Comments on: Review: BT Web Clicks

By: John

John — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:32:53 +0000

The Search Smart service is acutally run by Latitude – one of the UK’s biggest digital agencies, if not the biggest. Just remeber visitors don’t always equal sales, you can have the best looking website and be top of google for your targetted keywords, but if you’ve got a crappy website – I’m clicking back.

By: gavin g

gavin g — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:26:14 +0000

i have only yesterday seen what i have signed up too a complete waste of money i only have a small company running bouncy castles and when the sales man gave me all his wisdom it sounded great so £69 a month later for the past six month what has it got me nout thats what why ? i live 30 miles out of aberdeen in a small town called peterhead i said to the sales man i would not deliver there gess what? yep you got it he listed aberdeen as one of my delivery areas.so far out of my 512 clicks i realy have only had 200 to the area were i deliver to and im told by bt its my fault as i hadent looked at my statments please please if you read this beware its a SCAM an i have told bt this and also tryed to get there complants dep bt im still waiting for them to send me a email (that wont come )and im stuck with it for the next six months too. BT ARE RIP OFFS

By: BT Web Clicks, cunning advertising campaign

BT Web Clicks, cunning advertising campaign — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:43:06 +0000

[...] Just a word of warning for small businesses out there. I seem to have been the target of a BT carpet bombing telemarketing campaign twice in the space of two days. One word: AVOID. Despite them offering me an “attractive” package for only £10 a month, I would advise to stay clear of this advertisement mean. See the following article for some further explaning: [here]. [...]

By: ROB MEDLEY

ROB MEDLEY — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:22:26 +0000

Good News! You can get a full refund from BT.

Regarding entry no.19 where AG Ceramics refused to pay BT further monies and demanded all payments returned on the grounds that we had been miss sold BT Web Click (repeatedly told phonecalls when it is actually only clicks). After being repeatedly chased by the BT accounts department and AG Ceramics standing its ground, BT have now refunded all payments and acknowledged that their selling process what not as it should have been.

We contacted Emma-Louise Brown at support@btwebclicks.com
Also if you struggle to get anywhere, the senior decision maker at BT who made things happen for us is Graham Tosh at the same e.mail address.

My MD Tony Hyde is happy to receive calls from others who have been miss-sold BT Webclicks on 01438 315400 and advise you further on how we proceeded.

By: Rick Janicki

Rick Janicki — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:17:27 +0000

Don’t. Biggest mistake you will ever make.
I spend the first few days of every month answering sales calls that have used up my clicks then my listing disappears until the next month, when it all starts again.
Take the money you would spend on BT clicks, set it on fire and warm your hands, at least your getting something useful back.

By: Roger Mantle

Roger Mantle — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:54:46 +0000

I am in dispute with BT Webclicks at this moment. Being in a business where I look for leads to develop my Networking business I have previously advertised in Yellow Pages and BT Directories with pathetic results, mainly because the only category that would be anything near appropriate was Recruitment Consultants.
Imagine my reaction when I was approached by BT again in August 2009 to advertise again. However the silver tongued manager told me abut their Webclicks and persuaded me to let their sales person make a presentation.
When the day arrived and after pleasantries, the first thing that I mentioned was that I needed leads (name, address, phone number and e-mail address) and I was only on very rare conditions that I would pay over £2 per lead.
The salesperson, with some difficulty, largely because of lack of product knowledge and after three telephone calls to her supervisor, said that she could provide 40 leads a month which worked out including the set up fee at £1.87 per CONTACT. I agreed.
When contacting them about a setup issue and their ensuing competence a few weeks later, I learned that I was only getting clicks; I immediately wrote to the head of the BT Webclicks department expressing my dissatisfaction with the service so far and cancelled. The matter is ongoing after 3 months, I have refused to pay.

Anyone else in a similar situation should put up a fight. My local Trading Standards officer is taking up the case and offering good advice.

By: Mr Disgrunted

Mr Disgrunted — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:15:59 +0000

British Telecoms Rip off site!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Their reps fail to inform you that if you already do pay per click in google or yahoo, that they use these sites too, so if you supply them with keywords that you already use then you will be charged twice for the same keyword.
What a waste of money!

Dont use them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:01:36 +0000

OK, so you sign yourself off “BigBalls” and your penultimate paragraph states “you should contact our sales consultant to learn more.” You mean “BT’s sales consultant” surely…?

I like the line “We think BT are taking a bit of a gamble on this service as we have 80+ keywords on each campaign we are running which cannot be cost effective for BT buying from Yahoo, Bing and Google.”

