ComplaintsforThe Neat Company, Inc

• Initial Complaint

  03/27/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  My father passed away in May and I am receiving invoices for him from Neat Company. I have tried to call multiple times but I can’t get through. Hold times are extremely high, over 45 minutes. The last attempt was over an hour hold, I did get an answer but could not hear the rep, sounds like bad signal or he’s in a tunnel. Requesting refund of charges June 2022 to present since Dad died in May and credit/cancel all subscriptions and invoices.

  Business response

  03/31/2023

  Hey ********, 
  
  I am sorry to hear about your father passing and send my sincerest condolences. The invoice you sent us shows that the invoice is past due and that your card has not billed. It appears that we attempted to charge you 9 different times since 1/31/2023 when the payment was due but have not billed you successfully for this charge. The last payment made on this account was on 1/31/2022. 
  
  Please see our attached attempted charges and failed invoice. 
  
  Based on this information, there is no refund to process. We have canceled the account effective 3/30/2023 so there will be no more attempts to charge the card on file. Additionally you will no longer be able to login and access the data on the Neat Cloud account associated with this subscription. Over 1000 files are scheduled for deletion. 

  Customer response

  04/27/2023

  [A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response.  If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
  
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me. 
  Thanks to BBB for assisting to resolve this. The company has been charging my father for years for a service he was barely able to use due to software issues. He attempted to cancel repeatedly but was unable to reach customer service. I'm disappointed to find out, after he died, that he had continued to be charged fees for so many years.

  As noted to the company, Dad died in May of 2022. A company that respects their customers would refund the rest of 2022 that was charged.

  I will accept this resolution as the company has agreed to stop the repeated attempts to charge his credit card.
  
  Regards,
  
  ***************************

• Initial Complaint

  02/08/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  REQUESTING A FULL REFUND IN THE AMOUNT OF $54.44 FOR INVOICE #******. SUBSCRIPTION CANCELATION & REFUND REQUEST.

  Business response

  02/15/2023

  ******, 

  Per your request, your Neat account has been canceled and refund in the amount of $54.44 has been processed back to the card on file. Please allow 4-9 business days to see these funds in your account. 

  As a reminder, you will no longer have access to any files that you have stored in the Neat Cloud. Additionally, the data you are storing on the Neat Cloud will be wiped from our system after your account has been inactive for a period of time.

• Initial Complaint

  01/11/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Order Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  We purchased a desktop scanner system from The Neat Co. in July of 2014 shortly after we opened our small business. We entered a significant amount of information into their system and then found out they discontinued support of that system and the only way we could retrieve our information we had to purchase a new system. It wasn't practical to do that at the time and we requested a copy of our information. They said we could not have a copy unless we purchased their services. We complained to them at the time and they decided that they would hold our information hostage unless we purchased their services. Now they have alerted us that "since our original subscription has been inactive for over 5 years, its data will be permanently deleted on 2/4/2023, unless we renew our subscription at a ridiculous fee, or we can save our documents and files if we sign up for NeatVault for $20/year!!!" We need assurances that if we sign up for their NeatVault, that we will have complete access and be able to download that information. At what point do they have the right to keep our documents from us????

  Business response

  01/12/2023

  *****, 
  
  I'm very sorry for any confusion or misinformation you received. Neat is not holding your data hostage. While we did discontinue selling and manufacturing Neat scanners back in 2017, we have never prevented customers from downloading their data from the Neat Cloud if they wanted to.
  
  After reviewing your case history under your hotmail email address, I could not locate any case where we told you that you could not have access to your data. Our support team is trained to educate customers on how they can download their data out of Neat Cloud. It is against our policy to inform a customer that they cannot have access to their data on the Neat Cloud. If you have records that someone from Neat told you this, then please share that information so we can pull the agent responsible for telling you that immediately. 
  
  You mentioned that you added a significant amount of information into the system, but under the hotmail account, I only see that you are storing 32 items in the Neat Cloud. The email you recently received is for your Neat Cloud data. Not any data that you were storing locally on your computer. Neat cannot delete any data that you are storing on your local hard drive.  These 32 files have been sitting on your inactive Neat Cloud account since 2016. Since the account has been inactive for so long, we will not continue to store these items on our server for free. 
  
  You have the option to log in and download the data before it's deleted, or you could reactivate your account to use Neat again. 
  
