Complaints

• Initial Complaint

  06/25/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  The owner is knowledgeable, but unfortunately, his agency is just terrible! We experienced poor service and a lack of communication after signing the contract. Our company hired Neil Patel's agency to help us with SEO and ****** ads. However, after a few months, we noticed that the agency was not delivering as they advertised. Their SEO and ****** ads strategy were subpar and did not align with what we were paying for. To make matters worse, our website got hacked and ****** shut down our ad account. The agency was of no help, so we had to hire other professionals to resolve the issue. When we fixed the problem, we requested the agency to activate 2FA settings for added security, but they failed to do so within the given timeframe. Due to their non-compliance with our security instructions, we had to terminate our contract with them. Our requests for them to waive the fees have been ignored, and they are now threatening us with a lawsuit and collection fees. All fees must be waived as no service was performed after the contract ended due to the agency's failure to adhere to our security instructions.

  Business response

  07/01/2024

  Regarding the website hack, we had no part in that and were not contracted to help fix the problems the hack created.

  On Feb 15th, 2024 Sabber email the team that his request to have 2FA completed in a few days was not finished and that he was requesting to cancel his agreement. The Neil Patel team responded the same day that our attempts to set up 2FA were unable to be completed due to the locked account. This does not represent a breach in contract and stated on Feb 15th that the client could not cancel the current agreement. We asked for a call to discuss.

  Communication was sent on Feb 1, and Feb 12th talking about the locked account and changes to be made on the deliverables within the contract to appease his requests.

  Repeated attempts were made to the client in order to speak with him about his contract and the deliverables that continued to be sent per our agreement that was still in place. We made multiple attempts to resolve the situation and the client did not want to participate in any resolution. We have sent him to collections for the unpaid bills on the work that was contractually agreed upon and delivered to the client.

   

  Customer response

  07/01/2024

   
  Complaint: 21899946
  
  I am rejecting this response because: 

  I sent you instructions to complete the security setup but since you failed to do so the security features blocked your account after 5 business days. I didnt hear back from your team until many days after their access was automatically removed by the website since they failed to activate the 2FA. Their access has been removed since then but they insist that theyve been delivering SEO while they didnt even have access to the website to do any SEO work. I couldnt put my website at risk of another attack and when I saw theyre not communicating about activating the security features and that they failed to follow our instructions we had no other choice than stop doing business with them. I have all the emails and logs documented. Its a shame that you dont accept your employee *************************** mistake in lack of communication and you want to blame us for it. I shouldnt put my business at risk just because your company doesnt understand the importance and priority of the security measures for the websites they work on. I hope other people can see this complaint and never do the same mistake as I did in trusting your agency. 

  
  Sincerely,
  
  *****************************

  Business response

  07/11/2024

  Unfortunately, ****** continues to ignore any attempts to meet regarding this matter. His contract was in force the entire time and NP Digital has continued to reach out to make attempts at a resolution. However, with the complete lack of response on his end for months, we have no choice but to enforce the agreement. Our company has worked in good faith to fulfill the contractuals that we were responsible for. His mention of website hacks were not our responsibility nor anything caused by our company. We did work to resolve the 2FA situation but it was not in the timeframe that he created and has not responded to any of our requests to resolve this amicably since. 

• Initial Complaint

  05/16/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I am writing to formally lodge a complaint against Neil Patel Digital, which I believe to be a scam. My experience with this company has been extremely negative, and I feel it is important to warn others about their unethical business practices.Firstly, Neil Patel Digital forced me to remain in a contract despite my repeated requests to terminate it. This is a huge red flag; a reputable company would not force a client to continue paying for services that are not yielding any results. It is deeply concerning and unprofessional to coerce a client into continuing a business relationship under these circumstances.Throughout the duration of our contract, Neil Patel Digital consistently under-delivered even the most basic results. Whenever I questioned their performance, their response was always to suggest that I should pay them more money for better results. This cycle of offering expensive packages, failing to deliver results, and then demanding more money to achieve any measurable outcome is a clear indication of a scam. It is unacceptable and deceptive business practice.After enduring this for a year and seeing no improvement in their services, I believed we had reached a resolution when they agreed to wipe the final payment if I remained quiet about their poor performance. However, despite this agreement, they have now sent me to collections and are demanding an attorney. This action is not only unjust but also indicative of their intent to exploit their clients further.In summary, Neil Patel Digital has stolen my money for a year by forcing me to stay with them under false pretenses, failed to deliver any substantial results, and is now suing me for a payment they agreed to waive. This company's practices are not only unethical but also predatory. I urge the BBB to take immediate action to investigate Neil Patel Digital and protect other potential clients from falling victim to their scams.

