{"id":451,"date":"2010-05-11T10:21:25","date_gmt":"2010-05-11T10:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsmsblog.com\/?p=451"},"modified":"2010-05-11T10:21:25","modified_gmt":"2010-05-11T10:21:25","slug":"if-you-value-your-business-stay-away-from-infusionsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnthornhill.com\/blog\/if-you-value-your-business-stay-away-from-infusionsoft\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Value Your Business Stay Away From Infusionsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You may recall <a href=\"http:\/\/planetsmsblog.com\/the-struggles-of-an-internet-marketer\/\" target=\"_blank\">this post<\/a> I made on the 19th of March explaining I had been trying to set up an affiliate program to take recurring billing payments. All I was trying to do was set up Infusionsoft with PayPal to accept recurring payments. Not hard to do you would think wouldn&#8217;t you? I mean PayPal must be one of the largest payment processors in the world.<\/p>\n<p>Well as hard as I find it to write this blog post I feel I must share my experiences to save you from going down the same road I did as I have had nothing but frustrations for the last 10 weeks trying to set this up.<\/p>\n<p>I had heard many great things about Infusionsoft and decided to check them out. You can see what they offer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.infusionsoft.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>, Initially all I wanted to do was use their affiliate program and possibly use their autoresponder service at a later date. The plan was to put all of my products under one roof using one system. Now at $299 per month this was no cheap affiliate program but I decided to contact someone at Infusionsoft to ask about their service. This is where the problems started.<\/p>\n<p>I asked if I would be able to use PayPal to accept recurring billing payments, I was told I would be able to do this no problem and was then told about the wonderful things Infusionsoft would do for my business. (If anyone from Infusionsoft reads this I still have the email from Scott Morrision telling me the setup with PayPal was possible)<\/p>\n<p>So I decided to sign up and get things moving. Now remember I had done some research and while I consider myself to be quite technically experienced I knew this wasn&#8217;t going to be easy to set up so I had to get the help of a programmer to set things up.<\/p>\n<p>Without boring you with the details I have now gone through 3 programmers and none of them can set this up for me, the reason they can&#8217;t set this up is it can&#8217;t be done and Infusionsoft have acknowledged it but that&#8217;s not where my problem lies.<\/p>\n<p>You see, during all of this time I have had to contact Infusionsoft support numerous times and I must say their support is non existent.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They will tell you anything to get you off the phone.<\/li>\n<li>They don&#8217;t reply to support tickets.<\/li>\n<li>They pass you to another department which sends you to an answerphone.<\/li>\n<li>They promise to ring you back but never do (this has happened numerous times)<\/li>\n<li>The guy you need to speak to is always &#8216;in a meeting&#8217; or &#8216;away from his desk&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>ETC, ETC.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>They simply don&#8217;t seem to care about their customers, now remember this is a $299 per month service we are talking about here. Not some $10 product.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, to cut a long story short last week I decided to go with a different company and got set up in 3 days, if only I had done this in the first place. So I contacted Infusionsoft to cancel my account and request a refund of the $900 they have as they mis-sold me their product.<\/p>\n<p>After submitting a support ticket last week and making 3 phone calls yesterday and being &#8216;promised a reply by close of business today&#8217; guess what!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m still waiting!<\/p>\n<p>Now get this, I can&#8217;t cancel my account unless I talk to someone at billing. When you contact billing you get an answerphone, but what&#8217;s the point of leaving a message as they don&#8217;t respond.<\/p>\n<p>My next payment of $299 is due on the 23rd of May and I have given up trying to cancel my account. I am simply going to do a chargeback.<\/p>\n<p>How a company that is supposed to help the Internet Marketer can treat a customer like this is beyond me. I may receive some flack for this post but as one of my blog readers I must warn you, if you value your business stay well away from Infusionsoft.<\/p>\n<p>This whole experience has probably cost me in the region of $30,000 as I am now 10 weeks late with an evergreen product launch. Let&#8217;s just hope this blog post prevents a few people going through the same experience I have.<\/p>\n<p>They will tell you what you want to hear to make a sale but that&#8217;s where the communication ends.<\/p>\n<p>If anyone from Infusionsoft reads this please cancel my account so I don&#8217;t have to perform a chargeback. My username is &#8216;planetsms&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Rant over!<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Update]<\/strong> A lot of people are asking what service I have switched to. At the moment I just put the product in question on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.clickbank.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">ClickBank<\/a>. That&#8217;s one company who value their customers who I&#8217;ve never had an issue with in 5 years. If i do go with an all in one system I can recommend I will let you guys know.