Bright Local Suspended Our Access

[Dheeraj]

Due to guidelines of RBI on all Indian credit cards we had hard time paying recurring payments to merchants who have not updated their payment gateway based on how RBI wants for Indian customers. Due to this issue I was in communication with Brightlocal as we had 50 campaigns setup there for our clients and it took us 100ths of manual hours to setup and we were using it to track GBP's and report to our clients.

We are using many other tools like SEMrush and Agencyanalytics and I can use my Indian card on recurring payments to these so it was really frustrating so we have contacted their support and initially they were helpful and Trixy their customer support gave me several trails until we figure out payments but then some person name Ian came in scene and he warned me for all the frustration I had due to all this payment failure mess. Ian himself were amazed that why PayPal is not an option as they use Braintree to process payments. He then assured me that he will get back to me after discussing with their internal team and then nothing happened for several days.

He then involved their head Vicky Chandler and she threatened me that they can't work with us anymore which earlier they claimed they can setup one time payment which earlier I denied but then I agreed on one time payment for a year. All at sudden they blocked our account and we have lost access to all our campaigns. We were on a Pro plan with them. This behavior is really odd from Bright Local Support team. I have all the emails with them and we have tried 10 cards to pay but none worked. I was in talk with a US friend to pay on behalf of us and it was going to work but then all at sudden they suspended access to our account.

I hope they have their presence here and someone from their team can help with this situation.

 

[Dheeraj]

Bright Local have canceled our account and I no more have access to my campaigns which took us 100ths of human hours to setup and execute. This is not a good thing to do with any customer and all this is coming from a company like Brightlocal. I haven't had such experience with any other company I dealt with in my past 12 years of professional career.

I have contacted their owner on this forum as I saw his presence here but it seems he is not quite active here. I just want the forum to know about this and you have to be very soft spoken with them. And if you ever report their bugs with aggression as you are a paying customer (concerned for your client campgains) and if you are frustrated with their support you don't have right to raise your voice else you will be kicked out of their platform without notice and with their own will.

 

[VickyC500]

Here at BrightLocal it is never our intention to have unhappy or dissatisfied customers, and we work very hard to ensure this is not the case; I would like to address the points raised in this post for clarity, as there is more to this situation than detailed here

After many weeks of the support team helping you via email and live chat, trying to find a way to allow you to make a payment for our services , this included us escalating this to our product team, the manager of the support team and the manager of our accounts team, every possible option was exhausted, despite our best efforts, receiving any payments from your account remained impossible

Your free trial was extended numerous times beyond what we normally agree in order for you to continue using our services for free during the investigation of the payment issue. We are aware and impacted also by the constraints of Indian banks to subscribe to our platform and due to this there is only so much we can offer above and beyond our normal payment terms and gateways

During the numerous emails and live chats we had with some members of your team, very often the messages we received were full of threats, profanities and other forms of unacceptable language and behaviour that we simply we do not accept, your account was eventually suspended due to this, as I have a duty of care to protect my team members from having to deal with such correspondence

We explained to you on more than one occasion that this was not acceptable to us and asked you to refrain from continuing to speak to us in such a manner, warnings were given that your account would be suspended should this continue, unfortunately we reached that stage and informed you clearly of this at the time

I remain sorry that it came to this and it is very rare for us to make a decision to close a potential customers trial account.

Vicky Chandler
Head of Customer Success & Support
BrightLocal

 

[Dheeraj]

I would love to talk to you on the facts as the things you portrayed here is half truth. Yes I agree that there might be some sort of aggression from us as we value our clients and if your system fails to accept 10 different cards we have tried and your support has no clue with what is happening then you have to be ready to face some aggression.

We have been dealing with so many SEO software companies and never came a point where we got so much frustrated what we felt dealing with Brightlocal. We have also warned you that its our clients who are messing with our team on regular basis due to their ranking reports and their inability to generate PDF reports for more than 5 keywords from Brightlocal. Your support team had no clue when they will be able to fix the situation and it continued for more than a month.

