From what I can gather RedZee should change their mascot to an animal more identified with shiftiness than a cute Zebra. Ever since I wrote "Seeing Red - Search Engine RedZee Reviewed" I have lost count how many people have either thanked me for saving them from spending money fruitlessly at RedZee or have told me they wished they saw my article before they paid for advertising there. But what brings me to mention RedZee today is an email I received from "Abe" (his name has been changed to protect his identity), a RedZee victim who is asking me to help him recoup nearly $1500 USD he spent on the search engine. Interesting, well let's dig deeper here:

Abe, why are you trying to recoup your spend?

"After a week and several hundred "hits" I realized the service was a scam because I had no conversions and my tracking software showed that all my the "visitors" from RedZee landed on the same page and stayed less than 1 second."

And what can I do to help?

"I was wondering if you can help me by providing your expert opinion to my credit card company regarding RedZee's Referral Spam practices that have resulted in my receiving thousands of 'hits' but no conversions over the past 6 weeks."

My heart goes out to Abe because I believe he is likely correct in his concerns judging from the bad reputation RedZee seems to have; see "RedZee Scam". Unfortunately, in order to help him with this I would have to:

> Have Abe sign a contract protecting me should this issue escalate and RedZee take this to court.

> Thoroughly examine his web site analytics data to ensure his findings were properly referenced.

> Review his web site to make sure nothing could have gone wrong to impede the data.

> Examine the data that RedZee provided and compare it with his analytics data.

> Prepare my findings for his credit card company along with fulfilling the other requirements of my expert testimony. This includes explaining that RedZee has misrepresented itself.

What does Abe's credit card company need to follow through in a chargeback to RedZee at this point?

"A second opinion from a qualified expert. This should be on the expert's letterhead, it should be dated, it should state the expert's years of experience in their field, and it should bear their signature and explain the manner in which the service is deficient or not-as-described. Also, please have the expert provide copies of their credentials (For example, a copy of the expert's license in the field). The second opinion must support your dispute about the level of quality or misrepresentation of the service that was received."

I hate to say this but I honestly do not think this process would be financially worthwhile for Abe considering he is only out of pocket $1500. That said, I do believe we need more awareness in the form of blog postings from other people who have been wronged by RedZee... in the long run that will have a far greater effect. The more people that get insight into RedZee's questionable business practices the less business they will receive.

To end this posting I have two questions for our readers:

1. If you could pick an appropriate mascot for RedZee what would it be?

2. How do you feel about RedZee? Share your story in our comments section!

Please post your answers in our comments and we will post them ASAP!

Lastly, help us get the word out and save other people a lot of headaches by linking to this article RedZee Complaints Pile Up - Read this Before Using RedZee!" or republishing it elsewhere (with link credit back to this original posting please).

Oh and of course once again I welcome any official reply from RedZee on their complaints. I know from past experience they never reply but the door is always open.

Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Here are some other great resources on RedZee:

Quote from RedZee Search Engine: The Top 3 Scam:

"A quick search for RedZee, even from the RedZee site itself, returned plenty of results with people complaining of low or non-existent conversion rates and traffic that behaved more like a bot than a human visitor. It would appear that people who have used the RedZee Top3 Search Results service in hopes of paying next to nothing for visitors have gotten exactly nothing in return."

Quote from RedZee Scam and Unprofessionalism:

"I was ripped off by RedZee also. I spent $900 for targeted traffic from RedZee. I got some traffic but it all appeared to be from BOTS since I got no subscribers for my FREE newsletter that normally converts at 29%.


When I asked for a refund, John Kelly asked for my traffic stats, which I sent. They offered to give me more traffic which they did, but I still got no conversions for a FREE offer despite their "sending over 7000 click visitors."

I again asked for a refund and said I would file a claim with the credit card company. He then said, "we have never lost a charge back claim."

Ross Dunn is the CEO/Founder at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Ross's articles and those of the veteran StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com/ Tel - 250-385-1190, Toll Free - 877-385-5526, Fax - 250-385-1198

Mark writes: Hello:

I am also one of those that got taken by Redzee. But here is a bigger issue. They do not use the https:// layer when checking out. I checked my site and Amazon.com on Redzee, when you get to the CC page the url does not change to https it stays http. I also checked the page info for each and the info says it is not secured for either my site or Amazon.

