Heritage is not in the business of ripping off its clients.
Heritage is a legitimate business, based in the State of Utah, legally licensed by the State of Utah, and has been in business since 2001, and currently has an active customer base in the tens of thousands. Heritage does business all across North America and has recently expanded overseas to begin working internationally. Before 2001 it was a successful Mortgage company known as The Heritage Group. In the year 2001 a young, intelligent employee of The Heritage Group could see the writing on the wall for the internet and persuaded the owners to give him a chance to see what he could do in the web design and hosting field. They were so successful in providing affordable, functional websites to small and medium size business’ the owners not only continued to back them but eventually transitioned completely over to the web industry, hence creating Heritage Web Solutions. Along the way that young intelligent employee was made an owner for his efforts. Heritage believes in rewarding its employees who work hard. It also tries hard to reward its clients with low cost (in other words, affordable) web sites. A majority of the time Heritage does not make a profit on a site. Heritage relies on building a long term relationship with its clients so it can eventually make a profit (Heritage is a business after all) on the hosting contract they set up. Sound like we are a rip-off or running a scam? Well, there is more....
In 2007 Heritage was inducted into the Inc. 500, a list of entrepreneurial companies that are wildly successful and on the rise. Heritage made number 2 in the IT industry and number 22 overall. You don’t have that kind of success ripping people off. You can read a press release of Heritage's induction into the inc. 500 here, http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/inc-500-honors-heritage-web-solutions-34381.php.
For more information, please visit http://www.heritagewebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.
If you have thousands of satisfied customers, then plse send me the names of at least 6 people & their contact info, so I can verify that they are a good company with a good reputation & nothing to hide!!
ReplyDeleteThese people are known as 'Testimonials / References'!! A good company will provide this info without any problems!!
My email address is gombey100@yahoo.com
I can certainly understand concerns about seeing online complaints. I also hope you understand you are seeing it from a very skewed angle. In response to your concerns I will be as honest and as frank as possible. Currently our dissatisfied customer rate is a very small percentage. In fact, it is much lower than most companies; the number of online complaints for Heritage embodies less than 0.01 percent of our current customer base. After 9 years in business, 800 sites going live every month and around 30,000 active customers it is inevitable that we have some clients who are dissatisfied no matter what we do. I would also like to point out that many of those so called online complaints are posted on various complaint websites by the same people; these complaint websites, I would like to bring to your attention, are unregulated by any governing body and have no supervision of what is posted on them, other than self supervision. Anyone can go on them and say pretty much anything they want to, with no one regulating it or verifying any of the “facts” stated.
ReplyDeleteI’m sure you, as a business person, are aware that there is no such thing as a complaint free company. Research any large company and you will find they have complaints posted about them on the internet, whether justified or not. There are simply a handful of individuals who, regardless of the true merits of the issues, post slanderous and/or negative comments.
However, we do not claim to be perfect. No company, no entity of any kind is perfect, and we would never state we were. We do claim however to be able to satisfy any reasonable complaints, if we are given the opportunity to do so. We recognize that our customers come to us, trust us with their business and we take it as a sacred responsibility to return that trust with hard work and a successful website.
In your email to our CEO, you included a very specific complaint in the body of it. As for the others, I feel this response will give you the view needed to put everything into the proper perspective.
“Don't every trust Heritage Web Solutions to design your site! Heritage will sucker you in by offering you a 5 page custom made site for $200.00. Sounds like a good deal right? Wrong? It took them roughly a month to set me up with a 4 page website :( They also want to nickel and dime you to death for web contact forms over a certain length. What really sets Heritage Web Solutions apart though is they tried to bill me for a site that was not even on the Internet much less completed!”
Yes, Heritage offers great deals. We do not make a profit on initial deals. Our business model is based on creating a long term relationship with our customers. We only make money in the long term.
Roughly a month to set up a four page website. Well, yes. Frankly, that isn’t a lot of time; four weeks. I would be concerned if we told people differently, but we always tell our customers upfront the AVERAGE time is four to six weeks. This depends upon a lot of different factors. Because we make every site custom made that time can be very different. Some sites are more complicated, sometimes the customer can delay getting content to us, sometimes, rarely, a mistake can be made and misunderstandings happen. Those are the exception, not the rule here at Heritage. Do we “nickel and dime” things? I guess some people could think so. We give you a very reasonable price for a good solid, basic product. Anything extra is going to cost money. I don’t find this unusual. When I go to buy a car, I certainly don’t expect it to be loaded with all the extra’s for the basic price. I very much expect to pay extra for the luxuries. Same concept with us. We offer a lot of things that are extra’s like flash, etc. and those are going to come at a price. My suggestion would be to have a good solid idea of what you’re going to need upfront with the salesperson and get a package deal. That doesn’t mean our employees are not going to make suggestions on extra’s you can buy, unless you specifically ask them not too. They want to make sure you have every opportunity to “plus” your site. They have minds of their own and can sometimes see something about your site you might need that you didn’t think of or the sales person didn’t think of. Also, do we bill for a site that “isn’t on the internet” yes, we bill for our services, on a schedule, pre-determined with you at the point of sale.