Correct me if I'm wrong, we were a paying customer (not on trial as you mentioned) and if needed I can upload proof of payment of Amex card to upgrade from trial to a pro plan as well bought Local search grid credits. The payment actually started falling when it wanted to renew and by that time most of our clients received local search grid reports and they liked it and wanted their reports to be sent in that way. As I have mentioned we have used Agencyanalytics previously which I'm sure whoever works with them knows that their Local ranking reports are not valid this was the main reason we have opted Brightlocal to show our clients the grid tracking. We send bi-weekly reports to our clients and it is when our clients start hitting on our head for the reports we generated last time.

It is the same time when your support kept us waiting to resolve the issue with payment and I have talked to each card company here in India and they pretty much said that your merchant should support the way RBI wanted that e-mandate should be sent to customers. Even Google has fixed it now

Changes to automatic payments in India per RBI regulations - Google Pay Help

Why these changes are happening Due to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulations, automatic payments in India will be limited to â¹5,000 INR per transaction. The e-mandate notification also requires Goo

support.google.com

Most of the tech companies we deal like SEMrush, Agencyanalytics, Zoho, Ahref, SurferSEO etc our cards works just fine on recurring payments there so it was really frustrating that your support is unable to resolve payment issues as well other technical error our team has reported.

It was not only the payment issue but a couple of other bugs we reported to your team to fix it and your team was unable to provide any idea. Still there is NO option to generate PDF report of your local search grid reports and the only way to send report is by external URL. You had 5 keyword limit just couple weeks back which you guys fixed just recently upon reporting a bunch of times.

With all above happen I have myself reached out to you multiple times and made an apology for whatever has happen when you and your team threatened to close our account. I tried to made you understand the situation and personally felt sorry about it but still you have first suspended our account out of blue without any warning. I have then tried to approached you by LinkedIn and you have said I have time till 6th November and I told you that I'm trying to get help from one of my friend to pay the dues but all of a sudden you instantly cancelled our account within 3 minutes of the payment.

This is aggressive and it seemed to me that you were sitting with a ban hammer button and instantly banned us once we have finally paid in the account. Again with our 50+ campaign data and you have tried to portray that we haven't had any citations report running with you which is really funny that you tried to escape from your wrongdoings. You have not only threatened me to suspend our account but you went ahead and said that you will be putting a ban on our IP's as well. May I know is this the way you do customer success? Is this the way you handle any aggression coming from a customer earlier and then even someone felt sorry with whatever has happened still you chose to behave like this? Is this the way you head customer support team at Brightlocal?

I'm sorry I have to say this but it seemed to me that people within your team are afraid of you as I have tried to contact them by chat support and a couple of them were afraid and told me to talk to you and they can't help.

 

[keyserholiday]

I would love to talk to you on the facts as the things you portrayed here is half truth. Yes I agree that there might be some sort of aggression from us as we value our clients and if your system fails to accept 10 different cards we have tried and your support has no clue with what is happening then you have to be ready to face some aggression.

We have been dealing with so many SEO software companies and never came a point where we got so much frustrated what we felt dealing with Brightlocal. We have also warned you that its our clients who are messing with our team on regular basis due to their ranking reports and their inability to generate PDF reports for more than 5 keywords from Brightlocal. Your support team had no clue when they will be able to fix the situation and it continued for more than a month.

Correct me if I'm wrong, we were a paying customer (not on trial as you mentioned) and if needed I can upload proof of payment of Amex card to upgrade from trial to a pro plan as well bought Local search grid credits. The payment actually started falling when it wanted to renew and by that time most of our clients received local search grid reports and they liked it and wanted their reports to be sent in that way. As I have mentioned we have used Agencyanalytics previously which I'm sure whoever works with them knows that their Local ranking reports are not valid this was the main reason we have opted Brightlocal to show our clients the grid tracking. We send bi-weekly reports to our clients and it is when our clients start hitting on our head for the reports we generated last time.

