.
In the coming weeks, my affiliate's Adwords account was suspended for "Text Manipulation".
Before we figured all this out, but after the account was suspended, my affiliate signed a contract with them to restore and keep his account unslapped and running smoothly. If he had not signed a 6 month contract, Adficient's one-time fee was going to be between $10K - $25K per slap. What was this six month contract for? So Adficient could use my affiliate's Adwords account as a playground to maximize spending! You see, the montly mamagment fee was 10% of account spenditure. Although Adficient did cap their 10% of spend at a minimum of $4500 and a maximum of $5,500, it came back to haunt us later.

So, my affiliate's Google Adwords account was activated and then it got suspended after a few days and they still charged him the minimum fee per month regardless of the account's status, e.g. suspended = they still get paid minimum $4,500 to tell you "Still waiting to hear back from Google". Really, $4,500 a month to call Google twice a week? What a cunning scheme to drag out time on the contract.

My affiliate became so enraged by the many thousands of dollars that he wasted trying to make his account compliant for months and months, that he terminated his contract with Adficient that very day, and refused to pay any remaining sums due under his contract. At that time, Adficient's demeanor became unprofessional and hostile towards us. They made false claims against our companies, and even blackmailed us. When it became clear that Adficient would not be getting paid for "services not rendered", Adficient immediately filed suit against both our companies.
In a petition filed in court, Adficient made several grossly unfounded and unenforceable claims against us, and even alleged that a "merchant-to-affiliate" relationship be deemed as a true "business partnership" by the courts through estoppel, and that my independent company be held liable for sums owed under the third party contract they had with my affiliate!
End result? Their meager attempts at manipulating the cause to extract funds from my company for which they did not deserve to acquire, or had even worked for, proved quite unfruitful for them. Adficient's case was dismissed in a flash.

To this day, my own Google Adwords account is still suspended. I paid Adficient a one-time fee of $3500 to have it unslapped or my money back, (which they love to brag about, by the way). But you guessed it, there is no money back guarantee. I have lost my $3500 to the Adficient scam.

I published this complaint because I would like to raise awareness about what Adficient is doing, and to save potential future client(s) from going through the agony of being "screwed-and-sued" by this digital carpetbagger. Should people exercise their due diligence and discover this well-documented experience of two innocent third party's beforehand, they'll surely steer clear of the Adficient Scam being run by Chris Hickman of Bridgeton, MO.