ComplaintsforSapper Consulting

• Initial Complaint

  05/30/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  In November 2022, I engaged with Sapper Consulting about email lead generation and subsequently signed a $3,605/month contract.Since then, they have provided a poor level of service, have not been transparent about their targeting, nor have they responded to my repeated requests to retarget. As a result, I received 0 qualified leads. It appears that they never had the reach to target my account and acted in bad faith. Thus, I would like a full refund.Some background:My business is a consultancy and we have a distinct target audience. We have been in business for 15 years with a successful stream of clients. I was interested in using Sapper to supplement our existing sales efforts. During this time, I had numerous discussions with them, asking them their success rate with similar companies. Sapper assured me that I should be getting 2-4 leads PER month by the third or fourth month.I signed a contract on 11/21/22 (with a monthly fee of $3,605). During the month of December 2022, I worked with them on the text of the emails and lead targeting.Unfortunately, their copywriters provided multiple rounds of emails that included typos, grammatical errors, and a general lack of understanding of my target business. From January 2023 - May 2023, despite targeting companies with revenue 25M+, I only had two meetings (with companies with revenue <$1M). The other three meetings set up were no shows.I repeatedly asked to retarget and was told they would do phone calls, but got no visibility into these actions.In May 2023, I finally got a sample of email addresses, and the target was inaccurate. When my requests were finally escalated to management (Director), they admitted that my audience was too small. Then, despite assurances they would retarget and connect with management about my refund requests, they "ran the clock" and did not escalate.Thus, I would like a full refund, as their targeting was incorrect, and they acted in bad faith.

  Business response

  06/01/2023

  After confirming the desired targeting (including startups) during our sales and implementations, our team launched a campaign but then had to readjust the targeting due to your feedback which delayed our results. We were happy to make those changes, as well as the additional changes to remove contacts from the software industry, but ultimately those changes caused a delay in our typical results. Our team, including Directors and VPs, scheduled calls to confirm changes had been made and reset expectations but we weren't able to connect with you in a timely manner. We will continue to work with you to try to find a resolution, but feel we have held up our end of the agreement.

  Customer response

  06/02/2023

  Complaint: 20121375
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  As per my earlier detailed emails (which have been shared with the BBB and Sapper Consulting) and the attached, I had concerns about the targeting of my account in December 2022, and I have been repeatedly asking for retargeting on my account through monthly meetings and follow up emails with my account rep since February 2022.   No retargeting action was made on my account from February - May 2022, until my contract ended on May 28, 2022.   

  I noted that if no changes were made on my account by May 24, I would be filing with the BBB.  The only meeting I cancelled with a VP was due to illness (shingles) on May 25th, 2022.  

  Here are some more specifics:

  
  1.  I had monthly meetings in February, March, and April 2022 with my Sapper rep, and during those meetings and in email communications subsequently afterwards, I continually requested that my targeting be checked, as it seemed inaccurate, and I specifically reiterated my target audience.

  
  2. On April 21, 2022 I finally got a sample of 10 email addresses from the campaign, and that day, I immediately let my Sapper rep know that the targeting was off via email. 

  
  3. On April 21, 2022 at 5:22 PM, I requested a meeting with my account's Director.   That was set up by Sapper on May 4, 2022.
  

  4. On May 4, 2022, I met with my rep and her Director, and they assured me that they would retarget.  However, they also alluded to the fact that my target might be too small.
  

  An email on May 9, 2022 from my rep ******************** I think that we are finding out your sweetest spot is a bit too small to work our traditional process on, so we are left adding industries and targets that are to the left and right of your sweet spot to make the target large enough to hit."
  

  5. Between May 5 and May 19, 2022 I sent multiple emails asking to meet with management and I continually heard "we are working on it."   I never received communication that I would be meeting with management.

  6.  On May 25, 2022, three days before my contract was about to end, I cancelled my monthly meeting with my rep due to illness (shingles).   After receiving my meeting cancellation, she responded via email, "Are you going to meet with me and my VP today?" and I explained that I could not due to illness.   That meeting was not rescheduled before my contract ended on May 28, 2022.

  
  Sincerely,
  
  *********************

  Business response

  06/20/2023

  *****, 

  I have been in contact with our EVP of Partner Success, ****, who you have had multiple conversations with since you submitted your complaint. Unfortunately, it looks like we aren't aligned on what we consider a solution to this issue and won't be giving you the full refund requested. We wish you best of luck in your future endeavors. 

  Customer response

  09/19/2023

  ST 9/19/2023: called consumer and no answer, no voicemail was left due to the system not accepting voicemails. -- an email was sent.

  ST 9/27/2023: an email was sent to the consumer (final attempt)

  ST 10/10/2023: consumer replied explaining situation but did not confirm desired resolution. -- follow up email was sent today to confirm desired resolution.

  ST 10/17/2023: an email was sent to follow up previous email.

  10/24/2023: Thanks for the follow up.  At this point, I would close out the case.  I have not heard from a collections agency and I would like to let sleeping dogs lie. I appreciate all of the assistance and follow **. In closing, I would not recommend Sapper to any professionals. 

