WedAlert warning

[michaelchadwickphotography]

<p>Two years ago I was talked into advertising with WedAlert. It wasn't a <em>horrible</em> fee, and I really went after the promised leads in earnest, just to find that most of them came back undeliverable (via postcards I mailed them) and emails never received responses. Ever. I stopped wasting money on post, but continued trying to contact them via email, and would never get any responses. Ever. Google showed very few people even going to my site from WedAlert, so when it came time to renew I didn't intend to do so. </p>

<p>They contacted me and really hard sold me (gotta hand it to them on that one) another year, giving me better coverage (in hindsight why would I want more of a bad thing?) at a slightly lower cost. I finally gave up on them and about a month ago they contacted me again to renew my annual advertising. When I told them no, that their site had been ineffective for me, they went beyond the hard sell and actually got pretty nasty with me. </p>

<p>Now, a week before the renewal period is supposed to happen and my ad is to be removed, I suddenly am getting five or six messages from WedAlert saying someone has clicked through to my page from their site. Mind you, all YEAR I got maybe one click through. One. Now, I'm getting five or six a day, each saying it's from a different city, as if someone is going down the list. It's pretty much pathetic, and I expect a phone call from them in the next day or so saying I should renew and that I have all this activity.</p>

<p>This is just a word of warning for anyone considering their advertising. They say you'll get top search engine placement (yeah, their DJ service ranks high in Google - how does that help me as a photographer?) and all of the free leads you can handle. The truth of the matter is, the leads are utterly worthless and frankly I think they're made up. They're ALL coming from free web address sites like gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc. There is the rare instance of someone with a real email address, but it's probably 1 out of 100 users.</p>

<p>Some of you may have inexplicably had success with WedAlert. I have had nothing but loss from it and will not be wasting my time or money with them in the future. If you choose to advertise with them, I wish you the best of luck. I just don't believe that their hard-sell tactics and utter nastiness when I canceled with them indicate a company with which I will continue to do business.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Definitely don't use a service like that unless you can get some substantial, verifiable case studies and testimonials from real, living, breathing people in your line of work. That they would be anything but gracious in their communication with you is all you really need to know about them.</p>

[william-porter]

<p>THank you for your post. I've actually been using WedAlert for a while. I get tons of emails from them saying that somebody has clicked from their directory to my web site. But I get ZERO calls from these people. The calls I get are from people who somehow (amazingly) found me on their own. I wrote to WedAlert today asking to cancel my account. Got a phone call from them within minutes (which I didn't answer). Waiting to see if they will comply with my very clear request. There is, oddly, no "cancel my account" option on the web site, something I wish I'd noticed when I signed up.</p>

<p>Will</p>

[marcsaint]

<p>I had the same experience with them a couple of years ago, also with another site called www.decidio.com -- Never got a real lead off of either of them.</p>

[ibdnzgr]

<p>I've also been robbed by scam sites that flat out never deliver or do just as the site above did. But I've also had incredibly great results with other sites and then seen them go down in productivity... poor management or bad marketing that year or whatever.<br>

As far as Decidio (mentioned in this thread) I have booked several weddings from them and have gotten legitimate leads. It is a free service other than paying for the lead... so I am not sure why that particular site would be blacklisted by anybody. I have had great success with OurWeddingDay.com and with WedPlan.net (my main lead services). They are legitimate and produce LOTS of real leads for me on a DAILY basis for very little cost. Photographypros.com is also a good site.<br>

I did the Knot for a while. They are legitimate, but never gave me more than a couple of weddings and are very expensive. Gatheringguide is also another good one... free and not very productive, but not a scam. Eventective is also a legitimate site and I have booked weddings through them. <br>

NEVER got anything useful after paying $199 for weddepot.com. They had a fantastic looking interface but no local leads. Respond.com used to send me very consistent and productive leads but not for the past two years so I dropped them. If they got their act together I would be glad to go back to them.<br>

