Advertising for the Wedding Photographer Part 2b
Advertising with the Hitched.co.uk Wedding Directory
Advertising for the Wedding Photographer Part 2
Directories and ‘We’re from Google / Facebook / Some alien planet where reason doesn’t exist’
In this section I’m going to talk about my experience with cold calling Google / Facebook companies and Directories. In a way this section is in two parts but they do share some similar aspects worthy of one classification.
Chapter 1: Wedding Magazines and Print Advertising
Chapter 2: Directories and Cold Calls (You are here)
Chapter 2b: The Hitched Directory
Chapter 3: Google Adwords and Facebook Ads
Chapter 4: Social Media
Chapter 5: Wedding Blogs
Chapter 6: Facebook Groups and Wedding Forums
Chapter 7: Wedding Fairs and Bridal Shows
Chapter 8: What works for me
Advertising in Directories:
My definition is a site or entity that lists you amongst others of the same business and location somewhere that is part of your target niche, like a wedding forum or business directory.
Two immediately spring to mind, Freeindex and UK Bride. There is a clear distinction between these two. One is free, the other costs you money. Starting with free, because free is fun. I have a listing on Freeindex and whilst it hasn’t netted me any enquiries it has helped me establish a presence outside of my main website.
This searchable visibility is generally good because it shows you aren’t just someone with a website and a mobile number. Sometime people can leave reviews on and that’s even better.
Free web presence is good. Don’t forget that, (just as long as the company you’re keeping is reputable too). As with everything free there tends to be a catch or financial incentive somewhere. Freeindex likes to try and up-sell you premium services which you don’t need and leads you don’t want. There is another problem….there’s hundreds of directories out there. Which is why you should pick a couple and walk away from them. Their value is limited.
9 MILLION search results for Wedding directories – talk about crowded
This practice is carried along with other directories like the rude maniacs that are Yell who once you have a free listing try their utmost to get you to upgrade. I was called 4 times in a week and they were so persistent I had to hang up on them. Don’t use Yell. Like, everrrrr. Other directories will take your details and sell them on to similar related services like moose milking.
Also enterprising people will try to create their own directories from other directories in the false belief that there’s a gravy train pulling out from St Pancras and they have to be on it. For example, NPS copied member data from the SWPP directory and created their own directory. Under each SWPP member there was a comment that ‘This person is NOT a member of the NPS’ which came across as derogatory statement and of course in order to correct this you had to become a member.
Understandably people were angry at that.
Sadly morals go out the window when money is involved. Cold callers use directories to source leads as well. When I used Google Adwords I got 5 times as many cold calls because I was more visible and this is pretty much the same for all types of advertising. Visibility can cost you a lot more than you bargained for. So choose wisely.
UK Bride I was (cold called) from UK bride who for £400 (recurring, which I wasn’t told about) would have my ad on every page, a listing in their regional directory and my own microsite. For an entire year with them I received only 37 clicks to my Website.
Well that was rubbish, 37 clicks in an entire year.
But their figures suggest otherwise:
This suggests I had a lot more traffic than analytics shows. But this is from what I understand internal traffic within UKbride’s website. I wasn’t happy with this, you spend thousands on a nice website designed to sell yourself only to have it bouncing around somewhere else.
The endearing part of this deal was that they’d supply me with quality qualified bridal links every month so I could contact them offering my services…. BY MAIL ONLY Say what? They never told me that. They spent an hour on a web conference call with me so they’re up to speed with technology. If I wanted to follow up these leads I would have to put a stamp on each one? Email details cost extra? Again, wasn’t informed of this. I assumed in this day and age it would be an obvious thing to do.
Anyhoo, I did the mailers. 6 months in I get the call to ask how I’m doing and I’ve had zip, truly not a bean from it. The lady at the end of the phone is adamant it’s me, not them and they’ve had loads of happy successful photographers. So I did some digging and this is typically what I found:
‘I did it for a year. £150 for 50 leads a month, names and addresses. Not a single response.’ ‘Sadly I once signed up for UK Bride and I have never had a single enquiry through them.’