  You have access to your Neat Cloud account until 2/4/2023. You can log into your Neat Cloud account via this link and download your data before then. You do not need to purchase anything to do this. ***************************

  If you need to reset your password, please follow these steps: *****************************************************************
  
  Once logged in, you can follow these steps on our Help Center that walks customers through downloading their items in bulk from the Neat Cloud: ******************************************************************
  If you have any trouble with this, we can also set up a courtesy call with a support rep who can help you download the 32 files from the Neat Cloud.

  Customer response

  01/21/2023

  [To assist us in bringing this matter to a close, you must give us a reason why you are rejecting the response. If no reason is received your complaint will be closed as Answered]
  
   Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:  First, I would like to challenge the fact that I wasn't told that I couldn't access our data.  After trying to retrieve the information and failing, and then finding out the equipment was no longer supported, I called (I have no proof, but have no reason to lie) and was told the only way to access our data would be to purchase a new subscription online. We didn't want an online account only, so I gave up. I was so upset that we had no access to the data, I archived my file with all of our account information and background information. Then we received multiple notices that we had until 2/4 to either delete or download our data, which led to this complaint!!!!

  Trying to put aside your accusations, I followed your instructions to item 5 and found there is no Preferences tab under Account Settings in the online access to the account.  So I went to the cabinet in our account, and found some entries, but the receipts are missing, and the documents are empty ... they were scanned in there ... the line item with an amount and date are basically useless. Which confirms my thoughts that the data had been held hostage, and in the current form is not acceptable.  We wouldn't have trusted your company with the information if we had known that this would happen ... it really seemed like a helpful tool, until it wasn't.  Thanks anyway. 
  
  Regards,
  
  *************************
  

  Business response

  02/15/2023

  Hey *****, 
  
  I am very sorry for any confusion. The email you received about data deletion is in regards to an old inactive Neat Cloud account that you opened back in 2016 during a free trial. During that time it looks like you uploaded about 30 files to the Neat Cloud. Those are the only files we are referring to in this email. We cannot delete anything on your local computer hard drive. When you opened this complaint, we pulled your account out of the queue for data deletion, so you would have time to download your files. 
  
  You mentioned that your documents were empty when you logged in. Since you had not logged into the Neat Cloud account since 2016, your data would have needed to be restored from our backup server when you initiated the login to the account. Restores can take up to 24 hours to complete, so it's possible you were viewing the data before the files finished restoring. 
  
  They are finished restoring now and if you try to log back in, you will see your files. However, we have also downloaded your files for you and have emailed them to you in a zipped file. You can download this file, right-click on it, and choose 'Extract All' to see all your files. 
  
  Your desired outcome was to get access to and the ability to download the documents we were referring to in our data deletion email. 
  
  You will be able to log in to the Neat Cloud account until 2/22/2023 to access and re-download those files if needed, otherwise, all the files that you stored in the Neat Cloud have been emailed to you. 

  Customer response

  02/21/2023

  
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and other than the statement that we were operating on a "free trial", I find that this resolution is satisfactory to me. 
  
  Regards,
  
  *************************
  

• Initial Complaint

  04/11/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  Neat Company raising my monthly charge with no notice to me - just billing my credit card. I notified them back in December that if I could not continue the $8.99 rate, I no longer wanted the service. They agreed to adjust my December, 2021 billing back to $8.99 and continue that rate for 12 months. Then they auto billed my credit card for the $11.99 rate in January, 2022, February 2022, and March 2022. They have advised that finally they discontinued my service; however, I have been asking them to do so since back in December!! They need to credit my account and keep their word!

  Business response

  04/21/2022

  *****, 
  
  I am so sorry about this and I am sorry about the frustration and inconvenience this issue has brought to you. We see you spoke with an agent in December 2021 who successfully processed a refund and grandfathering of your $8.99 price for 12 months. At that time, you had agreed to keep your account open as long as you were billed at the $8.99 price for 12 more months.  Unfortunately, in the new year, we moved to a new billing system and we had a few hiccups in moving to the new billing system resulting in your plan not being billed at the agreed-upon price. 
  
  We see you spoke with another agent in March who tried to correct this issue by offering to re-grandfather your plan, but you had decided you wanted to cancel your plan at that point. The agent assisted you with your cancellation, but never properly requested your refund or addressed your concerns and I am very sorry about that. We've reviewed that case and found that agent's behavior to be unacceptable. We have pulled that agent for a review. 
  