Especially don't give money to a site that doesn't already have local photographers you recognize signed up. There is probably a reason!!!!!</p>

[frolickingbits]

<p>I got a sales call from them the other day-I put up a free listing, and the guy called offering me all of NH and Maine for $300 for the year, a bargain since it would usually be $600 just for NH. I didn't even really seriously consider it. The site is way too cluttered, and I doubt many brides really spend a lot of time looking for photographers on there. <br>

Any time I am looking at advertising, I take a good look at the Alexa rank of the site, as well as how the site presents itself. I don't want to be paying money to be on a site that doesn't get much traffic, and I don't want to be paying money to be on a site that is not attractive. WedAlert has half the ranking of OneWed, and is about 1/20th as popular as the Knot. <br>

As for the 'you've received a click through' e-mails, they are largely bogus. I have an ad with OneWed, and every once in a while I do a traceroute on the IP address they send along, which usually turns out to be a search engine bot.</p>

[william-porter]

<p>I got phone calls and messages from WedAlert, but they did not send me the email that I requested confirming that my account has been canceled. Today I notice that I can't log into my account—but in the absence of the email confirming cancelation, I'm not sure what that means. I've emailed them again, this time a bit more forcefully.</p>

<p>There are surely other services out there on the up-and-up. But my impression now is that WedAlert is a stinker.</p>

<p>Will</p>

[william-porter]

<p>I got an email a little while earlier today from an account manager at WedAlert. She said she asked somebody to call me yesterday to let me know that I still had a couple months left on my advertising contract and tell me they don't prorate a refund. Personally I think an email saying those same things would have been much better, but okay. Anyway, I wrote back saying I didn't expect a refund and confirming my request, and apparently they have now or will shortly comply. So I guess everything will be okay.</p>

<p>Fact remains, I've been with them for about 10 months, gotten a ton of emails saying that somebody has clicked on their listing for me, and zero phone calls or emails. I know that my web site isn't the sexiest one out there. But I DO get calls, from other sources. It's a big world and people have different tastes. You'd think — well, I'd think — that if hundreds of people had actually made it to my web site, one or two of them would at least have sent me an email or given me a ring.</p>

<p>Anyway I wanted to follow-up on my earlier messages and indicate that perhaps, in my case, WedAlert's phone calls in response to my cancelation request were not unreasonable. With any luck I'm out of it now. About to redo my site and reconsider my options.</p>

<p>Will</p>

[steve_tiger]

<p>Michael, William, Marc, Matt, Ian, and Mr. Davis,<br>

I am a co-founder and partner at WedAlert.com. We have been serving the wedding community since 2000, and have had thousands of satisfied advertisers. We strive to provide only the best customer service, and give our client's value for their advertising dollars.</p>

<p>We are very disappointed to learn of your negative experience with our company, and we realize that your advertising efforts and budgets are important to you, and we strive to deliver a return on your investment. </p>

<p>We have had many positive testimonials from all types of clients (including photographers) and those can be seen here: http://www.wedalert.com/wedding_pros/testimonials.asp.</p>

<p>We aim to make every client happy, but as you have probably experienced in your own business, no matter how much effort you put in, not all clients are satisfied.</p>

<p>To clarify we do not sell leads. We have never sold leads. We sell advertising. The leads are designed as a value add, to both you and the brides, because the brides information is only shared with wedding vendors the brides want to hear from, and only with vendors who agreed to give WedAlert Brides a "special offer."</p>

<p>The leads you may receive from us are filled out by visitors to our site, or in person by brides and grooms at bridal shows that we attend. Some of the handwriting on the leads is illegible and we do our best to get it right.</p>

<p>As far as the e-mail alerts from visitors to your sites, you can always login and turn those on or off. Again you should test your own listings, and see if you get an e-mail alert, or if the click appears on your stat program.</p>

<p>In response to Mr. Davis's concerns about Alexa rankings. Those are taken from sampling people who have the Alexa toolbar on their computer. Our ranking says we are the 24,927th most visited site in the US, which is not bad for a niche site serving the 3% of the population planning a wedding. </p>