  Business response

  05/16/2024

  We would be happy to explain why your account was sent to collections. Neil Patel Digital offered you a 30-day early termination for us to end the relationship amicably and cancel the contract early. This was agreed to on December 6, 2023. You did not pay the November bill for all the work that was completed, and our agreement was to void the December invoice if you agreed, to pay November's invoice.   
   
  On February 7, 2024, we emailed again reminding you that all the work was completed, and we just needed the payment for November we would void the December invoice for to close the account. There was no response, and no payment for Novembers bill, so our billing department sent it to collections. We did finish all the work for the entire 12-month contract. During our active partnership we consistently provided reports highlighting the strong and consistent growth of SEO in organic impressions and rankings month over month, and year over year. 
  We would like to resolve these concerns with you. If you would like to pay for the November bill like we originally agreed to, we can void the last payment for December.  

• Initial Complaint

  03/26/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  Neil Patel is the one who launched The ********************** Network. On 02/26/2020 I purchased a 5 year subscription to ********************** for $150. On 11/20/2019 I upgraded to a lifetime subscription of Neil Patel's Private Deal Flow for $1,500. On 03/22/2024 ******* and Entrepreneurs sent out an email stating that they were discontinuing their service on March 28th, 2024. A prorated refund of $45 is owed on the 5 year subscription to ************************ as I still had time left on the subscription when I renewed for 5 years. Now that the lifetime subscription to Neil Patel's Private Deal Flow will end on March 28th, 2024 I am owed $1,500 as a refund. Please respond to this complaint by refunding me $1,545.00. Thank you for your time.

  Business response

  03/26/2024

  I'm sorry it didn't go the way you want.

  Sadly I don't work for Angels anymore, it is a *************** company.

  I would refund you if I could, but I don't control that company as I don't own it.

  Please reach out to them and ask for a refund. I will email them as well, but I can't control what they do as you paid *************** (They own ************************) for the subscription.

   

  Customer response

  03/30/2024

   
  Complaint: 21484435
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  Please do let me know when you have contacted or emailed *************** in order to get this matter resolved and what their response was.

  
  Sincerely,
  
  *****************************

• Initial Complaint

  11/26/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  My experience with Patel's agency has been distressingly poor and utterly disappointing. I was forced to stay in their contract for a year even though my paid CPL immediately 3x and *** work had no results under their management. Promised expertise in digital marketing proved hollow as their approach systematically degraded my business's performance. Excessive and unproductive meetings failed to mask their incompetence, with my paid campaigns suffering severe mismanagement, leading to a substantial loss of faith on my part. Despite my pleas, they rigidly enforced the contract, further crippling my business with increased costs and scant leads. Even their purported SEO prowess turned out to be a farce, as a year's engagement resulted in negligible non-branded traffic and a lack of competitive ranking. With substantial financial investment yielding no tangible returns, their service can only be characterized as predatory and profoundly unsatisfactory. I strongly advise against entrusting your business to this agency.

  Business response

  11/28/2023

  We did not force them to stay working with us. We agreed to remove the paid services and downgrade the contract outside the agreement terms early, because they elected to run the paid ads themselves.  
   
  Our digital marketing has shown in no way degraded their business from our work. Since our engagement began in Jan 2023 to November 2023, the total ranking organic keywords grew from 296 to 881, a 197.6% increase, focusing on keywords approved by their team in their service area. Our SEO work brought more traffic to the website from our strategy. Only looking at the non-branded keywords which they say were lacking. The website grew year over year by a 356% increase with more impressions, and a 265% increase to visitors to the website. This is excluding any keywords around **** Roofing.  
  
