ComplaintsforMultiView

• Initial Complaint

  05/21/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  I paid this company $5,000 for a "geo-marketing" campaign that was supposed to target attendees at a conference. However, I was at the conference and never received a single ad, and neither did any single attendee we talked to. Multiview marketing claims that they have impressions on their end but I believe they were all falsified as we did not see any movement on our website or anywhere else. We also never saw the ad live despite being in the exact area that was supposed to be "targeted" When I contacted them to cancel the ad and asked for a refund they refused. Upon googling their establishment I have found that they have scammed several other businesses as well and somehow keep getting away with it. I should've know it was a red flag when they repeatedly asked me to pay the remaining balance on my invoice well before the actual due date. I hope that they get shut down so that no one else gets scammed like this. We are a startup and $5,000 was a lot of money for us to burn for absolutely nothing.

  Business response

  06/05/2024

  The issue in question has been resolved with the customer.

  Customer response

  06/05/2024

  I have reviewed the business response and accept this resolution. 

• Initial Complaint

  10/19/2021

  Complaint Type:

  Sales and Advertising Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  MultiView continues to spam me with unwanted email that I did not sign up or request. The email has no address related to "Food and Beverage Magazine". When I first started reporting the spam to Spamcop.com, the spam started to come from MultiView.

  Business response

  12/21/2021

  Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2021/10/20) */ We received your recent BBB complaint regarding unwanted emails that you have received. Please note that we are the 3rd party that creates and transmits email news letters on behalf of Food and Beverage Magazine, of which you were a subscriber. The newsletters contain an opt out link, which could have been used to remove your contact information from future newsletter distribution lists. We confirm that your contact information has been removed from all future email distributions from Multiview, the news letters that we send on behalf of Food & Beverage Magazine, and all other similar distributions. Consumer Response /* (3000, 7, 2021/10/21) */ (The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.) I never signed up or opt-in for these emails. The links don't belong to the site they advertise. The links changed when I reported the spam to spamcop. Why should I trust links in spam not to infect my computer? Business Response /* (4000, 9, 2021/10/27) */ I just want to reiterate the following information, which was included in our original response. We confirm that your contact information has been removed from all future email distributions from Multiview, the newsletters that we send on behalf of Food & Beverage Magazine, and all other similar distributions. Your desired resolution of "No further contact by the business" has been resolved. Consumer Response /* (4200, 11, 2021/10/28) */ (The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.) I WAS NEVER A SUBSCRIBER OF Food & Beverage Magazine!!!

• Initial Complaint

  08/30/2021

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Signed up for this service with a specific goal of creating leads for our business. Entire discussion focussed around this. To win deal, MV reduced budget by condensing geo area. From beginning, started highlighting that traffic coming was typically not real - all bot and ad servers. Questioned reporting several times, and shared frustration, while watching numbers reduce. Showed my findings in detail. Asked to give any information about what was served to, given almost no detail. Numbers could be considered fraudulent. Asked several times for advice, all was give it time. Never improved. Finally expressed extreme need to change. Was advised to have them perform something we already were doing, or spend in ad placements out of our market. Pushed back for some time, then finally agreed to former. At that time, told we'd have to increase monthly spend to pursue. This is bait and switch. Told them to work within boundaries of current budget. Would not. This is a fraudulent vendor.