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Update 2]<\/strong> <strong>I&#8217;ve just received this email from Infusionsoft:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Hi John, I tried to call you but there was no answering service. So am emailing you this response. My name is Clay Jeppsen. I am an Account Manager here at Infusionsoft, yesterday I received an email from my boss to contact you regarding your request to cancel. By the time I opened the email it was already late in the evening there in the UK. We are in Arizona, 9 hours difference. It proved to be a poor choice of me to wait and call you today. For that I apologize. And I am sincerely sorry for the fact that Infusionsoft was not able to get your project off the ground. I believe it is still a bug that our tech support is trying to fix, but that is not your problem. And, Infusionsoft is not in the business of taking peoples money. We are in the business of growing businesses; this is what we pride ourselves on. For that reason I have refunded 897.00 American dollars back to your Visa and canceled your account. I hope this helps towards your future endeavors and time lost with Infusionsoft. Like I said, we would have preferred a more prolific outcome. If we are going to part, I hope we can at least agree on one thing &#8211; that we wanted you to be successful with our product. Your success brings us success. That is healthy for the both of us. I wish you the best in the future. If you have any questions for me please call or email me.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a shame it took this blog post to get action but there you have it. You have to love the power of the Internet and social media, thanks everyone for your support, I truly appreciate it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Update 3] Yet another response from Infusion, it&#8217;s strange how they suddenly want to communicate with me now.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>John,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I have to say when I woke up this morning, checked Twitter and saw a  handful of mentions to your blog post, I was disappointed to say the  least. I was disappointed because I know great lengths Infusionsoft has  made (and continues to make) to deliver exceptional service to all  users. I am glad we\u2019ve taken steps to resolve this as quickly as we  have.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I hope you understand that we earnestly worked hard to earn your  business and legitimately wanted to help you and your business grow. Our  app had all the functions you desired, but it seems the point of  failure was on the merchant processing needs. We have hundreds and  possibly thousands of users who successfully use our app with PayPal  Payflow Pro for recurring billing. I know this wasn\u2019t what you expected  and I totally understand why it was frustrating.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I would like to point out that we have been on top of the support  cases you submitted. I wouldn\u2019t exactly say we were \u201cnon-existent\u201d nor  have we pushed you off the phone. We take sincere pride in our 92%  customer satisfaction and work hard to push that even higher. We will  made necessary accommodations to keep our users happy and their  businesses growing. We\u2019ve listened to our customer feedback on help and  have made numerous improvements to our Help Center \u2014 clearing away the  unnecessary and providing more detailed articles, tutorials and helpful  videos for users. To date, our support team\u2019s support case ratings have  averaged at 4.54 out of 5.0 which leads us to believe most users receive  timely, satisfactory service.<br \/>\nWe accept and apologize for the difficulty in reaching our account  management team. We have sent an internal communication to advise all  employees on how to properly handle such concerns. While this does not  ameliorate your concerns directly, it will help us improve and provide  even better service for all our users.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And one last point \u2014 and I want your readers to hold us to this \u2013 we  commit to following up with every customer concern within one business  day. We know it\u2019s unacceptable to wait for a response from a modern,  upstanding company and we\u2019re stepping up to the plate to provide  excellent service to everyone. We\u2019ve grown quite a bit and that\u2019s no  excuse to accept inferior service. Conversely, we will take all the  steps to hold our customers accountable once they use our app to use it  successfully and accept our guidance in making the most from the app.  After all, we\u2019re both in this game and want to keep our customers happy.  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/icon_smile.gif\" alt=\":-)\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I hope you understand we meant this response with the best of  intentions. As I mentioned to you on Twitter, any person who endured  such a bumpy experience would have been met with such compassionate and  rapid service from us. We\u2019re a different company than we were before  (Google us and see what mistakes we\u2019ve made in the past) and would like  to let you know that we welcome any feedback, suggestions and  improvements to make our app and service better.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Thanks for the feedback the opportunity to serve you better. Let us  know if you have any questions or feedback.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Warm Regards,<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Joseph Manna<br \/>\nCommunity Manager, Infusionsoft<br \/>\nEmail: <a href=\"mailto:joseph.manna@infusionsoft.com\">joseph.manna@infusionsoft.com<\/a><br \/>\nTwitter: @joemanna | @infusionsoft<br \/>\nPh: (480) 289-6814<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Reply from John<\/strong><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>My only response to that is if you &#8216;take sincere pride&#8217; in 92% customer satisfaction that&#8217;s actually quite shocking as that means 8% of your customers are not satisfied with your service and you seem happy with that. If you were trading on eBay with 92% satisfaction nobody would buy from you and eBay would probably close you down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may recall this post I made on the 19th of March explaining I had been trying to set up an affiliate program to take recurring billing payments. 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