Item: Lead Forensics
Rating: 1
Author: Ginger Davis

Overall Satisfaction with Lead Forensics

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Lead Forensics helps us see who is looking at our website. This is useful so we can target those companies but also so that we can stay ahead of the trends in the industry and target similar business when we notice a pattern.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Capturing visitor data (pages, length of time spent, etc)
Sell their product

Cons

Must pay additional for actual contact information
Unethical billing practices
Lots of wasted time training on the same things over and over which aren't of actual use

Return on Investment

Expensive product
Costly in terms of unauthorized billing resulting in additional charges and wasted time

Likelihood to Recommend

I wouldn't recommend them despite believing that they have a good product. Unethical business practices overshadow their product.

Although they provide a pretty neat service, the company is pretty unethical. Last fall, they convinced me to sign a contract with them for my small business after lots of negotiation. When they sent over the paperwork for me to sign regarding the bank draft, I noticed it had an amount different than what we had agreed upon, so I didn't sign and contacted my salesman; he said if I didn't want to sign it first and let them correct it later, he would send another. The second one was completely blank and they wanted me to sign my authorization and they'd fill in amounts after I signed and returned to them; I of course refused because blank is even worse than an incorrect yet known amount and they acted like I was crazy for doing so. Eventually they sent the correct amount and I signed.

Fast forward about three months. I'm in the process of changing banks. I contacted them to let them know that the account they would draft from monthly was changing and provided the new routing and account number. When I noticed a draft from my "old" account a couple of days later, I chalked it up to them not having enough time to make the change and assumed it would be switched before the next draft; however, when I reconciled, I realized that they were able to get that new account info into play nearly immediately and drafted BOTH the new and old accounts. I reported this and even though it only takes about 24 hours to CHARGE you, it's been a week and counting and CREDITING for their "mistake" is taking far longer. It's resulted in three overdrafts which they take no responsibility for other than to say they're sorry.

My advice is to find another company that offers this service and do business with someone reputable. I hate that I'm under contract with these crooks.

Comments

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Jim Hohl
commented 7 years ago
Same thing happened to me. They agreed to accept payment by credit card and then sent me a form adding 5% for the privilege. I objected and they removed that surcharge. Then they didn't charge my card but somehow pulled the money from my account. When I objected they denied ever knowing about the credit card agreement. I refused all their attempts to ding my bank account, and finally after 6 months, they wanted to collect the full amount on my credit card with the fee! Of course I declined but they had 4-5 different people contact me every month or so looking to settle up. What a mess. They won't let me out of the contract either and don't seem concerned whether I get any benefit from the tool or not, just as long as they can keep (trying) to charge me. Total mess.
- Ginger Davis
  commented 7 years ago
  Jim, contact Ross Patterson, PatersonR@leadforensics.com. He's pretty high up the food chain and after I completely freaked out and began posting here and everywhere I could find as well as filing a complaint with the BBB, he called and HE CAN GET THINGS DONE, not just promise and hope that you forget like everyone else there. When I had another minor billing issue months down the road, I didn't even bother contacting the other inept individuals I should have but went straight to him and he got that handled for me too. He was incredibly embarrassed by my experience and genuinely cared. Supposedly retraining lots of people and I know our rep has been replaced since.
Jim Hohl
commented 7 years ago
Same thing happened to me. They agreed to accept payment by credit card and then sent me a form adding 5% for the privilege. I objected and they removed that surcharge. Then they didn't charge my card but somehow pulled the money from my account. When I objected they denied ever knowing about the credit card agreement. I refused all their attempts to ding my bank account, and finally after 6 months, they wanted to collect the full amount on my credit card with the fee! Of course I declined but they had 4-5 different people contact me every month or so looking to settle up. What a mess. They won't let me out of the contract either and don't seem concerned whether I get any benefit from the tool or not, just as long as they can keep (trying) to charge me. Total mess.

Shady billing/business practices