Requested cancellation of my account in November. They continued to withdraw money from my credit card. When I again requested a cancellation of my account and a full written account of money owed, I got nothing. When they again tried to withdraw funds from my credit card I contested it through my credit card company who could not get an accounting either. Now their collections agency is harassing me. I've consulted my attorney who says not to worry about it because they did not provide proper documentation within the correct time frame and cannot produce a contract.

I STRONGLY ADVISE that you do not advertise with CitySearch, I have not seen any decrease in activity since I have cancelled. It's a waste of money and their are other companies who can provide details of any activity generated by their marketing efforts.

Below is the complaint I sent to my Account Manager with some details omitted. They tried to convince me to not cancel but I refused. They agreed to cancel my account and make no further charges, but I want to warn others about the type of tactics they use. I paid $350.00 plus $19.95 for one month. My agreement was to pay 50 cents per click. I expected that over a month, I would get a few clicks per week, but the report they used to charge me for clicks mysteriously had just enough clicks to come out to $350.00 worth of charges. They don't produce any evidence of where these clicks come from.

Dear Account Manager:

Please terminate my account immediately.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't have a contract with you. I never received a contract or terms and conditions and I never signed a contract. I was told by my account manager when I started the account that I would receive a copy of the terms and conditions, and I never received that. The "Your New Citysearch Campaign" welcome email I received after I agreed to set up an account (copy attached) has a link in it to "Terms and Conditions, " and that link leads to a page that says "There is a problem with this website's security certificate."

The service you have provided is completely unacceptable - not at all what I expected and not at all in line with standard business practices. You have provided nothing of value for the money I paid you. The level of service you have provided is so poor that you have breeched any type of contractual agreement you may believe exists between us.

The following are specific examples of poor service or lack of service.

INEFFECTIVE AND NONFUNCTIONAL MY ACCOUNT USER INTERFACE

* It took several days and multiple emails and phone calls for me to be able to access my account because I had a previous account which was not linked to my new ad.
* It took me an hour to figure out how to edit my business hours. I don't see the business hours under "Business Message" so I didn't think to look under Business Message to change the business hours.
* I am not able to edit images. I wanted to add a new photo, but all I see on the Business Media page is empty boxes that say "Image pending. Please allow a few minutes for image to appear on the site." That message has been displayed there for several days.
* It is impractical and inefficient to be able to make only one change at a time, and then have to wait "several minutes" as the site says, but it ends up being hours before I can make another change to my profile page. I'm never sure if a change I made was published, but I can't see it yet, or if there was a mistake and the change wasn't published until several hours after making a change.
* The interface does not allow me to edit some of the things I want to edit, specifically the targeted geographic area and removal of menu pages.
* I tried on several occasions to have my restaurant classified by type, but it is still listed as "Unclassified, Restaurants."
* There are messages that say to contact [email protected] to make additional changes to the profile pages, but I have sent messages to that email and they have gone unanswered.

WHERE ARE THE CLICKS COMING FROM?

I have gotten absolutely no business from the hundreds of clicks you have charged me for. I only had one phone call and that was from me as a test. I want to know where these clicks are coming from if you expect me to pay for them. I would not be willing to pay for your service unless you can give me some data about where the clicks you are reporting are coming from - such as geographic location, IP address, same or unique users, where they are referred from and what search string they used to find my ad. These are fairly standard web analytics that are provided by other similar services for free.

These clicks are far in excess of what would be expected for this geographic region. I suspect that you are counting clicks that I make in looking at my own profile page from My Account because the days on which I was trying to access or modify my profile page are showing higher numbers of hits. I understand you have a number of complaints and law suits against you for claims of fraudulence in how you calculate these clicks.

LACK OF CUSTOMER SERVICE AND RESPONSE FROM ACCOUNT MANAGER

I sent multiple emails that went unanswered

To my account manager's personal email address
* 8/20 - question about counting clicks (no reply)
* 8/22 - question about the phone number posted in CitySearch (no reply)

To [email protected]
* 8/17 - requested instructions for accessing my new account. My My Account page was taking me to my old account instead of the new one (no reply and no action)
* 8/31 - requested changes to my ad to change region and remove menu link (no reply and no action)

THE AD WRITING HELP IS OF NO VALUE

The original tag line supplied for me included "... Since 1997." I have no idea where you got the date 1997. We've been in business since December of 2008. I sent an email to AdReview with a number of attributes we want to emphasize in our ad and asking for help in writing a new tag line. Their suggestion was "Come Experience ... Best Thai Food & Thai Cuisine." I don't consider that useful, creative, professional, effective or efficient. The ad writer said they have a limited number of characters. If you have a limited number of characters, why would you repeat synonymous information "Thai Food and Thai Cuisine?" in that limited space?

