This blog entry is to spread the word about a bad experience I'm having with Wordtracker.com As a result of Wordtracker's poor customer service and unwillingness to communicate with customers by phone to resolve issues as quickly as possible, I do not recommend this service. Here's why...
Wordtracker.com is a web service used to perform research on the frequency of keywords used in search engines. I haven't used Wordtracker in several years since I started using a competitor's service - KeywordDiscovery.com by Trellian.
I recently discovered that Wordtracker charged me the monthly fee in January and February of $59 per month. I found some old account login information, but there is no way to manage your billing within your account. The only way to cancel your account is to send email to Wordtracker. I don't have active account billing setup! I immediately called my credit card company to dispute the charges. They suggested that I contact Wordtracker first as it will be faster if they will just credit me the unauthorized charges.
Wordtracker will not communicate with anyone by phone. There is no physical address information on their web site. The copyright indicates Rivergold Associates Ltd, but you can't find any phone number for this company online. You can only communicate with Wordtracker via email. Makes you wonder why they don't want to be contacted. This is the email response I received from Wordtracker:
It is regrettable but under the terms of our agreement with the credit card companies and also United Kingdom data protection legislation we are not permitted to assist with this.
You must report this activity to your credit card company as fraudulent. They will contact us and we can then provide them with all relevant information. We will of course do this promptly.
I am sorry we cannot help further at this time.Kind Regards
Anne Curtis
Customer Service Manager
Wordtracker
I have now filed a dispute for these charges with my credit card company. This will take some time, but it's worth the effort. I'm concerned about a company that does its best to prevent from being contacted and is not concerned about customer satisfaction - especially when it's related to unauthorized credit card charges.
The one good thing is that I had to cancel my credit card on February 23 and issue a new number because of suspected fraud. Wordtracker will be unable to charge me any further as the number they have on file will be declined!!
I highly recommend Keyword Discovery by Trellian. Not only is their tool for keyword research better, but they offer live support on the web site as well as many local phone numbers worldwide and a physical address.
This just happened to me. I signed up for the free trial and they never sent me the account confirmation email, despite the fact that i emailed them 5 times. The trial expired without me being able to cancel it, and they charged my card. Absolutely horrible customer service
Posted by: Eliathah Boda | February 22, 2011 at 06:18 PM
You're lucky. I'm sticking with Keyword Discovery. It's a better tool regardless.
Posted by: Betsy | August 24, 2010 at 03:28 PM
I just receive the refunds by wordtracker, i think their customer service is pretty good.
Posted by: matthew | August 16, 2010 at 10:25 PM
I just got charged for $59 by wordtracker , and i am very angry now. I sigh up just for free 7 days trial, why they bill me..
Posted by: matthew | August 14, 2010 at 01:16 AM
Its 2010 and I have same problem with word tracker.
I created an trail account, I got a mail with user name and password and a link to cancel the account.
This link to cancel the account never worked. Says cannot find the user name and asked me to contact customer support.
In the mean while I was charged $59.
I am not getting any response from word tracker and I am also following Betsy's way of canceling my current card and issue a new one.
Posted by: Thomas George | March 26, 2010 at 02:05 AM
Just had the exact same problem with Wordtracker!!!!!!!
So Mr. Nunney, in response to they should have "some a telephone number"--well guess what? They don't. I just called and faxed. BOTH DISCONNECTED. Since you seem to have their phone number, could you CALL THEM FOR ME AND CANCEL MY ACCOUNT or I will also take to my blog. I got a 'canned' email response, never mentioned the word fraud, and didn't get a refund.
Posted by: Donna Sarjeant | April 02, 2009 at 11:43 AM
Try SEMRush.com. The one of my favourite tool to analyze any site.
Just enter the url and it will provide you with a report which includes organic and adwords keywords
that you can find the site, positions, CPC by and more. And its all summurized in easy to understand charts.
Posted by: lminnik | March 30, 2009 at 07:43 AM
Hello Betsy
It's Anne from Wordtracker. I am truly sorry this has happened. It certainly isn't the kind of experience we hope our customers will have.
You make a very good point about our phone number and address and we appreciate you bringing this to our attention. We will be looking to add these details to our website very shortly.
On the subject of your credit card information, we do not store any of that here. It is stored by our third party online bankers and we don't have access to it.
It would seem then that someone has used your card without your permission to open a trial account. We must therefore go through the proper banking procedures to get this resolved. We will of course co-operate with your bank and provide all the information once we hear from them.
All I can do now is apologise again. We would indeed be happy to offer you access to our new beta tool if you would like to do that.
Posted by: Anne Curtis | March 12, 2009 at 01:56 PM
I received all of their email responses and responded to every one of them. It's not fraud. It's an error on their part. I retrieved my password in January to see if I still had an active account. (Keyword Discovery allows you to login even when your subscription has run out.) I logged in, but never agreed to a trial. Why would I? I use Keyword Discovery. No receipt notice was ever sent to me alerting me that they charged my card in January. You can't manage your account like you can with Keyword Discovery. It's a combination of poor interface usability within the account and a clear error on their part. The fact that you can't speak with anyone directly about an important customer service issue like this is unacceptable from any business. I'm awaiting paperwork from my credit card company required to document the issue. Now, it will take several weeks, maybe months, to receive my credit.
Posted by: Betsy Landon | March 12, 2009 at 10:35 AM
Hiya Betsy
I do a lot of work for Wordtracker and know them all personally including the customer support team. I know there is no way they would try and defraud anyone - they are good people and way too smart for such nonsense. Also, I'm pretty sure that anyone with a half decent reason gets a refund.
So i asked them about your points. The legal point made in the email is real - if you mention 'fraud' then they have to follow certain procedures and aren't allowed to just give you your money back. And don't forget that somebody, using your CC, signed up for a trial in January this year. So this may be genuine fraud.
I also brought up the points about contact address and telephone numbers and they agree: they should be up and I think they will be.
They also said they've emailed you lots of times without reply. So perhaps some emails aren't getting through.
As for which keyword tool is the best. That's for another day but you haven't used Wordtracker for several years and they do have a brand new tool out on beta. Give it a spin.
Posted by: Mark Nunney | March 12, 2009 at 10:13 AM