  Alongside the improvements above, we have consistently provided reports for incredible MoM (Month Over Month), PoP (Period Over Period), and YoY (Year Over Year) organic impression and traffic growth for the limited deliverables remaining after our point of contact downgraded their contract in spring, against our strong recommendations. 
   
  We talked about opportunities to continue to grow the non-brand keywords on the website as early as June. We repeatedly flagged this concern with our point of contact, that resources have not been utilized in the creation/publication of the recommended blog topics we provided them with. This strategy would allow them to leverage more non-brand keyword opportunities to the website. We provided all the research for them to write the blogs that they never used.  
   
  Our contact missed 3 of the regularly scheduled monthly SEO performance review discussion meetings over the summer. During a meeting with him in Sept, the brand v non-brand concern was discussed at length after which he declined a scope adjustment that would have allowed us to address it by posting blogs as well as correcting existing blog posts that included viewable code in their page titles and meta descriptions posted by their other resources. 
   
  Each monthly SEO performance review slide deck, call recording, and recap email highlighted the many growth results provided during our engagement showing our contacts disregard of data derived directly from the sites analytics and ****** Search Console, and other first party platforms.  

  Customer response

  11/28/2023

   
  Complaint: 20916666
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  my Screenshots clearly show this company ignoring my request and forcing me onto a call. On the call they pushed very hard to keep all accounts although paid had 3x in cost. At the time I needed them to release me so bad it seemed the ONLY way was to allow them to keep ***. We had been hurting so much from this company running our ads that we had to take their offer to keep the *** which you can clearly see was not at all what we wanted to do nor what my board wanted to do. The only reason we kept it is so that they would give us paid back. Their performance results on *** is fabricated and fluffed. All branded keywords went up because we 3x as a company - not because they made a key word on the 7th page go to the 6th page. We 4x ad spend, bought 15 more trucks. The only traffic increases being from branded keywords does not show they were working to our best interest rather piggy backing off of organic growth to Seo because our company was growing. I had countless proof that our html tags arent even live. Pages arent even indexed. Zero back links have been created. Minimal work was done on site. Our map pack is terribly ranked etc. as an Seo expert I trusted them to give me the best package for my budget. They claim they offered more options- they did but I was already in a contract against my will and getting terrible results and their only resolution was give us more money which would be 5x industry average for what Im being quoted from reputable companies. I did not attend calls because the results were terrible, they were long, and I didnt want to be working with their company but we were forced to stay in Seo. You can clearly see that by my emails. You can also get any Seo expert to do an analysis of the last year and they will tell you minimal work was completed and paying $40k+ for that work against our will is unacceptable 

  
  Sincerely,
  
  *********************

  Business response

  12/05/2023

  The html issue he is referring to is the one our team is looking into, that he notified us about on Wednesday 11/22. Our tech team so far cannot duplicate that issue or concern, and do not see html code interfering with site rankings or SEO performance.

  RE: backlinks:
  During our last call, we spoke to his question about backlinks -  we provided the 9 on the SOW.  He signed and agreement to downgrade his SOW which removed backlinks. He had sent an email about it prior to that call, and I asked if he had any questions about it and he said no. 

  RE: "Their performance results on *** is fabricated and fluffed": We reported on or highlighted among the MANY consistent wins, including specific double, triple, and even quadruple growth on pages and for keywords we'd specifically leveraged and optimized the site for with our work.
  Cases in point: 
  As of Sept, main and halos Keyword growth
  gutter installation cost grew month over month (MoM) by +178.06%
  tile roofing grew MoM by +17.45%
   By June, "metal roofing" had a MoM over +*****% growth for a target URL and keyword we optimized

  These were all targeted keywords by Neil Patel.

  His site and the amount of people that make edits to it has caused major problems. Example: Someone on his team inadvertently deleted tracking on his site and 3 months of SEO work. Neil Patel fixed all of this as a courtesy and free of charge in order to continue to provide best in class service to our client.

  He has asked to be removed from his contract. However, it was negotiated by him and an addendum was signed by he and his company, to continue the relationship at a lower cost and scope of work, removing paid services. We have continued to fulfill his contract and support his company throughout the contract period. 

  Customer response

  12/05/2023

   
  Complaint: 20916666
  
  I am rejecting this response because:
  

  Thank you for your prompt response, however, we would like to provide further clarifications and present counterarguments to the points you raised.