  Business response

  12/01/2021

  Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2021/09/13) */ The client purchased a 12 month Programmatic Campaign, containing both video and display inventory. The initial goal of these tactics are strictly brand awareness focused, however shortly after the campaign had begun, the client shifted his focus to lead and conversion specific. The client wanted to stay within the programmatic tactic, even after explaining the "branding first" focus. Throughout the initial run, we spoke at least monthly, if not, more frequent, during which we altered and implemented numerous new tactics in hopes of appeasing the client. The audience the client chose originally included all "Food Processing", but over time he narrowed it down to only "Fruit & Vegetable Processing"; this limited us greatly and cut off most of our overall reach. After about 3 months, we migrated the display portion into solely video, as the client had noted he was receiving more satisfactory performance from it. However, nearly 7 days into the migration, the client began demanding leads from the campaign. We again expressed (both over the phone & via email) that the only way we could potentially drive more leads would be through PPC, which he declined due to his internally ran campaign under performing. We offered to perform a Google PPC Audit to determine room to improve, however this was ultimately declined as well. Since the audience was condensed so much, we offered to move it into our association products which offer a more niche group for targeting, yet the client was still displeased as it involved banner advertising again. His expectations became unreasonable and would not acknowledge that he was limiting us by not allowing us to transition his budget into PPC, despite the numerous explanations from our team. Email correspondence noting this attached. Consumer Response /* (3000, 7, 2021/09/14) */ (The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.) This is factually incorrect. Was told this agency had contacts specifically within fruit and vegetable processors and our field from day one, as they served a couple trade publications within our space. I asked them about it immediately as I told them I didn't want to target the industry broadly. There was never a green light to be wastefully broad as that would make zero sense for a targeted campaign. Also from day one, I told vendor my goal was lead gen with a specific daily target, and they stated this was the process to get there, knowing I already had a PPC campaign running and I didn't want them in that space. That was our business objective immediately and this was the plan they had to help us achieve the goal. Asked for references, but was told no one else was doing this in our space, no one to show to. Flag one, but the salesmanship was well performed. To hit a contract price so they could close out their end of year goals, they reduced the market and told me I could only isolate to the US and a couple Western European countries, but that the target list still hit my need for fruit and vegetable processors. We went over a document about our needs that they call discovery and this point was hammered consistently prior to launch. Oddly at this point, was advised not to create a separate landing page, industry best practices, as they didn't believe going somewhere else would help and may negatively impact SEO. This didn't make a shred of sense, but went along with it. Later on, their sales rep came back and told me they scrapped an entire side of service to hit our number, but that is also inaccurate. I was told to hit our budget, all they were reducing was geographical reach down to our absolute core areas, English speaking. PPC was never in the picture, as we were already doing it. Want to reiterate that as I started to track traffic, highlighted my tracking/reporting and theirs was extremely divergent. Over 95% of traffic gained was bot, not real people. Also reviewed reporting with vendor, highlighted concerns, and even went as far as to provide data dumps to showcase what I was seeing vs their reports. Took some time to get a response that yes, this is normal. No it isn't. As I became suspicious of the quality and truthfulness of the service, I created a completely cloned landing page to track visitors, and asked them to change their redirect to it. Started to track more attentively. Highlighted back that bounce rates were nearly 100%, and that I could only pick out one or two visitors that appeared to be valid every few weeks. Was told their data team was checking this, had to keep following up to be told this is still normal. It is not. They told me pass through visits were ok. Reviewed those numbers, and they were extremely low. Highlighted to rep. No course of action suggested. At this points asked about keeping creative refresh. Was told this would be fine, could change as needed. Could do that and add an IP targeting campaign. Did. Took weeks of follow up to get in place. Was told dates would be hit. As those lapsed, followed up and told it would be the next cycle. That became a common trend. And results never started to improve. As a matter of fact, the IP targeting results were so low, I requested to stop and put this to something performing slightly better, as far as engagement rates, even though I was unsatisfied with those. This is the point the relationship really started to sour. As I kept asking for new ideas to get us back on the path to gaining leads, and was ever and always the goal, was told this was the wrong campaign - should have done something different. They did suggest an audit of other campaigns I was running independently. At first, I did instruct them to find novel ways to improve within scope. I asked point bland why I'd have them serve the area I could so myself, as if that would have been the plan they suggested from teh start, wouldn't have agreed at all. As that continued to dwindle rather than improve, I begrudgingly asked them to switch to a PPC campaign. I even showed my numbers