Now since posting this set of blogs I’ve had lots of comments and input on my writings, one was from the Owner of UKbride Julian Wilkinson:
Hi Chris, I read your blog with interest. Perhaps you can get in touch I’m happy to see how we can make your campaign work for you with UKbride, for FREE for one year… I’ll personally help with marketing advice. Emails are included in UKbride campaigns now (they’ve always been available, but I guess you didn’t choose this option). Most of the clicks on your report are link to internal pages of UKbride, this is why there appears a big difference in clicks. UKbride attracts over 1.5 million unique visitors each year 95% are from the UK. We have over 72,000 new members each year. I’m happy for you to visit our office and witness this at first hand, check our members, email them, call them, I’ll even show you our Google Analytics report so that on this blog you can verify that I am telling the truth. Although we can’t please everyone we do have many happy clients – please read this and feel free to call our advertisers – http://www.ukbride.co.uk/feedback. Please get in touch, and I can show you the power of UKbride. Kind regards Julian Wilkinson, owner of UKbride – 0800 112 3 112
Now this comment was left a month ago in the comment section of my blog, and I didn’t post it as I wanted to respond properly, and I advised Julian of this, yet this morning I get another one:
Im starting to get very concerned that you are offering your readers a VERY biased view of my website. I have now sent you a few posts over the past few weeks and you are purposely choosing not to publish them.
Please can you ensure my full response, which you have, is added TO THIS PAGE within 7 days of the date of this post.
Regards
Julian Wilkinson
Owner of UKbride
Nice chap isn’t he.
So look, Julian, thanks for the offer but no thanks. I feel I wasted a shed load of time with UKbride so have no interest AT ALL in using them again. If any of my readers want to share their experiences with UK bride please do so via the comments option below.
(Please note though that in order to remain transparent qualify your comment with your website URL.)
There are other directories which are quite notorious too. CD’s on the front of Magazines which nobody looks at, Advertorials (again quoting millions of readers – usually based on four people per household and on the print run not actual sales) and there are the ads in booklets and mailers supplied to brides in shops.
On this front I’ll only quote my most recent experience with the Wedding Dress company Tobi Hannah. It’s not a blanket comment on small business supplier referrals but those who inbox me for £120 and try to pull a fast one…. that deserves a cheeky mention.
The story of Tobi Hannah: I was contacted by their representative via email, said they loved my work and wanted to add me to their supplier list for a fee. Fair do’s I thought. I’m not adverse to spending out for trade. I have a budget and I’m not afraid to use it. However, being burnt in the past I thought I’d counter offer with my now quite common ‘put your money where your mouth is’ approach. Which in this case was instead of paying £120 for a year with them, I’ll pay £100 for every booking I take based on their recommendation. My reasoning being that if something was that good they’d tear my arm off. It’s a good test of seller confidence. They didn’t and this is the reply I got:
Hi Chris Thanks for your email I think I need to explain what we are offering, currently we have 3 photographers on our books and they have many dates already filled so we decided to add a couple more. We actively promote the people we have on board to every bride that walks through our doors If we wanted to make money from this we would be charging way more than 120 a year. Our motive for doing this is not financial related so whilst we appreciate the offer it is not something we are currently considering. Attached is an example of a pdf we give to every bride at her appointment as well as sending it to our mailing list.
Ok I thought, let’s do some digging via their attached supplier booklet. Firstly I called one of the three photographers listed. They’d only just joined up 4 days prior. Ok….but the real kicker was that the other person I called listed in the book didn’t even know they were in there. Then a few days later they received the same offer email as me, despite being in the booklet sent out! Are you in the book? Read the example PDF The underhand techniques from staff at Confetti.co.uk: I received an enquiry via my contact form:
confetti.co.uk —————————————- Name:: alex Email:: fin************en@yahoo.co.uk Message:: Can you do my wedding 14/10/13 How_did_you_hear_about_me?:: a friend found you
The intriguing thing about this enquiry was that it was for a Monday and that the senders server name was confetti.co.uk, usually it’s BT.blahblah or virgin.net or something domestic. I answered it as normal but suspiciously reverse searched the email address on Facebook and found it didin’t belong to someone called Alex but someone else entirely who works at Confetti.co.uk. In the marketing department. This was odd and 24 hours later I received a pdf pack from confetti trying to sell me advertising.
