Bonza Mobile Computer Repairs

Crooks and dirty tricks….

For those of you who have a website……(particularly a Bonza website)

When your website went live on the internet did you receive a phonecall from Google 2 days later? Perhaps you received a call from a Google representative? Google Australia? An authorised reseller for Google AdWords? 

Whatever they say, all you hear is Google, Google……

Did you receive one call or several?

This is what happened to one of our clients after his website went live on the 21st April 2010.  He received 3 phone calls in a row on the 23rd April from  different callers from the same company. Each telemarketer introduced themselves as “Google calling”.

1. The first call confused him – why was Google calling him!

2. The second call caused him to panic – why isn’t my web developer handling Google calls, what has she done wrong?

3. The third call just angered him – he felt harassed.

The company bullying our clients is called Yodel.

I phoned Yodel (again) to complain and was given a wall of words, “We’re reputable, we don’t do that, our team is fully trained, yadayada”. 

I had to literally scream at the guy to get a word in. When I finally got his attention, of course he denied bad practice, and then had the gall to ask me to be a reseller for them!  That is, hand all Bonza clients over to Yodel!

I’ve known for 2 years or more that Yodel has been harrassing our clients.
Many of you reported it to me, many of you were concerned and many of you were upset and just a bit grumpy. One client was reduced to tears by the bullying tactics of Yodel!

It’s not that they’re targeting Bonza especially. Well I hope not, even though it certainly feels like it!  It looks like they’re trying to undermine the marketing Bonza does and in the scheme of things we’re just an ant compared to Yodel’s manpower. It’s very unfair on you and Bonza.

I have reported Yodel to Google many times as a company misrepresenting Google and forwarded complaint emails from our clients. Nothing has been done . **Read below, maybe something has started.

We’ve been working online for 11 years, Yodel is a relatively newcomer. I’ve never come across such dirty and deceptive “poaching” practices. In fact, most ethical companies who offer similar services NEVER step on each others toes. There’s mutual respect and most companies willingly share information rather than steal in such a competitive environment. 

So how does Yodel know about YOUR new websites the minute it’s made live?
They say they target new businesses the minute you register it.
That doesn’t compute with 2 days after a website goes live, does it?

I HAVE FINALLY DISCOVERED WHAT’S GOING ON!

As part of our services, whether you buy a Bonza Bambino or a full website, Search Engine Optimisation is included. Part of SEO is to ensure your website gets listed in search engines and directories.

With crawler search engines like Google there is no need to submit your site, it will find it in time and if the site’s well designed and relevant to keywords you’re targeting it will be indexed.

For directories, we hand submit to Yahoo and Open Directory which are human edited, plus to a few Local Directories. Local directories won’t send that much traffic your way, but because they take up a lot of real estate in the search results pages, and do AdWords advertising, are sometimes worth the link directed to your site.

It turns out many of these local directories are referrers for Yodel!
Well that’s downright deceptive since they don’t mention it anywhere on their sites nor in their Terms and Conditions or Privacy Policies.

Look out! everyone is trying to get their hands on your money!

Yodel wants you to do online advertising with Google AdWords. As you know Bonza also offers AdWords management services.
Trying to compete with the packages and prices Yodel offer will see Bonza out of the market in no time….. so I decided to find out just how efficient and honest they are at managing AdWords campaigns.

Here’s a link to some reports online going back to 2008 (I’ve said my two bits in there too). Don’t leave a comment because Yodel is monitoring this site and will phone you to tell you how honest they are!

http://australiansearchengine.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/yodel-google-australia/

** Yodel advertise themselves as Authorised Resellers for Google.

Here’s the latest from Google.

Google is shutting the current form of the authorised reseller program, which has operated for at least three years. The AdWords reseller program conceptually was a win-win for Google and its  partners; however in practice it hasn’t worked out quite as well as hoped.

My speculation is that Google is seeking to “fix” the program and putting it on hiatus. One apparent frustration on Google’s part is that some participating firms siphon off a significant chunk of the advertiser’s media spend as margin or fees, leaving less to make the actual keyword buys and delivering less real value to the advertisers accordingly.

These sources told me that Google has said it intends to relaunch the program later this year, though perhaps with somewhat different terms and conditions.

Adwords can be an excellent way to spend your marketing budget so long as your campaign is in the right hands and you see results. Google is reputable. Companies who exploit their good name and products are crooks!

By the way, Google never phones you directly…

If you’ve had a Yodel experience, bad or good, please leave a comment.

Tags: google australia, google representative, yodel