Comments on: Yodel = Google Australia

By: Inanna_Co

Inanna_Co — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:47:28 +0000

don’t believe anyone from Yodel, dont give them your bank account details! your money will shrink in no time without you knowing!

By: Best Way To Get Noticed On The Internet | South Gippsland Website Design

Best Way To Get Noticed On The Internet | South Gippsland Website Design — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:18:56 +0000

[...] OH DEAR! – As usual, I did a google search for complaints regarding any company I am considering dealing with and came up with these interesting customer reports. [...]

By: Calvin Wood

Calvin Wood — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:16:59 +0000

I have a number of clients who have similar sentiments. I work for Reach Local Australia, and I would suggest we offer a different experience. I am located in Victoria.

By: Michelle Klement

Michelle Klement — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:04:37 +0000

Wow, I wished I had read some of these posts before I did anything with Yodel and then referred two of my team onto this company who they are now making money from which I was supposed to have been paid a referral fee which of course never eventuated.
Poor customer service, phone calls NEVER returned, promised reports never sent, the exact way NOT to run a company.. and to be frankly honest, I cannnot see any point of contacting any of the people above as none of them are “ever available” or “in the country” …
Honestly, it’s companies like this that makes people very vary of the internet marketing industry!!
GOOD ON YOU YODEL for showing how best NOT TO RUN a business!!

By: Carlo

Carlo — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:03:07 +0000

YODEL CONTACTS

For those struggling to get through the Yodel run around, here are some company contacts that will help you through.

Their Youtube videos indicate that key people within the business are

Paul Harvell – Managing Director
David Mayman – Unknown (FulfilNet Director – Parent Company)
Michael Gerardis – General Manager
Kynan Albassit – New Sales Manager
Matt Walker – Internet Sales Consultant
David Thew – Corporate Accounts Executive
Hai Duong – Marketing Manager
Natasha Howard – Yodel Accounts Manager
Janty Mohammed – Business Development Manager
Pierre Ajram – Referral Channel Manager

email address provided info@yodel.com.au

By: Carlo

Carlo — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:43:30 +0000

Terry,

I recommend you place a call to your state department responsible for consumer protection.

Under NSW law,

“you have a ‘cooling-off’ period of five business days during which you can choose to cancel a sale over $100″

-NSW Office of Fair Trading

IMPORTANT TO NOTE,

Yodel deliberately implement stalling tactics to avoid loss of sales within the cooling off period.

The cooling off period is 5 BUSINESS DAYS. This can be done by POST, FAX or EMAIL.

You’ll receive only the email address of the salesperson who sold you to cancel via. This isn’t enough.

To ascertain the correct email address, you’ll need to call their Toll Free number. You’ll then be redirected and hung up and lead on.

This is performed in the hope the buyer will abdicate their rights in frustration.

The best method of overcoming this issue is to visit their website, send REGISTERED POST to their office.

REGISTERED POST – CONFIRMS THEY’VE RECEIVED YOUR MESSAGE and CANT HIDE BEHIND YOU DIDN’T SEND IT ON TIME.

By: Carlo

Carlo — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:25:13 +0000

Outline of Yodel Business Model

1. Sell clients Google Adword budgets (campaigns) at a variable price (X). (ie. X could be 300, 600, 900, etc).

2. Define a campaign length at START. 30 days, 90 days, 180, 365 days. (Y)

3. Divide X by Y = Z “Daily Budget”. Daily budget is the pre-determined limit any business can receive in clicks on any per day.

4. Presume on average, $1 of the $5 budget is used. Yodel will keep those $4 as “FORFEIT CREDIT”.

Example: Over 100 days, your business will receive only $100 of its advertising spend. Yodel will receive $400.

Yodel, in this example would receive 80% commission for your advertising dollars.

By: Terry

Terry — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:01:44 +0000

Yodel Australia deceived me too. I was stupid enough to call them back and sign up, thinking they may be do a better job than me. Almost immediately i requested a cancellation. Yodel Australia could not spell my name or my company’s name correctly in correspondence (they are both simple) so i did not want them to wreck my advertising too.

After finding out about Yodel Australia’s bad reputation I started to worry. And with good reason…

I have now been jumping through hoops for a month, and Yodel Australia keep delaying my refund by referring to their various ‘policies’. First a 14 business day (~3 weeks) evaluation of my reasons and then a 7 business day (~1.5 week) refund processing period.

Yodel Australia are a disgusting bunch and i will do all i can to warn others of their damaging effects on business and shoddy practices.

By: Winston

Winston — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:25:54 +0000

Same here. Impossible to get your money back.

I’ve been trying now for two months to get a refund.

Dodgy business – please stay well clear of them!

By: Wendy

Wendy — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:47:25 +0000

Thank you for these comments. I have been contacted a few times by Yodel – who never identified themselves as Yodel just as an authorised reseller of Adwords (and implied they were part of Google). I showed some interest and have had numerous calls attempting to get my credit card number for sign up (to manage my Ad Words which are going okay but they say they will make them better… quoting loads of acronyms that they will ‘improve’. To which I said ’so what’ just get me more calls.

I finally insisted on something written / to view ‘a contract’ as I was not happy signing up for 3 months (just in case)… then I find out they are “Yodel”. So thought I would research them… and hey presto… this is what I read. I wont be signing up.