Being lied to in order to get my email address for marketing made me feel conned.
At the time I didn’t have a direct email address on my contact form, just the form so they faked an enquiry in order to get my email and sent me a press pack.
As already said in part one, when it comes to money, or someones ability to pay the bills their integrity, honesty and duty of care to you often goes out the window. It’s really hard to remain happy in this industry when everyone appears to want to rip you off.
******Update 21/10/2014********
Confetti have been in touch:
‘Thank you for discovering this tactic from *******. This certainly isn’t a method of marketing that we condone at Confetti. Please rest assured that this was an unauthorised method of communication. The employee in question is no longer employed at Confetti. We would also like to state, however, that obtaining contact emails is a common marketing tactic, although that does not excuse nor condone *******’s approach’.
Confetti are correct, the person has left. They are now the Media Sales Manager for a wedding directory somewhere else in the UK.
Section 2: Cold callers who say they’re from Google or Facebook. I’ll clear this up now. They aren’t from Google and they aren’t from Facebook. They aren’t even representing them or have any license from them. They are outright lying to you and should be hung up on immediately because they’re trying to deceive you at the pick up.
‘We’re calling you direct from Facebook. There is a pigeon in your bank account’
In all cases the Facebook callers are trying to manage your Facebook ads account for you. To run ads at a markup. So something you could run yourself for 20p a click they’ll charge you out at 30p. Pure and simple.
Companies that claim they are from Google will be trying to do the same with your Adwords account. ‘We’ll get you on page one of Google’ (via Adwords).
Look, there is no way you can game Google to get on page one without payment. It doesn’t work like that and in the case where I took on a company called Search Engine Easy I had 18 clicks from a £99 spend. That’s a really bad campaign. Obscene even. For many people new to the business they are susceptible to these sorts of calls because they don’t understand Facebook or Google. Be that the way they work or how their ad system works.
In general people get easily burned with these guys because they have no prior experience of them until the call, a mistake I made too
It is truly confusing and Google adwords is some crazy voodoo requiring a degree from the house of Zoltan on the planet wibble to truly know what’s going on there. This isn’t to say that if you researched an SEO company you wouldn’t find a stellar source of advice worth every penny. It’s just the cold callers you have to watch for. As I mentioned in my previous chapter, if something is worth having people won’t need to call you to sell it. Comments are open, share your stories.
Next: It’s not all bad : Google Adwords and Facebook Ads
Related posts
Shocking tactics by Confetti, although not surprising. This is valuable information to the newcomer and the seasoned pro.
Brilliantly written, Chris! Fun and informational. Very assuring to know that you have experienced the same as I have when it comes to paid advertising. I did try it myself in the beginning and got absolute zilch back (I didn’t spend as much as you did). Now, when someone calls to offer to connect me with millions of eager local brides looking for a wedding photographer just like me, I just say that I don’t pay for ads. Full stop. “Really, you don’t want to get any more business?” they ask, of course, and try to get you to part with your cash however they can… Since about a year ago I don’t even bother having a conversation with them, just wish them a good day. There are too many dishonest sellers out there, like you have highlighted here.
This post reminds me of a recent experience I had with Borrowed & Blue, a wedding-blog site here in the US who was really after me for some advertising dollars. Having gone down this route before, I contacted a few photographers who I knew who were listed in my area, and also picked a couple at random in a non-competing area across the country. One photographer didn’t even know she had a listing! The other one I knew personally said she was just letting her two-month free trial run out (hey why was I only offered one month?!). The two cross-country togs had been doing it longer, but neither could report any leads at all. Except a vague sense that it must be doing SOMETHING for their business.
So I did the same thing you recommend: I told the salesperson the results of my research, and then offered to use their services for free for six months. If I booked two weddings from leads they generated, I would immediately pay for the six months all in one pop. I even pointed out that it should be a slam dunk, since January is approaching and bookings skyrocket.
No surprise, they weren’t interested.
P.S. you have a weird artifact showing up in your comments. “add_theme_support(‘post-thumbnails’);” it says.
