(!!!) Fraud Company - Illegal Practices with Questionable Results (!!!)
I had been on Semalt plans for a year probably, as I did not pay much attention to SEO on my website myself - I cannot say for certain if they helped or not.
One thing I know for certain: They build a lot of low-quality backlinks, on irrelevant websites to your industry, hence why backlink lists are not shared.
Whatever, enough of the SEO service.
Let's delve into their illegal practices.
I was on a paid plan, a 6-month plan that I manually paid, and did not leave my card inputted anywhere else, nor did I "subscribe" to anything.
One morning, my account manager had reached out to me with the request for approval of "the rebill". I have never authorized a rebill, I did not even respond to the message yet, but by 6 PM I noticed that 500 euros were withdrawn from my card. Again, I never authorized a subscription, neither during checkout or with my account manager.
I opened WhatsApp and I saw that a few hours ago (like 4 PM), my account manager had sent me an invoice for the 500 euro payment.
I straight away asked for a refund, I was told:
"Don't you want to continue?
As when we will do refund taxes will be deducted"
Semalt wants to ensure that I pay the Fastspring processing fee. What the fck is this?
I have absolutely 0 fcks about the payment fees you incur when you illegally charge your existing customers.
My account manager charged my card knowingly without my approval and any response from me at all to his initial message.
25th of January - I was assured that a refund would be issued, a full one, so I don't have to pay any fees.
30th of January - No refund yet, I sent a message to my account manager asking if it has been processed yet. I received a response saying "Yes, it's done from our side"
Today, 12th of February - As someone in e-commerce, I know very well that a refund does not take damn near 20 days to process. I had just written another message to my account manager, asking for proof of the refund.
This is A REAL REVIEW amongst many PAID ones.
Paid reviews? Yes.
Look through the reviews, for example, there's this one guy who is from the Netherlands and has left a 5-star review on Semalt's Trustpilot. If you open his Trustpilot profile you will see he has 25 more reviews on Trustpilot, all across different foreign websites, in different foreign languages. Seems like someone is spending his hours writing fake reviews for pennies.
Anyway.
Semalt, I am not looking forward to your response to this. However, be very careful with how you treat this review. I have full documentation, including chat logs with my account manager and I will happily post the link here for everyone to see.
I will get my money back through my bank if I have not received the refund by the 15th of February.
Regardless, this review will stay.
Date of experience: January 25, 2024