Complaints

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:09/07/2023

  Type:Product Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  I'm a small business owner that hired Brandstar digital to manage my marketing on 6/25/23. I had high hopes as I met the owner, **** in person and really trusted his marketing acumen. After a couple of zoom meetings with the team and paying a significant setup fee ($1800), after 6 weeks of "setup" I quickly learned they spent no time working on my account; they spelled the name of my company wrong, spelled the name of my celebrity endorser wrong in the actual ad copy, they used unappealing images from my assets that were old, untouched and not optimized. Then they cropped out the product I sell out of one of the images. Every image they chose out of MY assets were subpar. After my concerns I reached out to the owner of the company, but he was on vacation and said would get back to me the following week. He did not. I had little communication other than damage control from their account manager assuring me the issues will be fixed. It became clear that no work/effort was done on my account and the people creating the ads were either incompetent or had no experience. More egregious mistakes were made, I deduced the company was not fulfilling their agreed upon services and stopped all ads and sent an email to go our separate ways on 8/8. I bullet pointed mistake after mistake. They offered me a free month of ads management, I declined and requested my setup fee payment back, they did not respond and finally a week later I had to send a nasty email letting them know that if they do not refund my money that I would have to take them to small claims court. I then finally heard back from **** saying sorry, I forgot to press send on my response to your last email. Anyway he would not refund my money and said all my communications will now be handled with legal Its been a nightmare and I hate to spend more wasted time on spreading the word about this unethical and inept company, but I do feel compelled to protect other companies from being scammed they way I was.

  Business Response

  Date: 10/10/2023

  
  Sorry for the delayed reply. 
  
  

  While we fully disagree with ********'s comments, and he has not honored his executed agreement by not paying his open invoice nor giving 30 days notice, the client has already received a refund of $1,800 on his credit card.

  
  

  The $1,800 was merely the setup fee, and by nature of the ****** and ******** *********************** being set up and successfully launched that service was rendered.

  
  

  Attached is a copy of our executed agreement as well as proof that we onboarded the client, did the setup work, were actively managing ***********************, and having regular communication with the client via ********* Teams video conference and via email. 
  
  Upon request, we can provide additional documentation to further demonstrate that we provided the services that we were engaged to provide and therefore *********** the associated fees. 
  
  

  Have a good evening!

  
  

  Thanks,
  

  
  
  

  *****************

  Customer Answer

  Date: 10/17/2023

  More Information...

  There is a lot to respond to, so first I will respond to ***** message. 
  
  I have absolute proof that I did give my ********************************************************************************** to cancel. This is a black and white email that you can see **** is being dishonest right off the bat.
  
  Second, he never refunded $**** on my credit card, I had to file a dispute with my credit card company and offer proof to them just like I will offer to you that they defrauded me. There is a PDF file from Chase showing this and that they have awarded me the refund after their investigation.
  
  As far as the executed agreement, I don't dispute that I signed the executed agreement, my dispute is, they did not fulfill their obligations of services in the agreement. Furthermore, you will see proof that in their agreement, the terms and conditions are from a completely different company of the contract I signed. 
  
  All of their attachments do not prove anything other than I agreed to hire them for a service. I am going to prove to you that from the beginning over and over they were not fulfilling their services agreed-upon in the contract and I reached out over and over with no explanation or very delayed response trying to make it right.
  
  Also, pertaining to their attachments, the -Grappz meeting agenda doc. does not open 
  As well as the **************** ads attachment - it does not open. 
  As far as the August 2 email attachment. This is an email from his employee, not from me. So this has no bearing.
  
  All his other attachments, I will concede to that I did sign their contract, again with terms and conditions from another company. They took almost 2 months to setup which I paid ****. But after two months when they presented me with the work, I was appalled and dumbfounded with what they presented. It was clear to me they did not do any work, or uphold their agreement, from the beginning, I was communicating with **** that he has not obligating his terms of services in the said contract. Only to get a response that he was out of the the country.
  
  My attachments will show that I signed the agreement in June and they did not start until August 1. It will also show that on August 2. I was extremely unhappy with what they were doing. You can see an email after email that the egregious errors were unacceptable. Please read the emails in the attachments so you can see how egregious the errors were and how they were not obligating their contract.  Just to name a few, they where spelling my companys name wrong in the ads, spelling my celebrity endorsers name, wrong in the ads, cropping out my product from the imagery that they used from my photos in a ****** Drive. They did not make one piece of original content, they only used old images that they had access to from my ****** Drive. They wasted $500 of ****** ads because they did not implement a coupon code I had, that they agreed to use.
  
  Just because they claim to have done set up work, I asked them over and over again what exactly they did and to give me a time sheet of the work that was done/time spent on set up. No response. It is very clear they did no work or preparation, just because you could copy and paste, a picture is not acceptable to say you did work. It also took two months to do this. 
  