and asked if they could beat them. I was told to do this, I would have to double my monthly spend to $3,000. I asked why, as they would be a lot for a company of our size each month. Was told it was their policy. I asked them to explain the logic behind that policy and how they arrived to it, no information was provided - just that it was policy. As an aside, happened to recently talk to others in our space that were considering this service. I asked if they were told it was $3k monthly to run a campaign. They said yes. Asked if they were able to get references or get an explanation of how that number came to be, the answer was no. This is simply to formula they like to follow, regardless of the size of the customer or potential base, it's just a blanket offering without logic. As vendor could not provide sufficient evidence that traffic / leads gained were real, have no reason to believe impressions were accurate. Asked for any sort of demographic detail about those impressions and video engagement and was given titles. Asked how they matched our target market, vendor was not able to provide - they did not have that data somehow. Also asked a few times why impressions were falling, almost immediately after the first couple weeks. No answer, unable to explain. In the end, I told them I believed I was sold a bag of goods and needed to so something to salvage a shred of value from this agreement. First suggestion was ad placements in a trade publication. They gave titles and industries, and I highlighted that they weren't our targets, and incredulously asked if they were yet aware of what our customer base was. No response to that, by the way. Then they gave me the $3k PPC pitch. as mentioned above, I didn't understand the budget number. Asked repeatedly if they could provide service within the established monthly budget to help our business. That was sidestepped each team, with vendor asking us if we could increase monthly. Explained I hadn't seen a reason to date to increase monthly based on dismal performance to date. That brings us to now. This BBB is littered with people believing they were bamboozled. And now, the response I get is that I was unreasonable. For what, demanding a vendor/supplier lives up to promises made, even marginally close to what started the conversation? Unreasonable because I tracked this, and told them it was all bot and no performance? Unreasonable because I asked so many times for speed, responses and ways to deliver, and the only thing that came back was the boilerplate pitch they typically give? I guess the common subscriber here takes a lot in good faith and doesn't dig. Because when you dig, this is beyond fishy. Have to wonder why this company scrubbed and removed their google business page and review sites. Because it's a trail of broken promises and wasteful spend. At min, term and let's go our separate ways. I asked for that several times, and was told no. Since we can't be amicable, here we are. End this charade. Business Response /* (4000, 9, 2021/09/17) */ Answering paragraph by paragraph addressed by the client as well as proposal and e-mail attachments to back up our responses. Our campaign initially was to set to target DMs at food processing plants. The goal from day 1 was to drive targeted recognition, awareness and brand credibility, then supplement that with bottom funnel conversion tactics. As a result, our team provided programmatic and PPC opportunities as shown in our proposal attached. Additionally, we provided 4 or 5 references (name dropped the company and campaign) in food packaging that we work with. After evaluating our proposal, the client not only wanted to completely cut the PPC portion out of the equation, but also wanted to cut the recommended programmatic impression total and media budget in half. As a result, our team made the recommendation of concentrating our efforts in a limited geographic region to avoid spreading ourselves too thin. When the need for a landing page came up during our discussion, the client decided against creating one on our end as it would incur additional cost. During this time, the client was not able to create a custom landing page on his end and we chose the most appropriate existing pages to drive traffic back to for the current advertising efforts. We did not cut out anything across our service side, nor did we cut out anything from a tactics perspective rather we reduced the spend / impression total based on his budget constraints. To reiterate, PPC was never in the picture because the client declined the tactic from the proposal hence removing the bottom funnel, lead generation aspect of our campaign. Traffic that the client is referencing is ad verification traffic that he was picking up with an internal tool. This tool picked up all page activity and did not have filter options for this sort of traffic. It was further explained that our portal filters this out and reports primarily on our traffic, however if we preferred third party reporting, he would be able to use Google Analytics. Furthermore, even after explaining this, the client continued to rely solely on his tool. Our Google Analytics segment was also provided to the client so that he could filter the data on his own. (Email correspondence title RE: MultiView Discovery ) Response times were always within appropriate time frames. The client was never left waiting for more than a business day. See all email correspondence chains for reference. "Cloned Landing Page" was added specifically for campaign traffic, and client continued to monitor ad verification traffic. This was also implemented for his new direction of only targeting "sweet corn processing" which had a much more finite audience. See email correspondence (RE: Video and Display assets...) Client was also unhappy with performance, however when explaining 0.05% CTR average, and limited audience, he was reluctant to accept. Also noted error on landing page, as there were extremely large page load concerns, and odd redirects that had potential to misreport traffic. Redirects