E.Wagner, CA - 9/2/2008
I have read so many complaints about Stores On-line that it is almost impossible to believe that a class action suit has not been filed against the company. I have, as many other trusting investors been "Ripped Off" by Stores On-line. I left my job and was told that as soon as the web site was up, "watch the cash flow". It took months to make contact with anyone and just as long to get return calls (I received three call backs). I started receiving calls after I quit paying them. I had already spent thousands for the right to be ripped off. They promised "Satisfaction Guaranteed". I tried to bring up the guarantee and they said they never even eluded to a guarantee of any kind. When my daughter tried to communicate with them they spoke rudely to her (the phone was on speaker), I got on the line and the rudeness continued. We asked for assistance and didn't receive adequate help. We continued attempting to work the very low budget wed site development that was extremely difficult to negotiate. We never did succeed. If you are contemplating a venture with Stores On-line, save your hard earned money and put it in a CD or Mutual Fund. You will make more even if you gave it away to charity.
E.Wagner
Monterey County, Ca.
Mark Weinberg - 3/26/2008
On the 19th of March 2007 I, Mark Weinberg attended the Stores Online seminar in Sydney Australia at the North Sydney RSL Club. As a result I purchased 6 websites for $4600.00
I am writing to you to inform of my extreme unhappiness & frustration with the product purchased, & the way it & Stores Online the company have operated.
I purchased the Stores Online websites with the intention of adding pages & links to my existing website & to use the permission based e-marketing of newsletters. I wanted to transfer the hosting of my original site to Stores Online & through the Stores Online system - add products, pages etc. to my existing business’s website.
In the past year I have tried to use the system extensively. During this time I have found the product & the content management system to be complicated, inaccessible & in complete contradiction to what was presented at the seminar in Sydney. As a customer I feel cheated & that I have been sold something under false pretenses.
As a result of my dissatisfaction with Stores Online, its deficient & inoperable system, I believe that I am well within my consumer rights to be refunded the amount outlaid for the purchased product. In addition, I wish to contest the 3 day cooling off period, as that amount of time is impossible to investigate the system & its workings.
Below is a list of my complaints & problems experienced that have brought me to this conclusion. If these complaints are not taken into consideration & my request for a refund is not adhered to, I will take the following steps such as;
List of Complaints
• False advertising of user-friendliness of website building system:
At the seminar it was stated that anyone with very little or basic computer skills would be able to use the system to build a website. I have more than a basic knowledge of computers. I spent approximately 6 months, outside of my normal working hours, going through the Stores Online training materials & concurrently applying what I was learning to building a website. It was at this point that I found the training materials to be poorly designed, & the system to be extremely complicated & inaccessible.
• On-line & Telephone Support
The on-line customer support is incompetent & more importantly inconsistent! Questions were never answered clearly making instructions difficult to follow. On line customer service operators constantly gave contradictory advice to the same questions asked.
There was great difficulty in being able to access customer service telephonically, owing to international time differences. In addition, I experienced being put on hold for long periods of time until my calls were attended to.
This is a grave oversight in the service provided by a company that sells their products internationally. Having originally paid a large amount for the software, customer telephone support should be available 24/7 with a Toll Free number! Furthermore the lack thereof has led to excess expenditure on overseas phone bills to Stores Online.
• Programming
Unsuccessful individual attempts at building a website, lead me to approach the Stores Online programmers to program my site. I wanted to copy the content of my existing website on to a Stores Online web template. However, the site that the programmers produced looked highly unprofessional, badly designed & it was not as good as my original website. I paid an extra $150 programming fee for this service with an unsatisfactory & unfeasible result - another additional and unnecessary cost for a falsely advertised “user friendly” product.
Further endeavors were made to improve the site with customer service, so as to achieve a more professional & satisfactory layout. Once again these attempts proved fruitless. In desperation, I contacted an independent Australian based web design company to help me achieve this aim. After they thoroughly investigated the Stores Online system & templates, they were unable to integrate my web-site design. Their reasons were owing to the inflexible nature of Stores Online’s web templates to create a professionally styled layout.
In conclusion, I have now spent approximately $5000 & countless hours on Stores Online’s system over the past year, with nothing to show for it! I feel that this purchase has also hampered the growth of my existing business, as I would have upgraded my website with a local company in a very short time, at a fraction of the cost paid to Stores Online! I am now starting this process again with a Sydney- based web design company.
The fact remains that I have purchased 6 websites & have not touched five of them, & never will. I see no reason why Stores Online, due to my detailed account of their product & service above, should not refund me (or buy back) for at least 5 of the websites that have not even been activated, or even published.
If I do not get a response from this letter & the appropriate refund, I will be taking absolutely every step necessary to reclaim these stolen funds!
Ray Stearnes - 1/14/2008
I was another sucker who purchased 6 sites from SOL. I published my first site in July 2007 and was told that my merchant account would be activated in approx. 15 days. It is now mid January 2008 and I still can't accept credit cards online. They refuse to take ownership of any problems and are driving me insane.
C., USA - 9/22/2007
I'd like for everyone who has been duped by SOL to try filing a claim/complaint with the BBB...
Nancy Kent, USA - 9/19/2007
Comments: Why should I tell you about the deceptive scheme I fell for if all you're going to do is read about it? Are you planning bring a class action lawsuit? If so, I'm in and I'll be happy to tell you my story. As for now, I'll just chalk up that $5300 to hard-won experience. I'd just like to get their PMI-EMS group to stop calling me and trying to get me to spend several thousand more!