  They wasted a week of my adspend even after I told them i was not happy. All the while, ****, the owner was non responsive. The moment, I realized that they did not do any work or abide by the agreed-upon terms. I emailed over and over as you can see listing the issues that were unacceptable. Please notice the dates of the emails. Please read through each email to see my concern from the very beginning. It is very clear they took my set up fee left town, copy and pasted some pictures. That is unacceptable, fraudulent and unethical. They tried so hard to give explanation after explanation, they offered to waive the fees, I declined and requested a refund of my initial $****.00, or to send me a work sheet/time sheet of the work set up that was done. That was never sent, they declined to refund my money. And this is why I have to warn other companies.
  
  In addition to putting in a dispute with my credit card company, I have reviewed this company and let bystanders know of their unethical/fraudulent ways in every platform I could find.
  
  I have never done this before, but I do feel it is my duty. I have used many digital marketing companies since I started my small business in 2017. I have been unhappy with most, but never have I asked for a refund of any kind or fired them before they even got started nor left a bad review. This is my first time.
  
  But if the purpose of this platform is to protect people/businesses from unethical and fraudulent companies, then I feel compelled to make this complaint. I have wasted so much time and money with them, but I am willing to commit this time to protect others. Anyway, please read through all my attachments and just look at the emails, and the proof of lies in Seths message. Please let me know if you need any other information, thank you again.

   

  PS* I am just now learning that I can only attach 5 docs. I have more to upload if possible?

  Customer Answer

  Date: 10/17/2023

  Here are the other attachments.

   

  Thanks

   

  JK

  Customer Answer

  Date: 10/18/2023

   
  Complaint: 20571716
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

   

  There is a lot to respond to, so first I will respond to ***** message. 
  
  I have absolute proof that I did give my ********************************************************************************** to cancel. This is a black and white email that you can see **** is being dishonest right off the bat.
  
  Second, he never refunded $**** on my credit card, I had to file a dispute with my credit card company and offer proof to them just like I will offer to you that they defrauded me. There is a PDF file from Chase showing this and that they have awarded me the refund after their investigation.
  
  As far as the executed agreement, I don't dispute that I signed the executed agreement, my dispute is, they did not fulfill their obligations of services in the agreement. Furthermore, you will see proof that in their agreement, the terms and conditions are from a completely different company of the contract I signed. 
  
  All of their attachments do not prove anything other than I agreed to hire them for a service. I am going to prove to you that from the beginning over and over they were not fulfilling their services agreed-upon in the contract and I reached out over and over with no explanation or very delayed response trying to make it right.
  
  Also, pertaining to their attachments, the -Grappz meeting agenda doc. does not open 
  As well as the **************** ads attachment - it does not open. 
  As far as the August 2 email attachment. This is an email from his employee, not from me. So this has no bearing.
  
  All his other attachments, I will concede to that I did sign their contract, again with terms and conditions from another company. They took almost 2 months to setup which I paid ****. But after two months when they presented me with the work, I was appalled and dumbfounded with what they presented. It was clear to me they did not do any work, or uphold their agreement, from the beginning, I was communicating with **** that he has not obligating his terms of services in the said contract. Only to get a response that he was out of the the country.
  
  My attachments will show that I signed the agreement in June and they did not start until August 1. It will also show that on August 2. I was extremely unhappy with what they were doing. You can see an email after email that the egregious errors were unacceptable. Please read the emails in the attachments so you can see how egregious the errors were and how they were not obligating their contract.  Just to name a few, they where spelling my companys name wrong in the ads, spelling my celebrity endorsers name, wrong in the ads, cropping out my product from the imagery that they used from my photos in a ****** Drive. They did not make one piece of original content, they only used old images that they had access to from my ****** Drive. They wasted $500 of ****** ads because they did not implement a coupon code I had, that they agreed to use.
  
  Just because they claim to have done set up work, I asked them over and over again what exactly they did and to give me a time sheet of the work that was done/time spent on set up. No response. It is very clear they did no work or preparation, just because you could copy and paste, a picture is not acceptable to say you did work. It also took two months to do this. 
  
  They wasted a week of my adspend even after I told them i was not happy. All the while, ****, the owner was non responsive. The moment, I realized that they did not do any work or abide by the agreed-upon terms. I emailed over and over as you can see listing the issues that were unacceptable. Please notice the dates of the emails. Please read through each email to see my concern from the very beginning. It is very clear they took my set up fee left town, copy and pasted some pictures. That is unacceptable, fraudulent and unethical. They tried so hard to give explanation after explanation, they offered to waive the fees, I declined and requested a refund of my initial $****.00, or to send me a work sheet/time sheet of the work set up that was done. That was never sent, they declined to refund my money. And this is why I have to warn other companies.
  
  In addition to putting in a dispute with my credit card company, I have reviewed this company and let bystanders know of their unethical/fraudulent ways in every platform I could find.
  
  I have never done this before, but I do feel it is my duty. I have used many digital marketing companies since I started my small business in 2017. I have been unhappy with most, but never have I asked for a refund of any kind or fired them before they even got started nor left a bad review. This is my first time.
  
  But if the purpose of this platform is to protect people/businesses from unethical and fraudulent companies, then I feel compelled to make this complaint. I have wasted so much time and money with them, but I am willing to commit this time to protect others. Anyway, please read through all my attachments and just look at the emails, and the proof of lies in Seths message. Please let me know if you need any other information, thank you again.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  *********************************