   

  
  

   

• Initial Complaint

  02/08/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Order Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  We hired Sapper in October and agreed to pay $2400 / mos for 4 QUALITY leads per month. They indicated the first month might be slow as they get the initial email campaigns moving. We were told that after 6 mos if they did not produce we would get 6 mos free. I was very skeptical and challenged two different sales people and our project manager telling them my worst nightmare would be zero leads and asked them if they really believed they could produce what they said they could and they all emphatically said yes. After 4 months they have produced zero quality leads. NONE. They have attempted to change the story and expect us to buy into the new storyline at our cost. This includes a new and completely different promise around the leads and when they will deliver them. Then expect us to believe and trust them after 4 months of nothing. We are not paying for the new storyline. We paid for the original story line which was a lie to get us to sign. They changed the contract after we signed to a 12 mos rather than 6 mos contract. They did not send us a copy of the contract at the moment we signed it. We had to request it. All of the materials they used to sell us are expired links so I cant refer to literature where they made us the promises. Bottom line we paid $8400 which is $700/ lead which is a premium. Avg lead gen is $100 - $200 per lead unless its high touch travel. For this premium you do not have access to the strategy team they claim is in the background working on your behalf. They reassure you based on their "experience" not data or statistics They just want you to keep paying and trusting them. They offered to discount our services $400 which is not satisfactory. Then they offered 2 mos free if we paid Jan. in 4 months they produced nothing. They are never going to produce for our business. I want the money back so I can spend it getting the leads I was promised and never received.

  Business response

  02/09/2023

  During our three months of service, we have worked hard to manage a campaign that will meet the yearly guarantee of 42 meetings. After our implementation period, where we reviewed the contract and qualifiers, our team has continued to adjust the targeting as needed in order to get you in front of the right decision makers in your target audience. At this time, your account has been suspended due to non-payment, but we have offered a monthly discount and stood by our guarantee to work for free if the guaranteed number of contractually qualified appointments is not set by the end of the first year of service. During this non-payment period, we even offered to begin working for free in order to show our commitment to this program's success but have received no response. We hope to be able to meet and agree on a payment and service plan going forward that ensures success for both parties.

  Customer response

  02/09/2023

  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

   

  - what you are reading is the "new" story that they are laying out to us as if we should be so grateful. Nothing in that message coincides with what the sales team told us. We needed quality leads fast. They promised 4 per month and while month one might be slow definitely in month two. Four months in and NO quality leads. At this point, any sane person would say, you are not going to be able to do this. Why should we be expected to continue to fund a fictional future promise THAT has absolution no repercussions on their end. There are no penalties if they don't make 42 leads in the first year. The repercussions is they will just keep working.

  1. What we were told is not what we got. Had they given us the information in their response in the sales process we would have never hired them.

  2. They did not have our filters set up correctly or in a way that reflected they knew anything about our business - there is no credibility

  3. They changed the contract after we signed it or slipped the change in without us noticing. It was never 12 mos with 6 mos free. It was always 6 mos with 6 mos free if they didnt make their numbers. So they turned a 6 month deal into a 12 month deal and never told us.

  4. The leads they have sent were not anywhere near a quality lead for our business. 

  5. We raised our concern and all of the solutions in their response to you came at the 11th hours. My request was simple. We paid for 3 months and got nothing, Now you do the next 3 months free of charge and show us if you can actually produce leads for us. If you do, great, we can keep at it. If you don't we part and you admit your system does not work on our business and you refund us for over promising and never delivering.

  6. We are a small business. $8k to us is a big deal. They want us to continue to finance their non-performance and trust the very same people that have lied all along to us that 42 leads will magically appear before the end of the year. I don't want to get involved in that because then who knows what kind of leads they will send us in terms of quality and it will become a shit show.

   

  Look, your system does not work for our business and you should be honest with sectors that have a more complicated sales process that your one size fits all approach doesnt work and stick to the sectors where it works. I absolutely feel that they will just syphon money from us for a year ill put my energy into exploring their crappy leads which has been my experience thus far when we should all just step back and say, this method actually doesn't serve your business well.  Show me one other branding agency they work for that charges $30k - $250k for projects who are happy Sapper Clients. I asked they never produced this. 

   

  I just want my money back because we need it very badly to go find leads through methods that make sense for us. I believe Sapper works for certain types of businesses. Sapper has not worked for us - 4 months in zero quality leads.  It's a shame what they did to us.  They literally vocalize promises over and over and over in the sales process that they actually do not stand by. Are they lying? I have not seen the evidence to support their 4 leads per month claim. They are certainly not telling the truth and hoping they can tell the truth AFTER you sign and you wont get upset.

  
  
  
  Sincerely,
  
  **** *****

  Business response

  02/22/2023

  I have met with both your account management team and the sales team who you originally worked with, including our VP of Sales. While I was not directly involved with any of these conversations, I am confident that my team wouldn’t have had you sign on if you didn’t understand our product and our guarantee and would never manipulate a legal contract. As with any marketing efforts, campaigns will need to be adjusted as we learn more about your audience, and we wish to continue to work together to find messaging and targeting that will help get you in front of all 42 decision makers. Our continuing to work for free does put a strain on us as a business, but we offer that because we are confident in our process and product. We work with businesses of all sizes and understand that any investment in us means trusting us with their reputation and business potential, and we work hard to earn that. As we’ve stated, we won’t be able to return any funds but we wish to continue to work together to create appropriate messaging so we can target quality leads that will help your business.