It is the same time when your support kept us waiting to resolve the issue with payment and I have talked to each card company here in India and they pretty much said that your merchant should support the way RBI wanted that e-mandate should be sent to customers. Even Google has fixed it now

Changes to automatic payments in India per RBI regulations - Google Pay Help

Why these changes are happening Due to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulations, automatic payments in India will be limited to â¹5,000 INR per transaction. The e-mandate notification also requires Goo

support.google.com

Most of the tech companies we deal like SEMrush, Agencyanalytics, Zoho, Ahref, SurferSEO etc our cards works just fine on recurring payments there so it was really frustrating that your support is unable to resolve payment issues as well other technical error our team has reported.

It was not only the payment issue but a couple of other bugs we reported to your team to fix it and your team was unable to provide any idea. Still there is NO option to generate PDF report of your local search grid reports and the only way to send report is by external URL. You had 5 keyword limit just couple weeks back which you guys fixed just recently upon reporting a bunch of times.

With all above happen I have myself reached out to you multiple times and made an apology for whatever has happen when you and your team threatened to close our account. I tried to made you understand the situation and personally felt sorry about it but still you have first suspended our account out of blue without any warning. I have then tried to approached you by LinkedIn and you have said I have time till 6th November and I told you that I'm trying to get help from one of my friend to pay the dues but all of a sudden you instantly cancelled our account within 3 minutes of the payment.

This is aggressive and it seemed to me that you were sitting with a ban hammer button and instantly banned us once we have finally paid in the account. Again with our 50+ campaign data and you have tried to portray that we haven't had any citations report running with you which is really funny that you tried to escape from your wrongdoings. You have not only threatened me to suspend our account but you went ahead and said that you will be putting a ban on our IP's as well. May I know is this the way you do customer success? Is this the way you handle any aggression coming from a customer earlier and then even someone felt sorry with whatever has happened still you chose to behave like this? Is this the way you head customer support team at Brightlocal?

I'm sorry I have to say this but it seemed to me that people within your team are afraid of you as I have tried to contact them by chat support and a couple of them were afraid and told me to talk to you and they can't help.

I am failing to see how this is something that needs to be discussed here on LSF. Your reply proved Vicky's point that your communications were the reason that they suspended your account. Please read the forum rules as your post is violating the rules. If you were my customer and you treated me in the same manner, I would terminate services with you and I would not issue you a refund.

 

[Dheeraj]

I am failing to see how this is something that needs to be discussed here on LSF. Your reply proved Vicky's point that your communications were the reason that they suspended your account. Please read the forum rules as your post is violating the rules. If you were my customer and you treated me in the same manner, I would terminate services with you and I would not issue you a refund.

This thread was approved by Joy so I believe you shouldn't be worried about why this is getting discussed here. I can pretty much understand what is taking place here, however it won't stop me explaining myself.

I have read the rules you have sent and I did not find anything with this reply that I'm in violation of rules of this forum. If it is the case please enlighten me specifically and I would love to hear that in private message else it will distract the thread topic.

I would ask you to stop judging and passing verdicts based on your own understanding of this situation. I won't jump in to any situation like this and pass a judgement without seeing all the facts in details.

LSF is a community of local SEO's and I believe everyone should know how Brightlocal customer success team acts with their customers so they can stay aware of this.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

For the record we've been a customer of BrightLocal for several years and have had nothing but superlative customer service. Whenever we have an issue with any of their services, their response time is exceptional. Additionally, they contribute back to the SEO community (even non-customers) with free newsletters, tutorials, and webinars. I just want to make sure that other people who may be reading this post and not already familiar with BrightLocal, get the opinion of a very satisfied paying customer. I have no other association with BL other than being a long-term happy customer.