<p>Moreover, as far as our calls are concerned, we intentionally try to speak with our customers instead of the impersonal e-mail and/or voicemail systems. When you call our offices someone always answers during business hours. Our clients are not forced to navigate some voicemail maze to try and get support, they actually get to speak with someone. </p>

<p>Therefore, again we apologize for your experience, and please note that we will continue to strive to place your business before potential brides and grooms, and also to provide the brides and grooms with a great place to plan their wedding. </p>

<p>Lastly, we take offense to being labeled with anything to do with scam, we are a legitimate company that has been in business since 2000, back when Excite was the most popular search engine, and before Google took storm. We always have had one mission, which is to help brides find wedding professionals and help to make their wedding planning easier, and to provide excellent customer service. We have also developed websites for many clients, and have always gone the extra mile to help with any issue they may have.</p>

<p>We are always available to address your concerns, and I will personally speak with any of you anytime. Thank you for your past business, we hope to be of service to you sometime in the future.<br>

Sincerely, <br>

All of us at WedAlert.com</p>

[william-porter]

<p>Steve, </p>

<p>I appreciate your response. I think it was the right thing for you to do and it does make me think better of the company.</p>

<p>One or two small suggestions, which of course you can take or leave. </p>

<p>If I phone, it's great that somebody will answer the phone. Terrific. But if I contact you by email, I think a response by email is appropriate. Actually, I was disappointed that the only way I could find to send you an email was by using your online form, since I would like to have in my own archives a record of the email that I sent. Maybe there's an email address link on the web site somewhere and I just didn't find it. Eventually, before Celeste responded helpfully to my request, I wrote to support at wedalert dot com, guessing that would probably land in SOMEBODY's inbox.</p>

<p>Anyway, if I had gotten an email in response to my initial request, I would have been grateful for the email and it would not have made me dig in my heels the way I did. </p>

<p>I also think that it should be possible to close an account on the web site. Again, maybe that option is there and I didn't find it. But I did look. The fact that I didn't find it frankly made me feel trapped. And I don't like feeling trapped. </p>

<p>I have my own personal reasons for wanting to cancel the account now, even before my year is finished. But I will personally try to keep an open mind about WedAlert in the future. Thank you for your response.</p>

<p>Will</p>

 

[steve_tiger]

<p>Thank you Willliam for your response, and good luck to you in all your future endeavors. Thanks also for keeping an open mind about our company. We have many exciting changes coming that we believe will address all of your concerns.</p>

<p>Good luck with your web redesign. If you want any assistance in implementing the changes to your site please feel free to call us and we would be happy to help.</p>

<p> </p>

[michaelchadwickphotography]

<p>Sorry, Steve, but your representative was really ugly with me when I told him I wasn't planning on renewing, plus the recent sudden thrust of "click throughs" when my year was almost up after going 11 months without such click through notices was just too suspicious for me to take as anything but someone at WedAlert's attempts to pad stats. I kept an open mind about WedAlert last year when it was time for the renewal, and got nothing out of it yet again. Fool me once, shame on you. I won't be fooled twice.</p>

[gabewalker]

<p>I signed up with Wedplan.net a few months back. You don't have to pay for leads when you pay the monthly $19.99. And I have received a bunch over the months. But the funny thing is, I've emailed and tried contacting the 'newly weds to be' and not so much as a response. I am starting to believe I have been hoodwinked. Maybe some of the leads are legit, but I would not be surprised if they had some kid making email addresses at $1 a pop. Another thing is when I search the emails in Facebook (I mean everyone has FB right?) or google, nothing comes up. Facebook is quite good at finding people within your area, through 4.74 degrees of separation. I mean I've searched for them by maiden names and groom's name, nothing. One couple was getting married in my town, of about 10,000 people. You would think one of my 680 friends were connected to someone who knew them. Apparently I am 3.84 degrees separated from everyone of FB. The point is I can find just about anyone online and seems none of these couples exist. I'm going to give wedplan one more month, if nothing after May-June season why stick around with them?</p>

