Bill me later

In November of 2011 I was contacted by a sales rep named luiz tuazon representing citygridmedia. I was told that he could list my site through their company site to help get better coverage on the internet and to get more customes to call in to my studio. I was told that they were like Google "Pay-Per-Click" and that I would be charged as people used their search site to find my listing and click through to my site or call my studio (Using a number they could track). This, of course, was not to be the case.

As it turned out, they charged for consumers to just look at my listing. Interestingly the number of people who actually viewd my listing was always the max number that they could bill me for. After getting my second bill ($419.00) and receiving ZERO leads through their site I decided to call in. I got a lot of apoligies and was told if I was willing to just stick with them a little longer I might get better results, but they did not want to promise anything spacific. They also told me that someone actually called from their add but when I asked them to produce the record there was none.

I was told that hundreds (Over 700) of people viewed my listing but no one actually responded. I was told that I was only going to be billed for people who clicked through to my web-site or called the phone number they provided. After checking my Google Analytics I can see that we have 78% responce rate with our web-site, that means that roughly 8 out of 10 people call in our respond to our ads from our web-site. even though they claim that I had all those views (No way they can prove that) no one took action. It would appear that they can only produce a 0% ROI to their site listing.

For the small business that has to watch their marketing dollars this is a waste. I was conned into believing that I would be charged for results but in fact was charged for people just looking at a listing that I had no control over. For all I know their own staff view my listing. After contacting City Grid they defended their position by saying they got a lot of people to look, but that is not what I was lead to believe I was paying for.

This is a Rip off and I want to warn other small business owners not to fall for their missleading promises. You can list your business on a number of FREE listing sites and get a the same if not better responce than they could provide. When I did a general Google search for my services in my local area City Grid's listing did not appear on the 1st ten pages of my search (I stoped looking after ten). Well, so much for them giving me higher visability on the internet (another empty promise they made).