  
  **** Issue: We understand that your tech team is looking into the **** issue we reported on Wednesday, 11/22. It's important to note that while your team may not have been able to duplicate the issue, we have observed it impacting our website's performance. As business owners, our focus is on ensuring that our website ranks well and maintains good *** performance. We believe that even seemingly minor issues can affect these crucial aspects. This is something that should not have been an oversight issue for a year from our seo "experts." I as a business owner did not find myself responsible for constantly over looking the indexing and **** issues. As basic as they are you would think that is something that would have been brought to my attention. If there was actual management over this account, instead of just a money grab, that would have been highlighted brought to my attention and fixed. 

  
  Backlinks: We acknowledge that we discussed the issue of backlinks during our last call. However, it's essential to clarify that the removal of backlinks from the Statement of Work (SOW) was based on the understanding that it would be in the best interest of our *** strategy. We relied on your expertise in making this decision. While we did sign an addendum to downgrade the **** we did so under the assumption that it would enhance our *** performance as per your recommendation. The cost that was requested for these additional SOW items are 5x+ other companies charge. To hold that against us is ridiculous. To dangle an option in front of us at an inflated price, and then punish us for not accepting it and using it as leverage for underperforming is not acceptable. 

  
  Performance Results: We acknowledge the growth you've highlighted in certain keywords and pages as a result of your *** efforts. However, our concern lies in the broader picture and the overall *** performance of our website. While there may have been specific successes, we have observed a lack of consistency in our rankings and traffic, which has raised questions about the overall effectiveness of the *** work. It is easy to highlight a couple keywords growth, however how much traffic did that drive to our company? Would you pay $40k to improve a few keywords? I have other specialists claiming that is a fraction of a % of what should have been accomplished for the money we were paying. 

  
  Website Edits: We understand that managing a website with multiple contributors can be challenging. We appreciate your efforts in fixing issues caused by inadvertent actions, such as the tracking deletion incident. However, this incident was not done by our "team." This was done by the previous marketing company that I connected you with personally in an email to communicate with to ensure that everything was brought over smooth from them to Niel Patel. To blame our "team" rather than the company you were supposed to be working with to ensure a clean transition, is unacceptable. On top of that - this is he said she said. The other company has stated multiple times that this has "never" happened to them and they claim it is an issue caused by YOUR team. 

  
  Contract Negotiations: Regarding the negotiation of our contract, it's important to clarify that the resolution that was preferred was a complete separation for your company, however as you can see by the screenshots that was not accepted. On the call, yes paid was dropped, but it felt like a negotiation, and the only way I would be able to drop services was if I kept the *** portion with your company.  

  
  In conclusion, we appreciate the ongoing dialogue to resolve these issues. Our primary goal is to see improvements in our website's *** performance to achieve sustainable and consistent results, which we do not believe was properly managed by your company at all. 

  Business response

  12/07/2023

  We understand the concerns to ensure there are no issues with the **** coding for your site. You are not wrong that there can be valid **** issues in some cases. We have done a lot of investigating to make sure this isnt an issue for your site. We can see there are no **** issues that would be hurting your ***, as we can see from how ****** is indexing and crawling the site. (see attached screen shots)  
  We monitor the website for tags or scripts that are invalid in the head. FB often does this in their tracking. ******** requires some advertisers to add a tracking image code within the head section of a web page, where it does not belong. Here is an article that explains more about this.**********************************************************************************************************************************************.  
  The error in the **** that you are seeing is forced by FB tracking, but perfectly fine to have and not causing issues for the **** ****** has said not to worry about it, but we checked manually anyway to confirm the site is performing well. 