  At this point, your account is not active. It is canceled. I have processed a refund for your January, February, and March 2022 billing. The refund will take about 3-8 business days to complete. 
  
  It does look like you are storing a significant amount of data in the Neat Cloud, that you will no longer have access to as a result of canceling your account. If you are willing to give Neat another chance, we can reactivate your account at the $8.99 price for 12 months starting April 2022, this will allow you to continue to use Neat as normal. If you would prefer to discontinue using Neat altogether then we can arrange to give you temporary access to your data and a way to download all your items to your local hard drive as PDF files. Please note that once your account is inactive for over 180 days your data will be wiped from our Cloud. Please let us know if you need to collect any data or would consider giving Neat another chance. 

  Customer response

  04/28/2022

  [A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response.  If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
  
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me. I would like assistance in downloading files but I no longer am interested in dealing with NEAT for my reasons stated.  Thank you for your response.
  
  Regards,
  
  *********************
  

• Initial Complaint

  03/03/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  Provide me with my files so that I can store them and access them In an organized fashion For tax purposes in the next 7 years without their subscription as that's the intent and purpose from 2014 SoThey can be stored on a hard drive in an organized fashion Unless I continue my subscription at 300 plus dollars a year

  Business response

  03/15/2022

  *****,
  
  Thanks for reaching out. 
  You can download all your files from the Neat Cloud by installing the Neat Light-Weight Application. This application will allow you to download all your files in bulk to a local folder. Below are the installation links for Mac & Windows: 
  
  Windows: 
  https://support.neat.com/smartorganizationsystem/install-neat-desktop-smart-organization-software
  
  ***: 
  https://support.neat.com/smartorganizationsystem/install-neat-desktop-smart-organization-software
  
  Once installed, you can follow the steps here to create a backup and local copy of all your items: https://support.neat.com/smartorganizationsystem/create-a-local-backup
  
  Please keep in mind that the Light-Weight Application will only allow you to download the files as PDFs. The download will not include your folder structure or any notes/metadata associated with your items. 

  Customer response

  04/11/2022

  [A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response.  If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
  
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me. 
  
  Regards,
  
  ***** ********
  

• Initial Complaint

  01/18/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I uploaded my Neat account to the cloud. The folder structure and the items showed. I went to download my items and found out they weren't there. I was also unable to scan and upload into this cloud account. Any image of a receipt or document - the very things they were supposed to hold in the account and I should have been able to access at any time (cloud account) weren't/aren't there. They charged me full price each year for service they knew wasn't functional.

  Business response

  01/26/2022

  ****, 
  
  Thanks for reaching out, and I apologize for any trouble. After a deep dive into your account history, we found the following: 
  
  January 2013
  You originally registered your account with Neat in January 2013. It appears that at the time you were using the Legacy Desktop software which did not require a Cloud plan. 
  
  July 2013
  You signed up for a Neat Cloud plan which allowed you to sync your data from the Legacy software to the Cloud. During that time, you synced about 1300 files to the Cloud.
  
  September 2013
  You canceled that Neat Cloud plan. 
  Our terms and conditions, which you would have had to agreed upon at the time of signing up for a Neat Cloud plan indicate "Certain Services offered by Neat may be used for remote storage of your data. These storage Services are only applicable to designated folders on your computer that pertain directly to Neat and are not a substitute for a back-up and recovery solution. Neat shall not be responsible or liable for any data lost or any failure of any storage service. Any data stored through Neat's cloud storage services may be deleted 30 days following cancellation of your subscription or account, as applicable."
  
  February 2019
  After 6 years of inactivity on the Cloud and no active Cloud plan, your account was wiped and archived, per our terms and conditions. While your account would retain the folder structure and some metadata, your images were deleted from our system.
  
  April 1, 2019
  You purchased a new Neat Lite Cloud plan. Unfortunately, this was already after your account data had been wiped and archived. 
  
  April 2, 2019
  Our support team reached out to you to offer onboarding assistance. Notes on the case indicate that the phone number on the account at the time was *************, which was not accepting calls and we had no option to leave a voicemail. 
  
  April 14, 2019 
  Our system shows that this is the last time you logged into the Neat Cloud. At that time, your account data had already been wiped and archived, but you didn't contact support then to inquire about your data. Our support records indicate that before 1/13/2022, you never contacted support for any reason. 
  
