Sitesell warning

Hosting
1

I am not in any way shape or form affiliated with sitesell
My site, boiler-breakdown-repair-london.co.uk
was hosted there for about 6 months by the “webmaster” who set up my site originally, but not any more.

Sitesell in a word are dreadful. They are only interested in selling selling selling. Every question I have ever asked them was either ignored or answered with something along the lines of: you can buy this course, it should help you.

On top of that, their “design package” that allows a newbie to set up a website real quick has severe limitations both in design as in onpage seo.

I moved my site 3 months ago, and despite the fact that my site looks a bit tatty still due to the loss of images that need replacing, my ranking, traffic and positive feedback have gone up dramatically.

Act in haste, repent at leisure applies fully to Sitesell. When I got so fed up in the end that I decided to go through the hassle of moving, they were very unhelpful and even lied about what I needed to change host.

As the only “plus” ( easy diy website creation ) is offered by many others for a lot less money, I really can’t think of any positives for this company.

2

Hello,

My name is Denise. I work with SiteSell Answers (answers.sitesell.com).

I answer questions or concerns about Site Build It! or SiteSell that are erroneous. I am answering this because your issues in this post are not consistent with the following standards at SiteSell:

We don’t lie or prevent people from leaving SBI or doing what they wish to do. We help them. I investigated your complaint to see if someone did violate our responsibility to you.

My first duty, when I see a post like this, is to investigate. If we are at fault, we don’t hide it. We apologize and ask what we can do to make it better.

I asked the Head of Support at SiteSell to investigate where our support team may have been unhelpful. Here is what actually happened:

You never actually contacted support yourself (or if you did, it was through some other name – if so, please let me know what name or email address you used). The only contact you had with our support team was indirectly through your webmaster.

I can also tell you that our support team will never try to “sell” to you. We do NOT offer any courses or other products to sell.

The only possible add-on you could buy in addition to SBI! would be coaching services, if you needed extra help. The SBI! forums are enough for most people to resolve questions, for free.

Some SBIers asked for 1-on-1 coaching, so we added that service. But we do not “push” or “sell” it. It is such an insignificant part of our business, most businesses would not bother. We do.

You mention that you found it difficult to transfer your site away to another registrar and host. Domain transfers can have complications. There are several safety measures in place so that domains aren’t transferred fraudulently. These are safeguards.

SiteSell Support, alongside the support for your new registrar, guided you step-by-step through the process. It appears that it was your webmaster who actually contacted support and took care of the transfer for you.

What I DID find when investigating your site was that your site was growing month after month while you were with us. In fact, you started at 289 visits a month in July, 2010 and grew to 1598 visits in March, 2011. With a 500% growth rate during that period of time (7 months), you were definitely expanding until you transferred away in April.

As I read your complaints in this thread, benbob, it seems like your webmaster took care of most of SBI! for you. I find no evidence of direct contact with you.

Many webmasters do use SBI! to take advantage of having all the tools they need in one place and for the success rate. Your webmaster, who runs other successful SBI! sites, is delighted with SBI!. I talked with your webmaster about this, who denied any problems.

In summary:

It’s hard to figure out why you are so upset with us. In any case, now that it’s done, please accept my best wishes for the future.

Denise Taylor
SiteSell Answers

3

They may not be consistent with your “standards”, but it happened exactly as in my post above.

That’s a lie, or if you want to put it that way: a nice example of deniability as they were agents and not employees.
And lying they did, not once or twice but repeatedly. Sitesell did not prevent me from leaving because they couldn’t.
But they tried and were as awkward as possible. Questions were not answered accurately, if at all. By “forgetting to answer” or “misunderstanding” them and being as difictult as you can be, sitesell created a very big stumbling block which caused a delay of months during which I could do nothing with my website.
When I finally found somebody who told me step by step what to do, it was very easy, and could have been taken care of in a couple of days.

That’ a lie too.

Yet another lie.
In stead of coming up with a few simple answers, I was “offered” courses or package extensions.

I was told it was compulsory to produce certain certificates or reports from overseas sources but they were absolutely not required. I managed in the end to transfer the site without.
Changing host companies is not difficult at all if you know how to do it.

How convenient, must be somebody else’s fault; one of the many “agents” maybe?
Initially I sent an email to a director who never even bothered to acknowledge, but apparently shoved the case on to an agent. This agent did not come up with a single useful answer, but only suggested the purchase of a number of sbi products; at an additional cost of course.
Further attempts to contact the director with a compaint about the agent’s comlete lack of skill in assisting me went also unanswered.

4

Benbob,

Your answer gives me nothing specific to verify. You definitely had a webmaster, as confirmed by that person (per my post above), and who denies any problems. Still, you may have contacted us under your own name or through a different e-mail address.

So please provide specifics (the actual name you used to contact Support because the only contacts with SiteSell Support that I can find for your domain name were with your webmaster, who I talked with and who denied any problems and is happy with SBI!). Please either provide your actual name and contact information that you used to contact SiteSell Support…

a) here, or

b) to SiteSell Support (just ask them to send it to SiteSell Answers and they will, no questions asked), or

c) to Ken Evoy himself. At any time, as you know, if you are unsatisfied with SiteSell Support (or if you just want to send along kudos), you can send a note to SiteSell Founder Ken Evoy. Every reply from Support has a special address that goes to him directly (after screening out abuse, pitches, etc.).

He personally gets involved. I asked him and he has no record in his personal database of having received any complaint from anyone about your domain. It is not too late to send the specific information to Ken himself.

Without that, I cannot add anything further.

Denise Taylor
SiteSell Answers