“It gets even better. The website that Heritage Web Solutions did create for me looked like it came from a children's coloring book? It amazes me that a company that supposedly does unique custom websites could stay in business for so long? I would have been better off using a template from a template site.”
The only thing I can say about that – why didn’t this person ask for another designer? Because this is basically an artistic process, sometimes the designer doesn’t nail it the first time. Sometimes a different designer needs to be assigned. Sometimes they don’t get your vision on the first try. Having been in the web design business for over a decade I don’t find this all that unusual. This fact about the design process is why we have our 90 day guarantee. It states, and I quote, “Heritage Web Solutions provides a 90-day satisfaction guarantee. HWS will continue to change and modify the Client’s website to Client’s liking, within 90 days from the date of sale or until the website is taken live, whichever comes first, at no additional cost. “ I think this speaks for itself. Our entire TOS can be found at http://www.heritagewebdesign.com/tos.html.
Bruce, you have asked for testimonials combined with detailed contact information. I will provide you with some, but I want you to realize that providing you with detailed contact information for our customers would be a blatant violation of our Terms of Service, as well as our privacy policy, which states, “We do not share the personally identifiable information provided to us in ways unrelated to our services or as otherwise described above without also providing you with an opportunity for opt-in consent.” Our privacy policy can be viewed in its entirety at http://www.heritagewebdesign.com/privacy.html. With that said, what I can and will for you is provide some of the emails we receive from our customers, (with names stripped to comply with our TOS) and the URL’s associated with them. If you choose to contact those people through their websites that gives them the opportunity to decide for themselves on whether or not they choose to give you their contact information and detail their experiences.
“Curtis has been a great help to me. Seems very knowledgeable of all the services and procedures. Very personable and enjoyable to communicate with. I appreciate his help.”
http://rosewood.net/cart/
(Contact information removed to comply with privacy policy)
“Greetings:
I am a brand new Heritage customer. Because of my age and lack of familiarity with the "latest and greatest" advantages and offerings in the computer world, I just wanted to compliment your staff. My rep, Jeff Harmon, has been not only helpful and respectful, but exceedingly patient. He truly grasps the extent to which he needs to explain in lay language, and the depth of that explanation depending upon his client's mental acuity. That's not something one can "teach." It is a gift, and a welcome characteristic when swimming in foreign waters. He has managed to guide me without insulting my intelligence, and steer me to helpful links that are appropriate to my needs.
Also, a Cliff Painter in the tech help section was able to ID the reasons why my sign-in and password failed to access. (FYI: Jeff tried it as well, as did Cliff, and it didn't work for them either!) He promised he would get on it because I am faced with time constraints. He did, solved the problem, and return emailed me. Keeping promises and following through is another worthy business ethic that is rare in today's world.
In these days of excessive complaint, I thought these young men deserved praise for a job well done, and that their supervisor would like to know his staff is performing well. Thank you!
http://relaxationreverie.com/
"When the power of love overcomes the love of
power, the world will know peace." (Jimi Hendrix)
Blessings and Smiles,
(Contact information removed to comply with privacy policy)
“You have only the best on your team. Martin Schetselaar is very soft spoken, patient, and courteous. I can only praise his way of dealing with customers. Where do you find those great people.? Down here they say New Yorkers are cold and snappy, well, I find them very sophisticated , great and classy.”
http://trpropertyandinvestment.com/
(Contact information removed to comply with privacy policy)
”Dear Mr. Walker
It's not often you find someone who truly lives out the qualities that a company needs in order to keep a good business reputuation, but I found that in Mr. Josh Doan who did an excellent job for me in addressing my concern over my website.
His efficient and quick handling of my situation has helped me be able to present myself in a good light to those who will be supporting my work as a writer. I just want to say that I am grateful to HWS for people like Josh.”
http://wandalittles.com/
(Contact information removed to comply with privacy policy)
”I just wanted you to know that Sonya has shown the utmost patience in trying to set up my web site. The draft designs that she has sent look good and are very eye-pleasing to me and others I have shown them to.
All of the people that I have contacted me from Heritage Web Solutions have shown the highest degree of professionalism I could have hoped for.
Thanks to you all. The site is not finished, through no fault of yours, and I will continue to add to it. There is no doubt in my mind that I will continue to enjoy
the support that has been given me thus far”.
http://pestarrestcc.com/
(Contact information removed to comply with privacy policy)
“Madeline is doing a fabulous job on my website! It looks awesome!”
http://autumnhess.com/
(Contact information removed to comply with privacy policy)
The above are just a few of the 1589 happy customer emails I personally have in my mail box.