  See attachement 1

  Backlinks-  
  Regarding your concerns with the backlinks for your *** work we never recommend a heavy *** scope with just a focus around backlinks. Especially with a site that has other high priority issues we need to tackle first. Getting tons of backlinks each month will not help you reach your goals if the site doesnt have the core optimization and content on the pages to support those backlinks pointing to your website. This was our strategy to get your website in order first with backlinks included in your monthly work. We were working with a set budget to include what items needed to be done and we could be more aggressive with more backlinks with a higher budget but wanted to wait to discuss a renewal for year 2, and not constantly tell you to spend more money with us when we are seeing positive results.  
   The way we do our backlinks takes lots of outreach, writing, and planning on our part to make sure we are earning those links on the correct websites around your topic. Getting backlinks is a great strategy combined with the other tactics we are doing for you. For example, by optimizing the keywords on the target pages, adding meta tags, alt tags, schema and content on those pages aligned with the keyword research.  
  I am sure you can get backlinks at a cheaper cost like you mentioned. However, they may have a different way to obtain those by buying them, or getting bulk backlinks that are not the same caliber as the way we do it. This looks unnatural and we have clients work with us to fix and clean up toxic backlinks when this is done. Looking at how your site is doing with backlinks you have a reputable profile that shows the type of backlinks we were able to get for you (see screenshot from SEMrush tool). You can also see another screen shot looking at the backlink profile. This graph shows backlinks going up naturally from where you were compared to last year. You are in a great spot to continue to gain more backlinks moving forward.

  See attachement 2

  Performance results- 
  The site is up 61% YoY. The site has more pages indexed now than ever. The data clearly shows the overall *** performance of your website has happened within the last year. We have ****** analytics that allow us to see how much traffic has come to the site from just looking at organic search from Jan 2023 to December 6, 2023. You have had ***** visits to the website for organic. With reporting 187 form submissions from the organic traffic. It is also amazing to see that organic is the highest source of traffic coming to the website and form submissions from any other channel. (See attached screenshot from ****** analytics) 

  See attachment 3

  Website Edits- 
  As far as the website edits, we are not trying to point the finger, and are happy to take ownership if there was something undone by our team. We have no reason to undo the implementations we did on the website and unfortunately it was removed somehow. We caught it right away and added it back to the site because we didnt want it to hurt the performance. This is the nature of having multiple teams working on the website. We dont have a way to look at a staging site or the change history. We recommended setting that up, so you have oversight on changes to the website to be able to understand what user made the change in the future. Your account manager ***** sent an email to you on April 6th letting you know we will work on making the changes back into the pages again. (see screenshot of email) We were happy to coordinate with them and even said we would email them or talk to them to make sure we were all on the same page and understand how we can better communicate changes together. You even asked us to draft an email for you to send to them, to avoid this being repeated.  

  See attachement 4

  I am sorry to hear you still feel forced to work with us for the *** portion of the contract. We did have a contract in place and wanted to come up with a resolution for you to lower your payments that in the contract agreed to. It was a compromise to help you and that you signed off on. You have requested a billing adjustment as a potential solution to resolve this. We have made you an offer to satisfy this.  We have agreed to let you out of your contract early, and not pay for your last bill in December. We are waiting to hear back from you on the offer we made. We stand by the *** work and it has made a positive impact on your website.  Your site will continue to see the *** benefits over time from our work.  

• Initial Complaint

  01/31/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  On multiple occasions I have requested to be "unsubscribed" from the companies email list. Every day, sometimes multiple times, I receive spam messages from Neil Patel.I am simply seeking to be removed from their mailing list. I have attempted to contact Mr. ******************** over the phone, but his number was not in service.I want the spam to stop.Thank you!

  Business response

  02/01/2023

  We are grateful for the opportunity to address the BBB complaint received and are committed to finding a resolution that satisfies all parties. We understand the importance of privacy and take such matters seriously. Our priority is to maintain the highest standards of customer satisfaction and resolve any issues in a prompt and professional manner.

  We apologise that ******************** situation was not previously resolved. In accordance with our privacy policy, we have taken the necessary steps to delete ******************** email record from all email communication tools. We would like to assure **************** that he will not receive any further emails from us. 

  All our emails contain an unsubscribe link which automatically excludes the customer from receiving any further emails. In addition to this, customers have the option to visit this page [***********************************] and request not to share their data and unsubscribe from any communication tools. Based on this complaint we have reviewed these processes to ensure that they are working properly.

  We take our customers' privacy and preferences seriously and offer these options for their convenience. If **************** has any further concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to us and we will do our best to assist.

  Thank you for your consideration in this matter. 
  

  Customer response

  02/01/2023

   
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  *******************

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