Being taken for a few hundred dollars in one thing but letting a customer CC info out into the public is another.

Thanks
Mark

20:24:49 Wed Apr 1 2009 CDT


Liz writes: Hello
I must say that I was duped by RedZee also, since July of 2006. This was mainly because the website we had from then until January of 2009 did not have the capability of showing how many referrals or hits on our site actually turned into sales.

January of this year, 2009, we moved to a new server and website. This host has an awesome statistics capability that allowed us to see that the thousands of RedZee hits that were sent to our website never once turned into a sale, while hits from Yahoo, Google, etc, converted into an average 5% to 7% of actual sales from real, live customers.

When I confronted RedZee about this, I got a lame response that the host just wasn't tracking the RedZee information properly. Long story short, my server proved them completely wrong. With my servers help, I put together a 30 page report showing the fraud committed by RedZee and presented it to our bank hoping to get a $7,200 chargeback. Needless to say, we succeeded. RedZee never even responded to the chargeback.

Armed with this, I have just sent a request to the BBB in Florida to recover the other $21,000 that I was duped into spending with RedZee over the past 3 years - boy, do I feel stupid. We'll see what happens with that. My next move, should RedZee not cooperate with the BBB is to send the entire report to the State Attorneys office in Florida and see what happens.

It is amazing that this company is still in business. I hope this helps anyone who is even toying with the idea of doing business with RedZee to run in the opposite direction as quickly as possible.

13:12:42 Tue Mar 31 2009 CDT


Jeff writes: Hey Ross, these guys at RedZee should be honored by Harvard Premier for their scam tactics. By the way, Harvard Premier is a scam also. It's tragic when a Internet Company turns out bad. It paints a bad picture for Internet Marketing. They need to get stung by a scam so that they can feel what it is like to screw other people around.

As for a mascot for RedZee, they should pick the Dung Beatle. They are certainly full of you know what.

7:06:08 Sat Mar 21 2009 CDT


James writes: I spent about $800 - I received 0 conversions and also noticed in my stats that they were bouncing within seconds of arriving. They called me numerous times after that trying to get me to redo the campaign and I kept telling them I didn't have ONE conversion from them so WHY would I give them more money ?? The reps really never had anything to say in response to that except, "sorry, your site looks spectacular so I don't know why. Maybe if we try again you will fare better this time?" - what a joke. RedZee, I do NOT recommend.

11:25:07 Fri Mar 20 2009 CDT


Steven writes: 1. Actually I'm thinking Africanized killer bees, they'll keep stinging till their target's dead.

2. They did call me once about putting one of my sites on the top 3 sc... er... plan; but, first, I don't care much for PPC, and second, I didn't see that their search site even had enough users to be worth trying. Seeing this just reinforces my decision.

10:00:41 Fri Mar 20 2009 CDT


Steve writes: The most appropriate mascot would have to be a weasel of course!

9:20:20 Fri Mar 20 2009 CDT


Lee writes: I was contacted by RedZee and I must say, the sales pitch is quite compelling.

After experimenting on their search page a bit it didn't take long to discover the "Search Engine" was useless. Every search I initiated returned mostly non-related garbage, not to mention how annoying it is to navigate through the slide show presentation.

I can only imagine how difficult it would be if someone were "actually" attempting to find us using that service. What good is a thumbnail of the web page if the person doing the search has never been to the site before. Other search engines have set the bar way too high for this group to be a player, much less a contender.

Naturally I declined their offer.


7:38:00 Fri Mar 20 2009 CDT


Rob writes: RedZee isn't the only one out there sending bot traffic. It's just the one in the forefront right now because it's the one your former article was about.

IMO I don't think any traffic provider is totally legit in what traffic they send. I could be wrong - I hope someone out there can prove me so, so that I can check them out.

6:49:06 Fri Mar 20 2009 CDT


Nathan @ 1-clan.com writes: The link to "RedZee Complaints Pile Up - Read this Before Using RedZee!" that you said to post around to help stop this dont work.

Can you fix it so I can get the right link posted around please thank you

4:51:20 Fri Mar 20 2009 CDT


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