Hi Matt, thanks for that 🙂
I’ve my web guy on the artifact as I type. This is a custom theme which he put together so I hope to have it fixed soon (he’s a busy guy) 😀
Hi Chris,
I read your blog with interest. Perhaps you can get in touch I’m happy to see how we can make your campaign work for you with UKbride, for FREE for one year… I’ll personally help with marketing advice. Emails are included in UKbride campaigns now (they’ve always been available, but I guess you didn’t choose this option). Most of the clicks on your report are link to internal pages of UKbride, this is why there appears a big difference in clicks. UKbride attracts over 1.5 million unique visitors each year 95% are from the UK. We have over 72,000 new members each year. I’m happy for you to visit our office and witness this at first hand, check our members, email them, call them, I’ll even show you our Google Analytics report so that on this blog you can verify that I am telling the truth. Although we can’t please everyone we do have many happy clients – please read this and feel free to call our advertisers – http://www.ukbride.co.uk/feedback. Please get in touch, and I can show you the power of UKbride. Kind regards Julian Wilkinson, owner of UKbride – 0800 112 3 112
Chris, yes brilliantly written…. Thanks for sharing! I totally agree with you, and I feel the pain too!….
Hi Chris
A good article. As a wedding photographer in a previous life we feel exactly the same as you, even now running our own directory, we do not just pay to advertise everywhere as we learnt lots of mistakes as a wedding photographer.
You have to advertise some where and that is the whole game of marketing, if you don’t know in the beginning you try different things. I think some things work for some and not others but at the end of the day you need to advertise somewhere or you are dead in the water.
We have just had 70 requests to photographers come through our system in 10 days, these photographers need to upgrade to see the emails, we have had a very small conversion rate. Why, either they are booked or they don’t trust us. We are sending people work and they are turning it down because of things you mention above.
But. People are running businesses and they want to make money and if a good service is provided i.e you book weddings from it, people will be more than happy to pay for that service.
As I said. You need to advertise somewhere but as long as the ROI is good then what difference does it make. Unless you are getting word of mouth and even that can stop, you need to advertise somewhere.
You could advise someone to advertise here or there but it just might not happen the same for them as it did for you. Different times of the year, different year different everything.
We only used to spend £1000 per year to get 20 weddings via adwords mainly in our previous life. We stopped running campaigns in the day as marketers would click our links, ran them after 7pm every day or weekends e.t.c.
A good post. Very In Depth What it comes down to is you just have to try things and find what works best for you but in the beginning you are just going to have to try things. These blog posts should be a Sticky In Many Places.
Our Goal As A Directory Is To Send Photographers Work. If You Make Money, We Do To And We Don’t Think We Over Charge Or Ask For Much. Like You With Hitched. £50 For 1 Wedding Is Worth It, It’s The Risk You Took In The Beginning & You’ve Found It Works So You Keep Doing It…That’s The Nature Of The Beast.
Thanks Darius and it’s good to hear from you 🙂
Very useful and informative. I’ve resisted the urge so far but this has confirmed my suspicions – thanks for posting.
Hi Chris,
Im starting to get very concerned that you are offering your readers a VERY biased view of my website. I have now sent you a few posts over the past few weeks and you are purposely choosing not to publish them.
Please can you ensure my full response, which you have, is added TO THIS PAGE within 7 days of the date of this post.
Regards
Julian Wilkinson
Owner of UKbride
http://www.ukbride.co.uk
Thanks Chris,
I was seriously considering using one of these companies. You just saved me 150 euro!! If something sounds too good to be true it generally is! Here was me thinking you could take the hard work and cost out of running your own Google adword campaign, along with all the work in SEO.
Oh well it’s back to the drawing board!
James
I wish I had seen an article like this before spending my money on advertising with internet companies such as UK Bride. Don’t get me wrong they have delivered everything they said they would – lots of leads each month and my advertisement on the appropriate pages. However, the amount of work that they inferred I would get from advertising with them has simply not materialized. I have replied to literally dozens of on-line requests for information from brides from their website and all have led to nothing. I believe that Brides simply use their website as a database of information to surf and collate and I certainly won’t be renewing my subscription with them.
