ComplaintsforBLAZE Marketing

• Initial Complaint

  02/15/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Think Blaze Marketing was contracted to provide website hosting service plus marketing consultation for a monthly fee. When the marketing professional consistently missed meetings and didn't respond to communications or resolve issues she promised to address, we canceled our marketing contract with them and paid for hosting services only. We asked several questions about why the services weren't working and on January 3 of this year received a **** for $625 that the owner, *********************, had "forgotten" to tell us about for answering those aforementioned questions. On Jan 11, we sent an email asking for specifics and an invoice itemizing the charges. When we did not get a response by the 29th, we asked again and gave 30 days notice canceling our hosting plan. On Feb 9 we received a hastily put together pdf invoice labeled "update requests" (none of them were update requests). We said we would contact our board member in charge and get back to her. When our new hosting company requested the login information to make the transfer, they did not respond. Two days later they shut us out of our website. Let me reiterate. WE PAID FOR THIS MONTH'S HOSTING SERVICE AND IT IS OUR WEBSITE. We let her know we were looking into the other charges for which we were invoiced only 3 days ago.

  Business response

  03/11/2022

  To Whom This May **************** BLAZE Marketing was contracted in order to provide monthly hosting services to the customer, Art from Ashes. The monthly service agreement included hosting, a monthly consulting meeting between the customer and **********************, and small website changes for the very low price of $149 per month (Monthly Hosting: Includes hosting of Wordpress site, Wordpress & plugin updates, SSL Certificate, quick bug fixes, monthly meeting, and small occasional edits to your website.) this package is a bargain deal and retail value is $250+ per month.
  With this package, a meeting occurred on a monthly basis on the same day and time of each month and the date & time of the meeting was selected at the time the service agreement is signed. Art from Ashes attended the first and maybe second meeting meeting and then stopped attending meetings without notice while BLAZE Marketing consistently called into the meeting in August, Sept and Oct, although the meeting time showed it had accepted the meeting on a recurring monthly basis (see screenshot is still showing accepted by *** main point of contact listed under office admin) and unfortunately causing us to spend time waiting rather than being able to schedule other business during that time.
  After they missed a few meetings in a row, we then had a conversation reducing their plan to $50 per month since they were not making meetings, which no longer included a consulting hour or small website changes. We communicated that any website changes requested from them going forward would be billed at an hourly rate. They agreed.
  Art **** Ashes, continued to request changes to their website, even though their new hosting plan no longer included them. We then billed them once the changes they requested had been completed (The **** was only $625- which they have since paid). I am unsure what they mean in their complaint that "the services weren't working" since we have been hosting their website seamlessly (and we still are) and their website never went down.
  Art **** Ashes did provide 30 days notice (sent on Jan 29th) per our contract in which they wanted BLAZE Marketing to stop hosting their website, which would have terminated the hosting agreement as of 2/28/2022. HOWEVER, we DID NOT TERMINATE THE HOSTING AGREEMENT. The reason for this is that it is true in fact, as of today 3/10/2022 Art **** Ashes is still an active hosting client of BLAZE Marketing even though they provided us with 30 days notice. The reason being is that they asked BLAZE Marketing to continue hosting their website for the month of March (We have this in email as proof as well), and may very well ask us to continue service for April 2022 as well (TBD). PLEASE NOTE WE HAD EVERY RIGHT TO DECLINE THEIR REQUEST AND TERMINATE THIS HOSTING AGREEMENT AS OF 2/29/2022.
  However, at BLAZE Marketing, we believe in conducting good ethical business. If the website was to come down because we were to stop hosting it per the 30 days notice, it unfortunately would affect many people's lives that work with Art **** Ashes to obtain community service hours that is reported to the government. Regardless of the client's behavior, we do not want to impact these people due to client issues outside of their control.
  At this point, we do not want to continue hosting Art **** Ashes as a client as we feel as they have unfairly reported us to the BBB (this complaint to you came through to you on a Saturday, Feb 12 outside of BLAZE Marketing's normal office hours, and under 24 hours of them trying to contact us about a non-urgent outside of normal business hours claiming that the website was down although it was not). In which we did respond later that day even though it was outside of normal business hours (assuming after they filed this complaint and without providing us a reasonable amount of time to respond to their early Saturday email). Furthermore, I was not able to answer immediately that morning aside from being outside office hours, because on that Saturday I commited my free time to working with High Schoolers on the lacrosse field which is a 4 hour commitment.
