I don’t like to name and shame companies and I hardly ever do it, but I’d hate to see anybody else potentially lose money by purchasing leads from Woods appointments without seriously considering whether you may end up in the same position as our company.
My business partner was phoned a few months back and asked if we would like to purchase some ‘meeting leads’ in the local area. Woods appointments would be in charge of calling up and arranging meetings on our behalf and we would pay something like £25 a lead. It sounded worth a shot and we purchased the minimum of I think 5 leads. I’m not at the office now and forget the exact amounts but I know we paid £140 via google checkout.
£140 isn’t a lot, and we weren’t expecting much, if anything, to come of the leads… but we were expecting some leads or some contact from Woods appointments at the very least. Having sent payment we haven’t heard anything back from Woods appointments, they seem to have disappeared.
The payment was over 90 days ago meaning Google checkout won’t mediate the payment. They suggest we get mastercard to do a charge back, which of course we will. I’m not completely surprised this has happened but it is a shame we’ve had to deal with the hassle of requesting our money back.
If I hear from Woods appointments and they have a reasonable explanation I will without hesitation revoke my comments. Until then I hope this warns at least one other person of the risks of dealing with Woods appointments. We have a phone number from a Google checkout invoice that may be worth trying if anyone else is in the same boat, just drop me an email.
P.S. I didn’t see the website until after this little debacle but it should have been obvious not to trust a company that has a website with the title ‘Untitled document’.
11 Comments
I can only agree with this. They stung me for £90 then disappeared. I even took them to small claims court but even the bailiff can’t find him. Avoid.
Thanks for getting in touch alex. We haven’t tried too hard to find him, there are a few leads we could try but am not sure it is worth the time or effort.
Somebody emailed me today (RE this) but unfortunately I think you typed in your email address incorrectly and so I could not reply. If you happen to revisit, please get in touch again!
Oh dear, I am such a Dufus, just read this and realised I too have been had, and like you say I should have known when i saw Untitled Doc in the webpage title. I only paid £80 for two appointments to try him out, glad i only did that.
If anyone finds out who and where Dave Woods is please let me know, as a couple of my ‘Friends’ want to have a word with him.
At the end of the day, buying leads, traffic, appointments or any other variant just does not work (even if they are a genuine company unlike Woods Appointments) and there really is no substitute for good old fasioned advertising and personal contact with your own prospective customers.
All the best
Roger
Hi Roger,
When did you purchase the leads? Recently? We purchased ours a few months ago. If he’s still taking people’s money now I’ll do more to get this post noticed.
Leads can occasionally work but you’re right, there is no easy way to do anything. We rely on word of mouth for 90% of our work but thought we’d take a punt with this guy as he was so cheap. I guess this time we all lost out.
Hi
I’ve also been had by Dave Woods, and this was almost a year ago so he’s been doing it a while now.
Unfortunately I paid a £90 cheque, so won’t be able to claim anything back.
don’t know if this is useful to anyone but he’s currently using this email:
woodsappointments@googlemail.com
Good to see your blog – but perhaps I can now share my side?
Firstly, never, at any time was it my intention to not fulfil orders for my new clients.
However, last year I went through a very bad time – divorce etc,etc, and to be honest – for many months did not want to live, let alone make appointments – sorry – I’m just human!
Appointment making is psychologically tough – that’s why my clients pay for it – for I while last year I just did not care – sorry – that’s the truth – maybe – this is my “blog” – a bit negative – but true.
I must also say that during this time I did manage to keep existing clients ticking over with appointments – one of whom has been with me for just over two years now and made loads of successful sales. Several others have been with me for 10 months or so and continue to be happy clients.
I’ve not prospected for new business until now because I haven’t needed to because things have been ticking over OK. But now I have my divorce completed, have a good relationship and am currently making lots of appointments – and can take on a few more clients.
I’m sorry – I buried my head in the sand for a while – but it was never my intention not to do work paid for.
So, everyone has my sincere apologies.
Therefore, if you or any of your contributors would now like to claim your/their outstanding appointments – please email me on woodsappointments@googlemail.com.
Kind Regards
Dave Woods
PS. After this I’d appreciate it if you’d take this blog down. thankyou.
Hi all, we were take for £105. I’ve just seen this now, I’ve sent him an email to ask for a refund. If he does I’ll be sure to let you all know.
Yep, we paid him £160-00 back in January for 4 ‘leads’. Its all very bizaar, he replied to a few emails early on (basically explaining that he was having personal problems etc) and since early February has gone completely awol. My business partner even spoke with him on the phone in the early days when he was touting for business.
For what its worth I used to run a similar business, working for myself supplying appointments to my clients. I am now a partner of a design agency. Daves proposal at the time seemed very reasonable and he was happy to share the risk (ie take 10% commission if a lead was successful) so we paid him up front in good faith.
I sent him quite a heavy email 2 weeks ago and got no response and today just so happened to stumble accross this blog when I googled his name (looking for his website). I cannot help but think that he must be working this scam to hundreds of businesses! Spamming a few dozen companies at a time, signing up a couple of deals and cashing in the cheques. Because the amounts are small very few people make a fuss etc.
I will make a couple of calls during the next few days and report back on here my findings. Like with you other guys its not exactly a big priority but he shouldn’t be too tricky to track down. Unless of course hes some dodgy African chap thats opened a British bank account, telephone number etc etc and has covered his tracks very well!!
Hi SW1972. Sorry to hear you’ve been duped too. Dave posted a similar sob story on the blog back in February and asked me to revoke this post.
If I’d had a refund, or any appointments, perhaps I’d have believed him. Until then, hopefully this post will stop others signing up with him or his companies.
Let us know if you get anywhere!
Hi – We are a national network of website consultants – we sell CMS websites to small businesses. Over the last year Feb 2008 on – we tested Woods Appointments for our Britnett Consultants and found the appointments overall good. We had a meeting last December and we discussed Dave Woods appointments – the feedback ‘good’ – keep using him. But as Dave Woods states above he went through some hard times. I actually helped Dave by pre paying for batches of appointments for our Britnett Consultants. Initially Dave produced as he said he would. But then we realised the quality was dropping. Our Web Consultants complained as to the quality and recently Dave Woods has become un-contactable. So he has left us out of pocket too.
As Dave states above he is sorry and I believe him – but I feel he should refund all who have paid him in good faith.