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Meltwater deceptive auto-renewal policy and truly awful customer service
April 24, 2017

Meltwater deceptive auto-renewal policy and truly awful customer service

Janet Van Pelt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform

We purchased Meltwater to help identify potential prospects in our area. We found it difficult to use for that purpose. Then we found out that we had been misled by our sales rep into going past a 60 day auto renewal provision and despite repeated communications with them well in advance of our contract expiration that we didn't wish to renew they are trying to force us to use their software (which we DO NOT want) for another year at a cost of $10k.
  • We didn't identify anything particularly distinctive about the Meltwater solution, and the difficulty of doing business with them far outweighs any potential benefits.
  • The results were cluttered and the search process was not intuitive.
  • I have wasted hours trying to resolve their hidden, non-standard auto-renewal. They claim that their 'legal team' will not allow them to deviate from the hard 60 day deadline, which is of course nonsense since this is a policy over which they have complete discretion.
While the Meltwater platform is probably adequate, their business practices are non-standard and deceptive. The value of their tools is absolutely not worth the pain of trying to work with the company. They bury a 60 day auto-renewal in their terms of use, which is normally reserved for how to interact with the site not business terms. Their sales rep contacts you suggesting that they send over renewal paperwork, which further obscures the auto-renewal provision. Once you are 1 day past the 60 days, they hold on like grim death and refuse any effort to terminate the contract, even if you provide notice well in advance of the end of your contract period. I have never seen a company operate this way; I'm assuming that because of the new and much better offerings from Cision and others they are bleeding customers and taking desperate measures to hang on to those they have. But it's not a pleasant experience if you're one of the poor companies that made the mistake of getting into business with them. I would avoid them at all costs.