Clara Doris Ney, USA - 9/19/2007
Store on line is nothing but a scam. I have paid, a lot of money to this company and I have nothing to show for it. They have $1,160.00 of my money and they want $6,000.00 more. I will not pay any more and I have stop payment on the other balance of $2,324.00. They are threating to put it on my credit report. I refuse to Pay it. Please help me get what I have already paid back.
I have a lot of of bad information from other people and I will be turning it over to the Attorney General of Georgia.
Clara Doris Ney, USA - 9/19/2007
Hello,
I am filing a complaint on Stores on line, I was ripped of of $1,016.00, I signed up for a online business with Stores on line and I still haven't got anything completed. After a very short while they called me and wanted $6,000.00. I refused and also stop the payments of the $2,700.00. They said, they will turn it over on my credit report. This is nothing but a scam and it should be stopped. If there is a way I can get my money back, I would appreciate and they need to be shut down.
Gina Eddy, USA - 8/17/2007
hi
Can i get my money back or is it better to just stop paying and ruin my credit. who do i talk to i still like a years worth of payments and already they want more money. please help Gina
Darlene C. Cole, GA USA - 8/11/2007
I was ripped off by stores on line in Ga. $320.00 down total around $6000.00. I contacted their customer service who in turn did not understand a thing I needed most of the time. I am contacting my Attorney General in Ga to complain and I would love for anyone else to also.The more complaints the more will be done in this matter several States have banned them and I would like to see them stopped now before more people get snatched in their web.
A. Shumpert - 7/6/2007
Wife was conned, I found out at the 11th hour and was able to reverse my credit card, These people are just snake oil salesmen, I encourage everyone to call their state attorney generals to put these people out of business.
Marilyn Martyn - 7/4/2007
Although I have had service from them setting up a website I feel now I was not wise in signing up with them.
Kris Zellers - 1/17/2007
Ripped off by storesonline and i can't tell you how many times i contacted them on a refund
Ellen Park Marketing - 1/15/2007
Hi,
Yes I'm a sucker with Stores Online. Perchased 6 licences. Have had 3 active, now 2. With one site I'm persisting with in an atempt to recove the thousands of USA $ spent. The other firm I've used is EMS more $ with no results. Intersesting part is both these firms made exception promises!! Do Not Go There is my advise.
Patricia Holt, UK - 11/18/2006
I've also been ripped off by StoresOnLine, but in the UK. In their info given to me, they said 'we hope you will host with us' but when I tried to host with others who don't cost so much, I was told that I couldn't use the s.o.l templates, so that was months of work and money wasted.
They give a download to 'do it yourself' but I was not able to fathom anything out from this, so it was a waste of time.
Anyone else out there from the UK with the same problems? Did you get anywhere or any help?
Vicki Bell, Australia - 11/17/2006
I have two big gripps against SOL. Firstly we had to pay $999 for links4trade for six stores. We were guaranteed several hundred links after 12 months. I never had more than about 50 - not one of which was to a decent site. I've just had to spend nearly $200 to get LInks Assistant. I want my $999 refunded. SOL say it is part of a package & as we purchased a package, there is nothing we can do.
Secondly without the SOL forum, which SOL does not run, there is no way most people could ever get their stores to work. SOL just do not build the store & give you the advise they say they do. eg no H1 tags, there say nothing about putting your footers in, etc etc. Much of their marketing advice is out of date. I have two stores which aren't making any money; though at this point I am sticking with them, as I think eventally I can get them to work.
Any way I can get my $999 back. I am in Australia.
John McCoy, WA, USA - 11/15/2006
We were very disappointed with StoresOnline's unethical and dishonest business practice.
We have paid $5399.00 on 2/24/06 to Stores Online - for a complete E-Commerce Online Store hosting service.
Even though they have promised, we had the following problems:
- No FTP connection established, therefore we were not able to upload any files. We have tried to contact them over phone, chat and emails multiple times – they never got it working after several weeks.
- UPS nor USPS shipping integration did not work for US nor International shipping, so we were not able to establish online shipping options.
- Integration of Merchant processing service (our merchant account bank is Nova) never worked out after multiple requests via online/phone and emails. Just to confirm this was discussed and confirmed that they can do the integration before we signed up with Stores Online at the seminar.
There were several other issues we had trouble with StoresOnline, but the above were the major ones.
After weeks of frustration trying to get the site going, we finally gave up on StoresOnline and had to go to a different hosting company to host our site. With the new company, I never had any problems and the site was up and running within 1 week. Our product is wakeboard parts, so our best marketing season is from spring to summer. We have wasted our critical time of the year to sell our products trying to get the site going with StoresOnline. We almost thought of suing them for the business loss, but instead requested for a simple refund for the service we did not receive.
StoresOnline denied our refund request saying “you did not request the refund within 3 days after the contract”. This is ridicules and unethical statement. How were we able to evaluate and tell that they do not provide what they promised within 3 days?! For several weeks they kept saying that they will help and they will get this working dragging forever. One representative said “We do not refund, remember you have one year to set the site up. You have plenty of time,” This was very upsetting statement. Our company can not afford waiting one year to get the site going!!! If StoresOnline takes one year to get the site going compared to the other hosting companies within a day or a couple days at the most with much less setup cost, we feels we were really ripped off by StoresOnline!!! We feel that they are very unethical and dishonest.
