IOMART

[sem4u]

It must be my lucky week - 3 calls from 'optimisation' companies so far this week

Iomart / Rapid Rank must have been the worse one today. They have called before so I know what they are about

Basically they use doorway/cloaked pages to get you a Yahoo listing. They claim to have a special relationship with Yahoo, but this is obviously a load of bull!

Anyway, today I let the guy on the phone talk for about 10 mins about their service - yawn! At the end he asked me what I thought and I said that I did all the work myself on sites. This didn't impress him much so he said that "you are wasting time". I said that I wasn't, said bye and hung up

[I, Brian]

Iomart/Rapid Rank weren't using cloaking or doorways last time I looked - at most they were just using autosubmission software.

One of my clients had wasted money with them before Christimas - £250+VAT initial fee, plus £10 per month for hosting 3 pages.

I ran an IP check on the client site - the Iomart server was hosting over 4,000 sites.

All I can say is steer away from them.

[toolkit]

I noticed they've already registered the rapidw*nk domains :wink:

[brickred]

lol

[waterimp]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

Iomart/Rapid Rank weren't using cloaking or doorways last time I looked - at most they were just using autosubmission software.

One of my clients had wasted money with them before Christimas - £250+VAT initial fee, plus £10 per month for hosting 3 pages.

I ran an IP check on the client site - the Iomart server was hosting over 4,000 sites.

All I can say is steer away from them.

We have invested in both the Hosting and rapid rank and also the new google rapid rank.

We have now realised that they are not going to do what we thought, just take our money. I cannot see any way to get out of the contract as they are very clever and say there is no cancellation as the contract must run for the full 12 months. any ideas???

[I, Brian]

Tell them they have misrepresentated their serivces, will contact Trading Standards, and will insist on a refund or else you will issue a chargeback for services not delivered as promised.

That will get your money back.

Actually, it probably is a good idea to telephone Trading Standards as well - Iomart have been ripping off a lot of people with the Rapidrank services for some time now. I don't believe that I have any authority to report them as I never paid for their services - but businesses who have been affected *should* report the company to Trading Standards. So long as affected businesses don't bother reporting these type of companies, they will simply find themselves jumping from one cowboy to the next.

[G10]

Interesting I have just come across this thread.

I too have had a call from Iomart today and they told me how they could list my site on google front page for any given keyphrase as they are a multi million pound company and have a deal going with google.

This made my blood boil as I am aware of another company Iomart called with this sales pitch.

They also lied to me about other ways to gain top placement too.

I told them that with this sales pitch, google would kick their a$$ faster than you could say "Blackhat SEO". Phone went dead.

They must be stopped as they are just tricking companies into paying out lots of money by feeding them lies.

I am aware of a few companies that have sent mails to google (they do actually reply believe it or not) and informed them of this.

[Papadoc]

Now this is interesting...

From the U.S. this evening, all their domains such as iomart.com, netintelligence, iomartmail, iomarthosting are all 404. I find it hard to believe that a company this size would be down and out, so it makes me wonder if they are under DOS attack or if they have blocked all U.S. IP traffic. They received some horrible reviews on many U.S. boards here a couple of years ago.

Regardless of the business tactics and ethics (which I've never heard anything BUT bad about), these guys have a remarkable sense for making deals. Just two years after selling out their own broadband company, I see they have inked a deal with BT to give free broadband away to their new clients that otherwise use their services. These guys aren't just after dollars right now, they are after market share and they will do anything to get it.

I'm sure BT is pretty cocky in their position and isn't worried about anything that Iomart might pull. But if you think that many small fish deals cannot kill you, simply because they are small fish, consider the pirhanna.

[G10]

It's more than just blocking all US IP traffic Papadoc,

I am from the UK.

Nice to see that it is down though, makes me feel that little bit better.

[Ferre]

I'm in Amsterdam, Netherlands and they are all accessable from here.

[G10]

I know dude.

It has come back. Like one of those bad guys in the movies, it doesn't matter how many times you kill them they always manage to crawl back and have another go.

[crasher999999]

I see i'm not alone in being stiched up by iomarts rapidw**k package & yes, I still can't beleive I was so gullable as to be taken in by it. BAST**DS. But, I'm trying to sort something out to pay them back (don't worry, it's through the trading standards so it's all legal) so if your interested, please contact me paddyboyacland2000@yahoo.co.uk

[Ephemera]

Glasgow Trading Standards seem to have their hands tied becuse of the B2B implications and this seems to also affect Watchdog. Best bet is the DTIs Companies Investigation Branch set up about a year ago to prevent abuse by companies.

http://www.dti.gov.uk/cld/comp_inv.htm

[MadHatter]

Iomart are based in my home town, or they have an office in my home town... I know the scam, because some of the people who work there that I know do actually know quite a bit about SEO, and even know that they are ripping people of by providing a service that does jack...
But hey, it's just a job to them...