Woods appointments don’t deliver
June 16th, 2008
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’.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
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.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
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!
September 11th, 2008 at 11:05 am
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
September 11th, 2008 at 11:10 am
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.