  Based on this, your account and Neat Cloud plan functioned completely as normal and we have provided our services to you according to our terms and conditions. As a result, we cannot provide you with a refund for your 2019, 2020, and 2021 payments based on our terms and conditions.
  
  What I can do for you is connect with a support rep who can check to see if your data is still stored in the old Legacy Desktop Software. I can't guarantee that we will be able to recover anything, but it's worth a shot. If you have records, communications, or other evidence that support your request for a refund, please send them over and I will be happy to re-evaluate your refund. 

  Customer response

  02/14/2022

  [To assist us in bringing this matter to a close, you must give us a reason why you are rejecting the response. If no reason is received your complaint will be closed as Answered]
  
   Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:
  Since I was not notified, I was unaware that you were taking my money for nothing. I'm owed a refund for the fraudulent exchange. I paid for something that wasn't delivered and when the account was renewed, you had an opportunity to let me of the purge and did not. You just kept taking my money. Regards,
  
  *****************
  

  Business response

  03/16/2022

  ****, 
  
  Our terms and conditions clearly state that "Any data stored through Neat's cloud storage services may be deleted 30 days following cancellation of your subscription or account, as applicable."
  
  You agreed to these terms and conditions at the time of signing up for both your subscriptions in 2013 and in 2019. We are not obligated to tell you when your account is wiped based on these terms and conditions. 
  
  There was no fraudulent exchange as you never talked with anybody in 2019 about the status of your account. No one provided you with incorrect information or promised you that your old data was still stored in Neat. 
  
  Though we attempted to reach out to you in 2019 to offer you an onboarding session to get started with Neat, we never talked to you and you never reached out for any assistance after that.
  
  What you paid for is a Neat Cloud subscription which gives you unlimited file storage, a free Neat Mobile app, a NeatCloud import email address, the document and organization system, plus many more features, which were delivered to you. Your account continued to renew as you never canceled the account. 
  
  Based on this, your account and Neat Cloud plan functioned completely as normal and we have provided our services to you according to our terms and conditions. As a result, we cannot provide you with a refund for your 2019, 2020, and 2021 payments based on our terms and conditions. At this point, your account is canceled and will not renew this year. 
  
  The only thing I can do for you is to connect you with a support rep who can check to see if your data is still stored in the old Legacy Desktop Software. I can't guarantee that we will be able to recover anything, but it's worth a shot. If you have records, communications, or other evidence that support your request for a refund, please send them over and I will re-evaluate your refund. 

• Initial Complaint

  12/03/2021

  Complaint Type:

  Order Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  I had a plan with The Neat company for 79.99 a year, this year they jacked the price up to 300.00 a year, I am on a fixed income and cannot afford this so I had to cancel my plan. Now they are telling me that unless I pay them 300.00 dollars they will not let me access my documents. They are holding my documents hostage until I pay 300.00. Which I do not have.

  Business response

  12/14/2021

  *****, 
  
  Thanks for reaching out. We apologize for the increased cost of Neat, however, the reason the price has increased is that Neat has added several new features and enhancements to the application.
  
  Neat is now so much more than just a document organization software. In Neat, you can access your data from anywhere with our Cloud and NeatMobile application. You can connect your bank and credit card accounts to Neat for even more thorough expense tracking and reporting. You can share your account and files with others for smooth collaborations. You can customize, create, send invoices and even accept online payments for those invoices all through Neat. Finally, Neat is no longer just limited to Neat scanners anymore, you can also get items into Neat via mobile scanning, importing, emailing in, and we even allow for 3rd party scanner compatibility with our Neat Scan Utility.
  
  After reviewing your account history, it appears you chose to cancel your old Lite plan back in October of 2021. You canceled the plan in October due to the price of the old Lite plan increasing from $79.99 to $199.99. At that time, we offered to grandfather your Lite plan price point at $79.99 for one more year which you declined to take. As a result of declining our offer and canceling your plan, that old Lite plan is no longer available for purchase. If you wanted to sign up for Neat and continue using it, you would have to purchase a Neat Files plan, which is currently $300. As a courtesy, we could offer a $100 discount on that plan bringing the plan down to $200, but that is the most we could offer as the Neat Files plan includes even more features and functionality.  
  
  Alternatively, if Neat no longer fits your needs and you would like to discontinue using Neat, then we can certainly give you 14 days of access to your account and send you the Neat Lightweight Application which would allow you to down sync all of your NeatCloud files directly to your computer hard drive. After 14 days, you would lose access to both the Lightweight Application and the NeatCloud. After your account is canceled, your data remains in the Cloud for 180 days, after which it will be deleted from our system entirely. 
  