[christopher_jones8]

<p>Gabe, my name is Christopher Jones. I am an owner at WedPlan. We have a response system in place that keeps track of what brides respond to what vendors. While a much greater percentage of brides will respond directly to vendor emails rather than coming back in through our system to respond, we nevertheless have a system in place and it keeps track of the date and time of each response. It is also a good way to facilitate communication for brides by letting them make responses in one place.<br /> <br /> We show that you have connected with 11 brides through our leads program to date. At the time of your posting you had made a total of 7 connections. Two of the 11 brides have responded to you through our response system. We do not know because we cannot track (for obvious reasons) when a bride responds directly to a vendor's email. The first response you received was from the very first bride you connected with. Her reply was made to you on April 26 at 8:46pm CDT and she indicated that she "might be interested in your services". Your next response from our system came on June 5 at 11:13am CDT. I do realize that that response was received two days after your posting here but the first bride's response was about a month prior to your posting. We have to assume then that you did not receive that first email we sent you since you stated above that you had gotten "not so much as a response" from any of the brides. We will forward you both of those original emails from our archive for you.<br /> <br /> While the idea of paying "some kid" $1 "a pop" to make up email addresses had not occurred to us as a viable business strategy, we might encourage you to give it a go. You might make it a couple of months before either going out of business, finding yourself in a small cell next to the likes of a Bernie Madoff, or both. But in all seriousness, we have the IP address and timestamp of every service request we have ever approved. We may have to include all or a portion of the IP address on each request. But to someone who truly believes we make up email addresses would it really make a difference if we provided the client's IP address? Some people believe that Elvis lives.<br>

<br /> The truth is that not only do we not "make up" email addresses, we don't even approve a significant number of the requests that we do receive. We carefully screen each request in a variety of ways to ensure that the request was not submitted by a wedding photographer or other vendor. Why would a vendor want to submit a request posing as a bride? We will leave that one up to you. Suffice it to say that it happens frequently and it is a violation of our terms of service. We can and do delete and permanently ban vendors who attempt to pose as a bride requesting photography or other services. Why would a vendor state that they had not "gotten not so much as a response" from any brides when in fact they had? We will also leave that one up to you. I do realize that it is tough out there. I fully appreciate that being a professional wedding photographer is an exceedingly challenging and competitive endeavor. That was true when the economy was good and it is even more so now. That being said, spreading speculation and flat out untrue statements about a business is, if not libel, certainly not helpful to other photographers.<br /> <br /> The last thing I will say is that the vast majority of brides who use our site search our directory to find vendors rather than submitting their information in the form of a lead. It seems as though many photographers focus exclusively on leads. I would say this is a major mistake, at least in terms of valuing our services. Other services might be different. When brides come to our site, most of them want to view images taken by our photographers, read reviews of their services from past brides, and click over to the websites of photographers they like for more info. It continues to surprise me how many photographers do not know what "website statistics" are, let alone how to access them. If you are paying a service for clicks to your website, you really need to know how many clicks you get for your money. Otherwise, it is like going to fill up your tank at a gas station with no meters on their pumps.<br>

<br /> Faithfully yours,<br /> Christopher Jones<br>

<br /> WedPlan</p>

[gabewalker]

<p>What ever happened to Wedplan.net? Now it's wedfolio? I was reading a thread that goes back to 2011. LOTS of dissatisfied customers (photographers) who were targeted and lured in with false leads. <br /><br />http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=276643 </p>

[christopher_jones8]

<p>Hello, Gabe:<br /><br />We don't "make up" leads. Never have, never will, never would. Our system now allows vendors to connect with brides on Facebook. And if you were using the service you would notice that every client we approve will have a relationship status of "engaged".<br /><br />Faithfully yours,<br />Christopher Jones</p>