LACK OF PROMINENCE ON SEARCH ENGINE SEARCH RESULTS PAGES

Although my CitySearch listing comes up on some of the popular search sites at the bottom of the page when I search for "thai food (city, state)" most of the more prominent listings for my restaurant are from sources other than CitySearch - most of which are free. I don't know why you think I should pay you $350 to get a listing at the bottom of the page below multiple free listings. And I wonder why I am getting so many clicks when my CitySearch information is at the bottom of the page.

Please terminate my account and make no further charges to my credit card.

Below is an account of the treatment we received from Citysearch.com. We hope you find this information useful before you make a decision with this company.

Citysearch is also an affiliate of Merchant Circle and hosts 35 other web sites. They are based in California and listed in the NYSE as IAC/InterActiveCorp

February 28, 2007

City search.com Elisha/ Customer Care

Re: Account No.

On December 27, 2006 I spoke with Liza Smith who explained that the most effective way to use the program was to increase the monthly cap from $100.00@ $1.05 cost-per click to a monthly cap of $150.00@ .39 per click that would include a flat fee of $9.95 per month with the understanding that this would be for our local service area only and not nationally. It appears by the information that I have is that we have been with your company for approximately 30 days and we have been debited $122.56 from our account for over 300 clicks.

Once this was discovered we immediately contacted your Atlanta office only to be treated in a very distasteful manner and only to hear two different stories about how the account was set-up. This morning I originally spoke with Tim King and when he appeared to become obstinate the call was transferred to Deborah Kurin who in turn began to speak so loud into the phone I had to move it away from my hear.

When I informed her of this she began to dictate in no uncertain terms that, �This is what you signed up for and agreed to.�

THIS IS NOT WHAT WE SIGNED-UP FOR; Not to be treated with contempt or disrespect by anyone with CitySearch.com and not to be falsely mislead or misrepresented with the terms of service and deceptive billing practices.

It would have not been quite so bad if we had received one hit from CitySearch.com but we receive absolutely zero. This is not our first day in business and we are very much in sync with the effective use of the internet as it relates to our business and our local service area.

After several attempts to contact Citysearch and resolve this problem this is what followed. It is very difficult to contact a live person and without an account it is impossible. This is an account of the conversation that took place on November 20, 2008 and e-mailed to their rating department.

Today I contacted your customer service department for the third time. I s/w a woman who would only identify herself as Katherine. It was very difficult for me to explain the situation to her as she sarcastically kept referring to me as "Darling"

Apparently since we do not have a paid account with Citysearch it appears we are treated differently. I can assure you that from the treatment we have already received from your organization it would be a very easy decision not to do business with Citysearch.

Today the internet is a tool that many businesses derive most of their income. In today's economy were money is tight a good reputation is essential for buyers to make intelligent and informed decisions on who they want to do business with.

On Feb 13.2008 R. Powell. stated in his review to Avoid This Business and states in his review we "doubled our quote." Mr. Powell declined service and threatened he would put us out of business if we charged his card for a minimum service fee. In retaliation Mr. Powell posted several postings on other sites telling people to "Avoid this Business� We contacted our attorney. Subsequently a letter was sent to Mr. Powell ordering him to remove any and all defaming postings. Mr. Powell denied that it was him that made the postings. It became clear to our attorney in his conversation with Mr. Powell he had issues with people of color (Afro-Americans). On October 29, 2008 we were contacted by B. Dube and scheduled a cleaning appointment for October 31, 2008. When our technician showed up he was treated very disrespectful harsh by Ms. Dube.

On November 5, 2008 the day after an historical election Ms. Dube let out a rant that goes on for several paragraphs. When this was brought to our attention we contacted Ms. Dube by e-mail and requested she remove the review. The following day the father (H. Dube) responded with a negative review on November 11, 2008. All of the negative reviews are in violation of your policy for unacceptable content.

It also appears that most of the reviews posted by reviewers have reviewed one business. This review is in violation of your review policy #11. Content determined by Citysearch to be illegal, or to violate any federal, state, or local law or regulation or the rights of any other person or entity.

We have contact Georgia Consumer Affairs regarding our complaint. There are several other complaints on the internet complaining of similar issues with Citysearch.