Jacqui
Hi Chris, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to write this series of posts, and for your honesty.
I’ve also had my fingers burnt, with companies such as UK Brides and learned the hard way.
I’ve had many cold calls from companies claiming to work with Facebook and Google.
Nearly all are misrepresenting the success of their advertising, their affiliations to legitimate social media sites, but have no qualms about taking hard cash from photographers who in the majority, scratch an existence from an occupation that is generally undervalued.
What I’d like to know, is why these companies aren’t being investigated by the Office Of Fair Trading?
I totally agree with your conclusion, and wish you a very successful 2014.
Randell John
Thank you Chris for an excellent article. We went though all this as well and it’s unbelievable how many dishonest firms making tons of money on photographers like us who just want to develop their business.
Just wanted to share my experience with UKbride. I just had a same issue of throwing loads of money to them and having really zero bookings. It was absolutely awful. But in additional to that, they renewed my contract without sending me any prior notification. After I revealed that they charged me for another year, I phoned them and asked them to cancel the contract and refund me back. After long discussion I found out that they sent me the renewal notice, but it was hidden in one of their automatic leads email at the bottom of the page where no one scrolling down to read to the end.
When I found this out, I had very long argument with them that I don’t want to work with this firm any more and demanded to refund me back. They disagree until I said that I will publish the review about what they did in SWPP web site so all photographers will know about this.
Magically this turned the conversation from strong “no” to “how we can help to resolve it”. Eventually they cancelled my contract and refunded me back.
To all other photographers, seems like this is the only thing they afraid of is a bad publicity. Bear this in mind when you have conversation or argument with them.
Thank you again Chris for these great articles. I wish I could find it before making so many mistakes and throwing money to all this black holes called “wedding directories”
Many thanks, Yana
Hi Chris
I just read your article and while it was informative and interesting I have to say it was also a tad misleading. I work at one of the companies you’ve named above and I can assure you that it is not a hotbed of phone pirates trying to trick you into parting with your money. Please take my word for it that if any employer of mine asked me to do something that was dishonest or misleading I simply would quit the job (which is in fact the reason why I left my last employer).
My job is cold calling, but I take great offense at the suggestion that I am doing so in order to sell a product that I don’t believe is worth the money. In no conceivable world would I set out to “earn my commission” by selling rubbish, especially when all it takes is a few pounds lost to push a small business over the edge, which in turn can have devastating consequences on the individuals and families that are connected to that business.
We make it very clear in our office that we are not calling from Google, we can lose our jobs for saying it, and we regularly inform customers that if someone tells them they are calling from Google they are being lied to. We have a script that we follow, but we don’t read it verbatum, we aren’t robots. As long as we tell the truth about the product we’re fine.
On a daily basis people I call tell me what SEO or adwords campaigns they’re running and if they’re working I tell them that they don’t need our help and I leave it at that. I sell what I sell because I believe it works. I know that sometimes it doesn’t, but not everything I buy myself is right for me, it doesn’t mean I was miss-sold something. There are lots of factors in play when you sign up to a company offering adword services: the industry sector, the season, the economy, the geographical location, even the weather during the trial period – if one is offered.
As for my company: we don’t tie anyone into a contract so unless we keep our customers happy we lose them. In what world is being indifferent to the well-being of your customers good business sense?
One thing your readers should be aware of though is that these companies operate out of large offices with a regular turn over of staff. This means that often you get people who aren’t suited to telesales, who can be rude, who say the wrong thing, who are in it just for the commission. These people do not last long. They damage the reputation of the business in the short time that they are there, but they don’t represent the business, the product or majority of people working there. If these businesses were so dishonest or deceiving, I can’t imagine they would be in business for very long or attract the sort of employees that are essential for a business to be a success.
Be assured that as a hard working man with a scrupulous conscience, I would not work where I work or do what I do if it was in any way, shape or form deceptive and potentially damaging to business owners, their employees and their families. Where I work, for every one unhappy customer there are 19 who are very happy with the product as they sign up for month two, then three and so on. I understand people need to vent frustration or disappointment, but if a majority of customers had such negative experiences, I can’t imagine a business would be in business for very long.