   

   

  Best,
  ****

  Customer response

  02/22/2023

  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

   

  The team I worked with absolutely promised me over and over what I have stated and my business partner could back me up including the 6 months, 6 months free because we were calculating our investment.You can say whatever you want about your team but I am telling you what we experienced. You did not do what you said you were going to do. You did not even take the onboarding information and set our filters anywhere close to our business needs, you did not have us review those filters until December when we requested it. 

  You all will say anything and make up any story you want to justify your lies and non-performance. We are a customer experience design agency. We are going to use our Sapper experience in every presentation and webinar we give to tell all the companies in the audience what NOT to do. We know a bad experience when we see it and experience it and this was a disaster. We will do case studies and publish it on our social medial and we will not rest until we warn agencies and companies to not trust Sapper. 

  Four months, no performance. Not the story you sold us on. Period. We want our money back.

  
  
  Sincerely,
  
  **** *****

• Initial Complaint

  10/19/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Sales and Advertising Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Company continues to send many emails. I have unsubscribed and even blocked their email domain. They change their domain frequently in order to get around IT solutions. The company is a scam and should not be able to get bbb accreditation. They continue to send new and disruptive emails to me and my organization.

  Business response

  10/20/2022

  ******
  Thank you for bringing this to our attention. While we set up multiple domains in order to reach more contacts, we understand that unsubscription requests should transfer over. We have added you to our internal do not contact list so you should receive no further contact from us.
  Best,
  **** ****** Director of Customer Marketing

  Customer response

  10/20/2022

  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  The solution does not address the issue that many employees at my company will continue to receive spam from your company and there is no way to stop it. I am currently blocking the following domains;

  *@sapperconsulting.com
  *@sapperconsulting.online
  *@sapperconsulting.work
  *@sapperleadgen.co
  *@sapperleads.com
  *@sapperlogistics.com
  *@sappermarketing.net
  *@sappermktg.com
  

  The similarities between domains is clearly intended to confuse and circumvent reasonable efforts to stop spam traffic and do are not made to reach a broader marketing audience.

  Please stop sending email to the ************************* domain or supply a complete list of sapper domains so that I can block the traffic altogether. This traffic has not been requested by ************************* and we have not requested any information from your company.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  ******** *********

  Business response

  10/25/2022

  ******
  It looks like our last communication was in March of 2021 and that you only had one team member who replied to unsubscribe back in 2020, which we did, but we have now added your entire domain to our do not contact list so this should alleviate any further communication from any of the domains you mentioned (or any other that exist).

• Initial Complaint

  04/18/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  This company is harrassing me and will not stop sending me messages. I have asked them SEVERAL times to unsubscribe me and take me off their contacts list, but they continue sending me messages nearly every day.

  Business response

  05/10/2022

  Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Sapper is in compliance with all of the regulations of the CAN-SPAM Act and provides an unsubscribe option in all of our marketing emails and communication, and we apologize if you have continued to receive any emails from our team. I have added the email from your message to our do not contact list and will ensure that you will not be added to any future campaigns.
  Please reach out by phone or email to provide the email address that has been receiving our marketing communication if it is different than the email address associated with this complaint. We can be reached at ************************** or by phone at ***** *********

• Initial Complaint

  01/08/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Sales and Advertising Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  This company continues to send unsolicited emails after repeated attempts to "unsubscribe". The individual sending the emails is "***** ******". I have unsubscribed at least four times, and nicely explained that his repeated emails waste my time. I want these emails to stop.

  Business response

  02/07/2022

  Hello *******,
  
  Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Sapper is in compliance with all of the regulations of the CAN-SPAM Act and provides an unsubscribe option in all of our marketing emails and communication, and we apologize if you have continued to receive any emails from our team.  
  
  It is our understanding that you are not a current client of ours. Please confirm this. I have added the email from your message to our do not contact list and will ensure that you will not be added to any future campaigns. We would like to ensure you are completely removed from our database and will not receive any additional marketing emails from our organization. Please reach out by phone or email to provide the email address that has been receiving our marketing communication if it is different than the email address associated with this complaint. We want to ensure all of your emails are added to our do not contact list. We can be reached at ************************** or by phone at ***** ********. 
  
  
  

  Customer response

  02/07/2022

  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:  I clicked the unsubscribe link on multiple unsolicited emails over a period of months.  The emails came from "*************************************".  I don't know if this is a real person, and I don't know anything about "the regulations of the CAN-SPAM Act".  I do know that clicking the "unsubscribe" link on Sapper's unsolicited emails is a waste of time.  Replying with "I am not interested" at least three times was also a waste of time.  It took a complaint to BBB, and I am just hoping that will not be a waste of time.  So I do hope that Sapper will stop bothering me, but their response to my complaint was totally false and misleading.  
  
  
  
  Sincerely,
  
  ******* *********

*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. ↩