  Please let us know how you would like to move forward. 

  Customer response

  12/28/2021

  [A default letter is provided here which indicates your acceptance of the business's response.  If you wish, you may update it before sending it.]
  
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me. 
  
  Regards,
  
  ***********************
  

• Initial Complaint

  10/05/2021

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I had applied for a trial subscription to Neat and during that process I had reached out to the company to cancel my trial subscription to Neat Company. I have reviewed bank charges and they had took out $323.25 on 09/30/21 I had called the customer service office over 30 times to request a refund. I had left over 30 message. On 10/05/21 at 9:00am a Neat Company Rep reached out to me on my request for a refund has been received. This request for a refund is subject to 90 day review and approval by the finance department. We will provide you with an update shortly about the status of your refund request. I advised the rep that I am requesting for my refund back into my account within 3 business day.

  Business response

  10/12/2021

  *******, thanks for reaching out. 
  
  For clarification purposes, we reviewed your account history and we were unable to find any cancellation request from you before 10/5/2021. This is why you were billed. Had you reached out to us before your trial conversion you would have received a cancellation confirmation email before your billing on 9/30/2021. 
  
  Additionally, we were very concerned about your reports of calling support dozens of times to get assistance. However, after reviewing your call history we only see that you contacted support 6 times, 5 of which were shorter than 30 seconds. 
  
  Finally, the agent who assisted you appears to have followed our cancellation and refund policies correctly and escalated your refund request appropriately. That refund was approved and processed by our account services team on 10/6/2021. Once a refund is processed on our end, it is up to your bank and their policies as to when those funds will be available in your account. If you still have not received your refund, then we suggest you reach out to your financial institution for further assistance. Thank you. 

• Initial Complaint

  08/01/2021

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I bought 2 Neat Scanners. The first was a model **-****. The second was **-****. I have been using the software that came with them. I now want to use it on a different computer. They however removed an important item so installing on another computer will not work. I read on their web site that I had better convert all my files to PDF or I will lose all my years of backed up data if my existing computer crashes. I paid over 300 bucks each for these scanners. They are trying to make it so I have to pay a 36 dollar a month subscription to use them or to use different software, but I won't have my data from the last 10 years that I have saved.

  Business response

  08/06/2021

  Hello ******, 
  
  Thanks for reaching out. It appears you are reaching out about the free Legacy Neat software that was discontinued in 2014. Since its retirement, the old Legacy software that came with your scanners has received no enhancements and is not supported. 
  
  Neat has not removed anything from the software installation package to prevent you from installing it. Rather, the software is so old that it is no longer compatible with newer operating systems. This is due to limitations from ********** not Neat. ********* has stopped supporting and discontinued key C++ files required for installing the old Legacy software. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to make it so you can install the Legacy software on newer PCs because of these limitations. 
  
  Since the retirement of the Legacy software, we have let Legacy customers know that they can continue to use the Neat Legacy software at their own risk. We have also adamantly suggested that Neat Legacy users move their data out of Legacy versions of Neat to prevent any data loss. This is because Neat has not released any enhancements or updates to the Legacy software since its retirement and therefore newer operating systems and changes made by ********* and ***** may render this software inoperable.
  See more here: https://support.neat.com/retired/neat-to-end-support-of-legacy-desktop-software
  
  You absolutely do not need to purchase anything to continue to use your Neat scanner. If you still have access to the Legacy software on your old computer, then you could recover your data from that software and move it out of the old software to your computer hard drive. Then you could continue using your Neat scanner for FREE using the Neat Scan Utility. The utility will allow you to continue to use your Neat scanner to scan your documents to your computer hard drive. 
  https://support.neat.com/scanutility/install-neat-scan-utility
  
  Additionally, Neat technicians may be able to recover data from older versions of Neat into the Neat Cloud, but we cannot guarantee it. What we can offer you is a one-time courtesy support session with a Neat technician who can attempt to recover your data. If the data is recoverable, then they will move it to your computer hard drive. Keep in mind though, they will not be able to install the Legacy software on a newer computer with a new OS, they will need to try to recover the data from your older PC with the Legacy software still installed. Please let us know if you would like to schedule a one-time courtesy support session and we will connect you with a Neat technician. 

*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. ↩