IWebtrack, an exercise in poor customer service
People who know me well will tell you that when I am not feeling well or injured, I whine a lot. I have many old sports injuries that nag, and I will gladly complain about them. Outside of that, though, I don't complain much...unless it is warranted.
This brings me to web analytics provider IWebtrack. Similar to other javascript web analytics providers, they offer a low end subscription service for your interface and data. Being the web analytics dork that I am, I signed up for their 30 day trial in April just to see what they had to offer.
I was greeted with a fairly standard array of reports, sufficient for small business needs, but on the whole rather underwhelming. As IndexTools moved to a free service and Google continued to improve, IWebtrack didn't really provide anything that would make me continue paying for their service.
So, as per the instructions on their user agreement, I removed their tracking code from my site after only 21 days (21<30, in case anyone from IWebtrack is reading this). In my mind, that was that.
Now, since I've already divulged a few personal details, I'll let you in on another - I'm not the most meticulous when it comes to my credit card statements. They show up in my mailbox, if the numbers don't seem out of line I just pay them. This has rarely caused me any issue. Until I decided to stop using one of my cards a month ago after zeroing out the balance. Much to my surprise, the card that hadn't been used still showed a charge...from guess who?
Turns out that IWebtrack has been charging me all along. I picked up the phone and called the company, trying every available extension and leaving a voice mail on each. I wrote emails, just wanting an explanation and a refund. That was three weeks ago. What have I heard since then? Nothing. I had to go to my credit card company to dispute the charges, which is a pain in my ass and completely unnecessary if the folks at IWebtrack would just pick up the damn phone.
I won't run down their product, it seems okay for what it is - similar to Visistat and some other products playing in that space (though Visistat's interface is much slicker and user friendly for analytics newbies).
Just to prove my point, here's the activity from our site...data collected from April 20th to May 11th...oddly, our site gets trafficked quite a bit, but IWebtracks own data shows NOTHING from May on. I suppose if their code wasn't on our site anymore, that's exactly what would happen...
IWebtrack's own data shows nothing since May.
Avoid this company, even if you're just interested in evaluating new products. There are better products you can get for free.
Tags: crappy customer service, crappy web analytics, i really want to write a bad vulgarity in here but won't because that would be unprofessional, iwebtrack, iwebtrack ripped me off, iwebtrack sucks
