Listing has not appeared

[DaveP]

Hi,

I paid for a 48 hour review for a listing on the 26th May, the money was taken from my PayPal account.
I don't have a listing yet, and I made a mistake on the entry form, which I would like to correct,
Can't see any other way of contacting you, please could you advise.

Thanks, Dave Perris.

[DaveP]

Hi, This is getting a bit annoying. There is no obvious contact address to deal with problems like this. After some looking around I've found an email address for Brian and sent him a pm, but have had no response.
Will have to go to PayPal transaction dispute unless somebody gets back to me today.

Dave Perris.

[Brian Turner]

Thanks for the messages, Dave, but it would have been helpful to allow reasonable time to allow for the reasonable resolution of the issue. This is especially as the submissions information was not properly present in the submission, plus the fact that I dared to take a couple of days off over this weekend.

I'm genuinely sorry you had a bad experience with the directory submissions process, but I think you have shown a large degree of impatience that means that instead of allowing an issue to be resolved, you have now escalated matters so that I cannot even refund your submission.

It is especially worth remembering that if you submit malformed information to the directory, it will necessarily take longer to process and resolve regardless.

[DaveP]

Hello Brian,

Glad you've taken the trouble to reply, sorry it's taken a dispute with PayPal to get you to respond.

You advertise a 48 hour service on your site, for which I paid you £14.95. That was on the 26th of May, a week ago. Since then I've sent you several emails, posted in your forum and have had no replies. If you are charging for a 48 hour service then you need to provide it. I don't think I've shown great impatience by waiting for a week before taking action.

The information I entered for a listing, isn't actually 'malformed', I just didn't put in the best anchor text and was hoping it could be amended. This was partly due to the design of your entry boxes, too small and not very clear.

From your response in the PayPal resolution centre you are obviously not going to put up my listing, and I don't want to be associated with your site after my experience here. I will be claiming for a refund through PayPal. I don't want to waste any more of my time and I'm sure you don't either, so I hope you will sort this out as soon as possible and we can part company.

P.S. Where are the clear contact details that you mentioned in your PayPal message?

[Brian Turner]

Originally Posted by DaveP

From your response in the PayPal resolution centre you are obviously not going to put up my listing

I can't because it was malformed - as you said, you were having trouble with the entry boxes, and the version I appear to have does not list any information in the entry boxes.

Originally Posted by DaveP

I hope you will sort this out as soon as possible and we can part company.

I can't because you have escalated the matter. If you mark it resolved, I can refund you as obviously your listing hasn't come through. However, while you remain in the Paypal dispute system, it is impossible for me to do anything but provide comments.

It is also worth remarking that you have not paid for a listing, only a review - the same as with the Yahoo Directory.

Originally Posted by DaveP

P.S. Where are the clear contact details that you mentioned in your PayPal message?

Bottom left of the page:
http://www.internetbusiness.co.uk/

[DaveP]

Hi Brian,

I hadn't escalated the claim. It was in the first stages of the resolution process, where we see if we can sort it out between ourselves. I see you have now refunded my money through PayPal, thank you.

I've no idea what happened to the data I entered. It was nothing I did as far as I know, though as I mentioned before, your data entry boxes are very small and not that clear. I've made entries in many online forms before now without any problems. The only thing I was hoping to alter was the anchor text, as I didn't understand which entry would appear as an anchor in the final listing.

I did notice that you state the fee is for a review rather than for a listing. The obvious fact is that you are selling listings on your site. Putting up unreasonable terms and conditions doesn't mean that they are legal. The reasonable expectation is that buyers are paying for a listing, they wouldn't be giving you money just to have a review of their site. I think a lawyer would tell you, unless the site has unacceptable content, you need to provide the service you have charged for.

Yes, I found the link eventually. I had to go through the directory, then the submit form, then on to the forum and there's a link on the bottom right hand corner on my page. It's not incredibly obvious.

If you had responded to my emails within the week, sorted out the problem and not immediately told me that I hadn't paid for a listing on first contact, I would have said 'Great, thanks very much' and been happy with the service. Things go wrong from time to time, the big difference is in how people try to sort problems out.



Dave.

[DaveP]

Hi Brian,

See you have just put a 'contact us' button on the page, nice move!

Dave.

[Brian Turner]

Indeed, I think there were a few unfortunate circumstances came together in this instance - the technical problem with the submission not showing the intended details, and my taking a few days off, compounded the problem.

I can certainly sympathise with your concerns and frustration - thankfully I was able to note a refund option in the resolution process (Paypal have been changing their site recently, so it wasn't immediately clear to me that the button was there).

In terms of submissions and acceptance - it's simply the same policy as the Yahoo Directory - only that costs £200. Submissions are never guaranteed, in order to maintain the integrity of the directory - otherwise any old crap would presume a listing, denigrating the value to others. I just noticed one come through today - a casino affiliate site, despite that it's a clear precondition that all websites must have a listed postal address. That submission will not be listed, and I think those serious business owners will be thankful for not having their own listing surrounded by pills, porn, and casino entries.

The contact link on the main site has always been there - however, it does look like it's missing from the directory footer, so I'll get that added in now.