Sincerely
Archer.
Thanks for your email Archer.
It’s a shame indeed that not everyone is honest. I usually get a couple of calls a week from people claiming to be from Google. It puts the good companies in a bad light.
I’ve even been at another suppliers office and they’re forever slamming the phone down on cold callers asking about Facebook / Google ads.
It seems rampant. I don’t mind the calls. It’s the attempts to lead people astray that aren’t on.
Thanks Chris,
Great Article 🙂
We were with UK Bride for a year (I made sure it was stipulate in the contract so it wouldn’t auto renew), over 500 “leads” and not one conversion, we convert about 95% of people we meet so I know its not us.
There free engagement shot offer was a waste of time as I rang many brides who had no idea what I was talking about a few couples who put the phone down on me. Not the sort of client I want!
I’ve even done some editorial with them and nothing came of that.
My only advice to people looking to advertise this UK bride is DON’T.
I think the post by Julian Wilkinson sums up the company.
Wow – what a fascinating post Chris! Another photographer mentioned it in a discussion on Linkedin. So glad I’ve said “No” to UK Bride on so many occasions. Now to find Part 1 of your article. Thanks so much for sharing!
Hi Chris, wished I came across your article a year ago! I feel like I’ve been tricked by UK bride as they never mentioned to me about auto renew but then included on the order form but didn’t even see this. After a year you forget when your renewal date is…and bang you are tied in for another year!!! on there terms and conditions no mention of auto renewal fees…just states you need to advertise min 12 months. no mention of cancellation fees and they are now trying to get £199+vat if I don’t want to renew another year. luckily my initial credit card I paid with expired so they couldn’t action the rolling fee. I thought Advertising companies have the duty to contact you before renewal date and email over the stats so you feel confident to renew with them again!!! I didn’t receive anything of this. ..had over 100 leads and received zilch bookings via them! very strange as i advertise with another site and have received approx 10- 15 confirmed bookings per year via them!!
I have refused to pay cancellation fee but they have been calling me on daily basis chasing payment.
Chris – where do I stand in not wanting to pay the cancellation fee due to zero confirmations for the year and all my wasted time? don’t want bailiffs turning up at my door….pls advise
Hey Chris!
Many thanks for taking the time and effort in being so informative and open in this blog, I seriously appreciate your honesty.
Thanks for taking the time to research and write this stuff Chris. Your findings appear to reflect our own experiences with most of these (now very prolific) listing services. I have a standard response for the sort of cold calling you’re getting. Firstly. We pay a £70 commission for wedding referrals on receipt of the signed contract and booking fee from the newly referred client after consultation. Anyone wanting to do this (not a single taker to date apart from real clients) and we’ll sign up on that basis of commission on results – we do the work of the consultation of course. At this point most hang up.
Secondly. I will sign up to any listing service that vets its advertised suppliers so that the list becomes worth something to the potential clients. Over 95% of all our wedding work comes from those who have either seen us work at previous events or from friends of clients who have been recommended by them. Most people who undercut us don’t declare their earnings or have the skills, kit or necessary experience and most still live with their mums! A properly accredited list that required a background check and some form of assessment to ensure their members weren’t con artists, amateurs, paedophiles or politicians and who had the aforementioned qualities would be a godsend for the industry, but I’ve yet to see a single one Yell included who do any such thing. If I have the money they ask for I’m listed regardless of whether I even own a camera, let alone know how to use one.
For this reason I’m out.
I think maybe we should generate our own list and ensure that potential clients are aware that membership means all of the above and also offers some form of guarantee if things go horribly wrong. Otherwise it’s just another dreary and worthless list.
I know most of this has already been said on various forums by me and others, but it doesn’t hurt to remind other photographers that at some time this month they will receive unsolicited calls and emails from Tom, Dick and Harriet from a number of different organisations with another too-good-to-be-true offer.
Time wasting should be made a criminal offence, but you may have saved a few newcomers to exposure from this non stop nonsense. Thank you again.