  Additionally, on that Saturday, Feb 12 -I personally had several conversations with two of their staff later that day after I was down with my previous commitment of working with High Schoolers and after receiving the email claiming that the website was down (it was not down, the Art from Ashes Staff also verified it was not down, and our off hours team checked for any downtime during those hours in which they claimed the website is down, but it was not down and the hosting plan was still working). The conversations I had with ******* and ***** from Art **** Ashes staff went well, but I was informed that for some reason the owner from Art **** Ashes bothered one staff member while he was on his first vacation with his family after having his first child to speak to me about this non-urgent issue by supplying him with inaccurate information about BLAZE Marketing which I personally found very sad and rude to treat your fellow board member and staff in that way.
  And later that week, the other staff member I had spoken to quit on the spot.
  It is sad that this organization which we were so glad to help previously, has taken so much action to interrupt normal business operations, the lives of their vendors, and the lives of their staff members over non urgent issues and outside normal operating hours- when indeed all business processes were following proper procedure.  Any question they ever asked of us, we had replied to and have documentation of all questions through email and the responses- if you would like to request all of this documentation we can supply it to you gladly and are open to speaking over the phone with the BBB if necessary.
  BLAZE MARKETING ADDITIONAL RESPONSE:
  In response to the portion of the complaint below- we have email documentation of all update requests that came from Art from Ashes, and they were update requests for their website. In regards to responding regarding a transfer of hosting, this is a non-urgent request and we DID in fact respond with the information requested. Since the filing of this complaint, all invoices had been paid which to us confirmed that all charges had been looked at and accepted as work done properly by Art from Ashes. Additionally, in response to us "shut us out of our website"- is indeed true. We did in fact lock all others out of the back end of the website until we were in touch with the new webmaster for their website to ensure that the website was secure and transfer from our host to the new host would be successful and to ensure any updates or changes to the site would not occur during the hosting migration because that would break the website- AND AS I MENTIONED BEFORE WOULD DIRECTLY IMPACT THOSE TRYING TO FULFILL COMMUNITY SERVICE HOURS. When Art **** Ashes informed us they wanted us to continue hosting the site and were not ready for host transfer we reassigned a login to a member of their staff that would allow them to make changes as necessary to their website. 
  -------"On Feb 9 we received a hastily put together pdf invoice labeled "update requests" (none of them were update requests). We said we would contact our board member in charge and get back to her. When our new hosting company requested the login information to make the transfer, they did not respond. Two days later they shut us out of our website."--------
  In response to the portion of the complaint underneath this paragraph- ********* stated earlier in the complaint that we sent an invoice for charges on January 3, 2022. No other invoice was sent out on Feb 9- however we likely sent an inquiry as to when we could expect payment for their past due invoice previous sent on January 3. After they asked for more information to clarify the Jan 3rd invoice, we did send an email on 3 separate dates outlining the charges by time spent on each website ticket request, each email from them requesting these changes, and summarizing the charges. 
  "Let me reiterate. WE PAID FOR THIS MONTH'S HOSTING SERVICE AND IT IS OUR WEBSITE. We let her know we were looking into the other charges for which we were invoiced only 3 days ago."
  VIOLATION OF NDA BY ART FROM ASHES:
  Also on Saturday, February 12, 2022 *********, owner of Art **** Ashes violated a two way NDA signed by both Art **** Ashes and BLAZE Marketing. The violation of this NDA occurred when ********* falsely accused BLAZE Marketing of conducting sub par business practices and inaccurately relayed information to her friend. Her friend then publicly posted a relay of information from ********* of BLAZE Marketing on ****** My Business with a 1 star review. We have documentation of this review that clearly violates an NDA in which we could in fact press charges against Art **** Ashes if we chose to do so.
  In conclusion, we are besides ourselves that we have been required to respond to a misconstrued complaint over a $50 hosting contract and due to a non urgent request submitted outside of office hours in which we had to take 3 hours to gather information to respond to this complaint. Previously we were under the impression all things were resolved through discussion between the Art **** Ashes team and BLAZE Marketing.
  OUR REQUEST:
  BLAZE Marketing asks that since:
  1. All invoices have been paid by Art from Ashes to BLAZE Marketing up until this point,
  2. BLAZE Marketing has not violated any contract terms and has only acted in the best interest of the client,
  3. and BLAZE Marketing has chosen to continue hosting the *** website so it does not impact lives that are depending on it 
  That Art from Ashes:
  1. dismisses this complaint to the BBB
  2. and completely removes the 1 star review on ****** My Business that was left due to a violation of their NDA as ***** (*** board member) promised it would be removed.
  Thank you.
  
  Warmest Regards,
   
  *********************
  Director of Strategy
  Tel:  ************
   
   
  Consulting, Brand Management, 
  and Staff Augmentation
  thinkblazemarketing.com
  

  
  

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