ComplaintsforZiplocal

• Initial Complaint

  11/21/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  4 years ago I helped out a friend who was working for this company by signing up with them. I am a lender and there is strict compliance that must be followed when advertising lending services. This company did not know compliance regulations and was copying other lending advertising with links to other lenders essentially steering business away from me / my company along with not following lending compliance regulations. After explaining that this type of advertising was not allowed and could cost me fines and ultimately my lending license the ********************** agreed to credit my fees and terminate my contract with them. 3.5 years later I just received a call from a collection agency asking for a balance due. This is fraud and unacceptable.

  

  Business response

  12/18/2023

  I have researched this account and found that this customer authorized social media marketing services with ZipLocal in April of 2019. We began the services (Google-my-Business page, ******** posts and ad boosting) in May of ********************************************************* concerns until 3 months later. As a standard, we email a proof of the post/ad ahead of time. The posts are assumed to be approved if our customer does not with requests for alterations.
  
  When we talked with ****************** on July 10, 2019, we let her know that we would write of $200 because of her concerns with the content of the posts, but in the future she needed to review and approve the posts that we emailed. We continued to create and email post examples to our customer for nearly four months (August 2019 to November 11, 2019), until she rejected our emails. She had not responded with approval or changes, and we were not allowed to post without her approval as per her request.
  
  We canceled the service on December 6, 2019 due to non-payment because our customer did not respond to our billing attempts by phone and email from July to December 2019; however, there was still the balance owing for services up until that point.
  
  Our customer service manager then spoke with ****************** in February of 2020. Our manager apologized for any misunderstanding, and explained that we had not agreed to cancel the contract; it had been canceled due to non-payment. Our manager agreed to waive nearly $800 in collection fees and costs for the service, bringing the total down to $329.16 as settlement for services. This was offered as a gesture of good will because the customer was upset and because of the original misunderstanding.
  
  Our customers agreed settlement payment was supposed to be made on March 15, 2020, but it did not go through. ****************** did not respond to our managers attempts to contact her after this, so the account was eventually sent to a different collection agency as the client did not follow through on her part of the agreement.
  
  Since this BBB complaint, on December 15, 2023, I spoke with *****************. During the call we discussed these issues and we are currently working with her on a possible settlement, which, at her request, we will be waiting until mid-January to conclude. We believe we have made and are currently making reasonable efforts to resolve this complaint and come to an amicable resolution. We will follow up with her in January as per her request.
  
  Thank you for your assistance in this matter. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me at *****************************.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  *******************
  Customer Relations Supervisor

*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. ↩