What makes you think that BT will buy all of the available clicks for those 80+ keywords!? They’ll just set a budget (significantly below yours so that they get a good margin) and when it runs out each day, your advert stops being displayed. Let me assure you there is no gamble in that for BT!

By: John Wheeler

John Wheeler — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:34:29 +0000

I would like to introduce myself as someone who knows first hand how the BT web clicks + campaign works for 2009. We have several contracts with this service and it works well for us which we refer to other businesses in the Southeast and to our BT rep.

BT Webclicks is based on a search marketing service.

BT Web Clicks is a new advertising proposition which offers small businesses advertisers media exposure via a range of sources to deliver a Guaranteed package of ‘contacts’ (clicks and calls). Customers choose a contacts package with a sales person for a 12 month term. For a fixed monthly fee, BT Web Clicks places priority listings on BT Exchanges and Google, Yahoo and Bing; and a few smaller search engines which BT now own which are: UFindUs, SmileUK and MoreUK to fulfil the customer’s contacts package.

Advertisers can track the performance of their contacts package via monthly analysis and a performance guarantee applies across the minimum contract term (12 months) with a credit or refund policy for contacts not delivered (money back guarantee.)

Our business was in Tier 3 on one package and T1 on another. This at first seems a bit confusing until you understand the logic behind what the tiers are and costs etc.

JUNE 2009
Tier 5 – Mortgage Companies, Accident Claim Experts etc
Tier 4 – Call Centres, Debt Collection, Casinos etc
Tier 3 – Kitchen Design and Installation, E-Commerce, Energy Saving Consultants
Tier 2 – Plumbers, Double Glazing Installation, Car Body Repairs, Computer Services
Tier 1 – Garage Doors, Golf Shops, Sign Makers, Vets, Water Sports

The main reason for the tier policy is to make it as cost effective as possible for both parties as BT give you unlimited keywords to run your campaign for the full 12 months.

Instead of paying for every word that you add to your campaign a fixed cost is put in place, so that you do not let it run your business which we did with Google Adwords.

The Tier policy allows for a straight forward cost and click process worked out as an average cost over the year. We think BT are taking a bit of a gamble on this service as we have 80+ keywords on each campaign we are running which cannot be cost effective for BT buying from Yahoo, Bing and Google.

Tier 5
Tier 4
Tier 3 – £3 a contact//click – Kitchen Design and Installation etc
Tier 2
Tier 1 – £1 a contact//click – Sign Makers, Painters etc

Not sure of the other Tier Pricing as we don’t do them, but I would assume that Tier 2 is £2 a contact etc.

So from here you can see how it all works.

We have a Tier 3 package with Mobile Phone Shops for 1200 contacts for the year and the cost is £3600. We pay the whole lot on 12 months Direct Debit and our costs are spread evenly every month, BT manage the whole solution so we can run our business. They email us every month telling us how the campaign is working.

Our second business is in a Tier 1 campaign and we pay a 1200 contacts package, so 100 contacts a month in the Yacht industry sector. This is not a huge part of our business as the profit is not very high, unlike the Mobile phone shops.

Packages start from £1400 and go upto £72k – If you want to know more or you want a consultation you should contact our sales consultant to learn more.

Many thanks for reading, listening and allowing us to offer our opinions.

BigBalls.

By: ROB MEDLEY

ROB MEDLEY — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:28:52 +0000

AG Ceramics is Hertfordshire’s leading tile centre. We sign up to BT Click recently. Their representative claimed that we would receive 400 phone calls a month to our designated telephone number or we would get all of our money back. Obviously we were sceptical and queried this several times as 20 extra phone calls a day to our offices from new customers would be incredible. We voiced our doubts but the BT representative confirmed to us this was the case and added that we could set our own geographical area and key words, and no matter how limiting they were BT would still have to come up with 4800 phonecalls per year or we would get all our money back. We signed the contract as we couldn’t lose – we either received masses of new customers or got our money back.

Each month, we are sent a list of the key names and number of clicks. Loads of clicks but not for key words we have picked. It seems that the words are just picked to meet the click target and not on their relevance to the customers business.

Obviously the phone calls didn’t come and to date I cannot confirm that we have received a single call through the BT Click line. I rang BT Click who said that when receiving a call through BT Click you should first hear a faint whisper saying “BT Click”. Is this for real? No-one who works at our offices has ever heard anything! BT also stated that it does not guarantee phone calls, only clicks. Suddenly it all became clear. We had been miss sold. We immediately cancelled our payments. BT seem keen to pursue the matter but we will happily call their representative to court if it goes legal.

Rob Medley