So for others… watch the persistent sales team!

By: IAN

IAN — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:10:19 +0000

I concur with all the negativity above, unfortunately
for me I paid them upfront for a so called Free website $552.00 which supposedly gives me 3 months worth of Google Adwords. Nearly 4 weeks later I still have no live site, I am told they are waiting for a rep to contact me for my keywords. I spoke to one today and he said my site will now be ready in 2 days.
Isn’t the net meant to be quick, should it take nearly a month of delays, phone calls, waiting for phone calls to get a website setup.I dont think so, save your money, dont listen to their spin and find a decent company to deal with.
And if anyone from yodel wants to talk to me regarding this post, I would welcome that after 4 weeks of dodging my calls.

By: Rene LeMerle

Rene LeMerle — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:38:51 +0000

Thanks for bringing Yodel’s activity into the public forum.

It’s disappointing to hear about other search marketing companies using deceptive behavior to acquire customers – it reflects badly on all of us.

We’ve been in the industry since 1996, and have helped 1000’s of Australian small businesses with their advertising.

If you want some honest Google advertising advice – please give us a call.

By: anthony

anthony — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:22:50 +0000

yes it is misleading

By: Taygan

Taygan — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:02:58 +0000

Thanks for posting this.. they called me this morning and I have no idea how they even got my number! I only registered my business like a week ago! I told them I was at work so I couldn’t talk, so I would call them back. Gave me some time to do this research and now I know to refuse the offer if they call back!

Thanks again.

By: ross

ross — Fri, 01 May 2009 06:09:31 +0000

Yodel are shonks. Poor customer service. Remember to check out the fine print from any company that wants your credit card details before doing anything.
I actaully had a screaming match with a customer service girl to get my money back. She recited the terms and conditions and I eventually wore them down with twice daily calls an a barrage of emails.
Do not trust them they will promise everything to get your credit card number then give you no or poor service as they please.

By: mel williams

mel williams — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:08:50 +0000

Yodel Aust. has been my headache for the past 4 months. I signed up for 6 months and paid in full to recieve a great discount ..What a joke I have wasted $4100 on advertising that has not been done proberly .. I made more sales on $150 a month on advertising myself then I have on $700 a month thru them….All I can say is please stay away from Yodel Aust they will bring nothing but grief to your life… and are detrimental to your business and your business success much less your hip pocket…

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:59:17 +0000

Thanks mate, just saved me time wasted calling the same 1800 number back.

By: unhappy customer

unhappy customer — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 01:41:33 +0000

I signed up with Yodel, the money was deducted instantly but the page never went live for over a month. It was mostly incorrect and the changes I requested were not a priority and did not go through in a hurry. Customer support was less than impressive. The salesperson even went as far as to deny making me the ’special offer’ that hooked me into the deal in the first place, the ‘one day only’ deal that was too good to say ‘no’ to. I asked for the page to be refunded, it’s been cancelled but I’m struggling to get my money back. Not happy.

By: tracy

tracy — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:14:29 +0000

I have just signed up for yodel.
I thought they were google.
They did a one page web pg, with all the incorrect stuff, and now they say give us a few days to correct this.
well I now want a refund to find out if they are for real. I have never heard of yodel.co.nz. I think i was mislead. I want out of this yodel crap!

By: Hai Duong

Hai Duong — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:53:34 +0000

Hi Guys,

I work for Yodel Australia and our head office is based in North Ryde, Sydney NSW. As a representative of Yodel Australia, I would like to address some of the views and concerns raised in this conversation.

Yodel is currently in the 3rd year of our strategic alliance with Google Australia, and this is because of our continued success in providing quality AdWords management to local Australian businesses. Our processes are completely optimised and refined to provide advertising services to over 7000 clients in Australia and New Zealand. We are also proud to announce that our sales force has been given approval to resell into South Africa, Ireland and the UK.

The key reason for why we’ve been given approval for international expansion is due to the fact that we can replicate our successful local leadership. Yodel deploys a model of sales engagement with Australians that simply clicks!

I’d like to point out that our sales staff are put through an extensive 2 week training course of how behave and interact with clients. Each sales rep is trained on how to effectively represent our company, our Google alliance and our product offering. They also complete some vigorous written testing (much similar to the actual Google Advertising Professional GAP) And this is before they are even allowed near a phone! We practice being completely upfront and we always represent ourselves as Yodel, the 1st Authorised Reseller of Google AdWords in Australia.

I can personally attest to this because of whats on stake. If we were ever convicted of misrepresenting ourselves as anyone other than Yodel, Google has the right to immediately terminate our alliance and we would no longer be allowed to display our credibility. This alone would be disastrous for a company such as ours (As fellow AdWords Resellers ReachLocal, HotGoanna and DirectClicks would agree). Google has every right to protect is global brand and we make sure that we play along…

Simply put, we are an honest company and we always follow “the rule book” of approaching all potential clients.

We’re about to go into our 4th year of providing our professionally managed Google services to Australia and countries beyond. At least Google Australia seems to think we are doing a good job.

I would be more than happy to answer any further questions you may have. Feel free to email me at hduong@yodel.com.au. I am based in the Sydney office.

There is also lots of great information on http://www.yodel.com.au

p.s. Google doesn’t advertise their phone number because they employ AdWords resellers such as Yodel to do the dirty work!