An all too often scenario outlined here Chris and very well peresented. Like many others I have learnt through the many mistakes made over the years. Luckily I haven’t been suckered in by certain names in the business and will certainly be keeping even more of a distance.
Now of the mindset that natural and organic is key to a lot of it, so my usual easy going nature has changed. Anyone wanting to talk sales to me with listings and directories, just gets hung up on!
Time is valuable!
Thanks for sharing, it will be invaluable to new comers to the market.
Great article Chris. You’ve just saved me a few hundred £££ after finding this page having been called by UK Bride! I will invest the money in SEO instead! Many thanks, Rafe
Thank you for taking the time to write this article. It’s such a minefield out there as far as people wanting a piece of your marketing budget, and it’s also been a revealing read to see the comments from other togs and interested parties. When we’ve looked at some of these directory website they somtimes look like something that a sixth former could have knocked up in the late nineties!
Hi Chris,
Thank you for sharing your experience with us, I have found this very useful.
I have just started my wedding cake topper business and would be grateful if you or any of your readers could recommend reputable wedding website companies to advertise on?
Hi Ohene, that’s a tricky one to answer. Hopefully someone will answer you!
thanks for the blog, I have signed up with UKbride geting leads weekly and monthly – I offer free engament shoots with no one ever taking it up for alomost a year now, I thik they are all bogus, no one has ever called, i have not spoken to one person from my leads, I will not renew with them.
Hi Andy. I have had the same experience. Did you pay for the service? I’m hoping I can start to build a case against them. If you can provide a statement thatbwould be great. I definitely will be taking this further.
Hi Chris,
Very good article – found when researching UK Bride. I have just responded to one of their emails containing a quote request for a local bride. I confess I was a little bored at the time and so gave in to the relentless flow of spam rather suspecting that what appears to be too good to be true almost certainly is. So I have cleared the decks for action and await their sales pitch call(S).
I share your feelings about SEEasy or whatever they may be called this week and have had to literally hang up on them while they are still talking to get them off the phone. I had a similar experience with a firm called DotComChrome a couple of years ago – cost me loads in pay per click on Google before I discovered how easy it was to DIY it.
Thanks for sharing your experiences – keep up the good work
Thanks for your article Chris. If it’s any consolation musicians get the same calls and hard sell tactics too. I play the harp for weddings and have had numerous calls from all the usual directories you mention. Being of a cynical mind as well as reluctant to part with hard earned cash I’ve always refused their offers. I rely on my website, word of mouth, and work being passed around between other professional colleagues whenever we can’t take a booking ourselves. It’s good to hear your experiences and to know that my cynical instincts were right! Thanks for taking the time to write about it.
Thank you Chris. So much for posting this. I emailed UK bride today basically asking whether the request for quotes sent by ‘brides’ are computer generated. I have soo many request a week from the site. They have never lead to anything. Sometimes what is written by the bride makes no sense. The sentence will be half finished. Or they ask for a quote… Yes god knows what for.
Not surprisingly. UK Bride haven’t even replied! I’m appalled. And I will be taking this much further if I find out I’ve paid for fake leads. I do hope that if any other suppliers read this and have the same experience, get in touch so that we can all band together.
Hi Chris, just wanted to say thanks. I was close to signing up with UK Bride yesterday when I stumbled across this blog after deciding to do some investigation into the company. Your honesty is appreciated and I have no doubt you have saved me some money. Having already fallen foul to Yell’s shady practices, I could really do without being turned over again. Best regards. Mark 🙂
Excellent blog post . I can endorse every word. You don’t seem to have mentioned the very worst of these type of companies who are in my opinion, Scoot and Infoserve. These two make the ones you mention look good …..and that’s saying something.
Well done in highlighting these scamming rip offs.
Thank you Chris, I was being cold called by one of the bride/directory/fare organizations and nearly caved. After reading the stories on auto renewable adverts I’m so glad I stayed with my instincts and avoided them.
Reading this has helped me not to make a mistake in advertising, thanks for the feedback. I was looking into UKBride and Confetti as we speak. Dodged a bullet thanks to this 🙂
Matthew
Chris the article is just superb! Thank you for such an insightful post and all the gold worth information.