were stripped out after 1 month by client after my recommendations. Client requested multiple campaign direction changes which led to multiple restarts and loss of campaign traction. It was stated since the discovery stage that he is running a branding focused campaign, which does not have a primary goal of generating leads. It was also mentioned that the most prominent tactic for generating leads is a PPC campaign which he declined due to previous experience and cost. Following the clients request to generate leads, you can see our recommendations to transition spend to a PPC campaign on the 2 e-mail chains attached, back on 7/9/2021 and 8/18/2021. Multiview has established PPC budget minimums to allow us the opportunities to set ourselves up to execute successful campaigns for clients. Client states that no information was provided explaining the minimums, however on 8/24/2021 you **** see our explanation here and on the e-mail chain attached. "We'd like to run a paid search (pay per click) campaign for Pro Ex. Multiview's minimum spend for this type of campaign is $3,000 per month as from a B2B context, we've seen over our years of experience that our minimums set us, and our clients up for successful campaigns." From there, the client declined and demanded we give him leads without changing the campaign types. Following the clients reluctance to move his budget to PPC given his poor past performance Multiview offered to perform a free audit to identify areas of improvement based on his past performance. This solution was unfortunately declined as well. Once again, our PPC budgets are not a blanket offering, they are established to allow us the opportunities to set ourselves up to execute successful campaigns for clients. We provided the client the target demographics many times. You can see an e-mail attached dated 7/21/2021 where it clearly shows the demographic breakdown of who we were targeting. In regards to impressions falling, we explained during monthly reporting calls that limiting his audience would negatively impact our overall serve. We continuously offered the client suggestions of transitioning the campaign based on his concerns. First suggestion was always migrating to paid search. The second was to continue with our video branding campaign, even create a new target persona for him, then the THIRD option was to move to PMA or FPSA eNewsletter which are Association publications. After he scoffed at our recommendations, we continued to reiterate that the best course of action would be moving to paid search, though if he wanted to, we could move into FPSA based on the following target demographic. Demographic Breakdown Primary sub industries in order of audience share: 1) Meat 2) Juices 3) Dairy 4) Prepared Foods 5) Bakery Dairy: 141 companies represented Juice Beverage: 124 companies represented Job Titles: Owners & Founder, Partner, President, CEO, General Manager, Executive Vice President, Product Manager, Supply Chain Director, Operations Manager, What do they look to buy? Machinery for food processing, cleaning equipment/materials, mixers, conveyors, pasteurization Going back to the $3K PPC option, the client did not understand what PPC was. We repeatedly told the client his existing spend was not enough to warrant a successful PPC campaign. He clearly didn't understand why because he doesn't understand what PPC is after multiple explanations. Once again, as referenced during our email exchange on 8/24/21, it was not sidestepped. He didn't see a reason to increase spend based on his performance, we generously offered to run an audit to identify why his self-serve campaign preformed so bad, unfortunately that request was denied without explanation. Consumer Response /* (4200, 11, 2021/09/20) */ (The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.) Admittedly, vendor was astute at what conversations were verbal only and what have an email / trail. Very versed at this part, near doctoral level. Practice, practice, practice. Initial discovery attached that was supplied and was the basis of all conversations. Words were strategically removed from contract, likely due to experience in responding to a claim such as this. They are more practiced in disputing than in delivery, and were entered this agreement with naivety and trust of the vendor. We called out we were surprised at the number of contacts they showed in our space, and asked to verify count was within parameters. Was confirmed. We highlighted that we would start small and grow with success, but even then the client was eager for the sale and didn't highlight concerns on delivery if there was $$ to be made. Called out verbally that references provided were not in our space, asked if there were others more similar to us. response was no, no work performed. Again, vendor astute enough to keep that verbal only. Bot traffic was monitored in BOTH a visit analyzer and google analytics. In both, highlighted that most traffic was bot with 100% bounce rates. Several verbal and email discussions about that. Attached one. I was INSTRUCTED by responder / vendor that they advised I used our home page as landing page, and not to create a separate one. It was after extreme suspicion on our end that it was created to further research and identify areas of concern. Executed on March 30. This course of action further highlighted to us that services rendered were exactly nothing of any value. Initial also highlighted our target markets. Were initially told more difficult to serve due to GDPR, but doable. Later, said they could serve if we drop the ones they didn't believe they could serve at all. In one of many examples of delays in response, thread here. Showed that I kept asking for an update. When vendor did, highlighted a server issue. also meant no work had happened as it would have been resolved. technical fix executed on our end immediately. Onboarding took a while, as I asked if their team read the discovery doc. Message took a while to lock into place.

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