GREYSTONE INTL. RANKING REPORT
Greystone International is an industrial seating manufacturer ofchairs & seats for cinemas, theatres, auditoriums, churches,educational lecture halls, and home theaters.
July 31, 2010
I was the website designer for Greystone International until July 2010. The company hired me around 2007 to create a new website that would finally get high rankings on the 3 major search engines. I accomplished that goal and their rankings rose tremendously (see rankings below). These new rankings dramatically improved their visitor count resulting in greater sales. At the time, my contacts within the company were Rick Sousley - President, Bill Moore - National Sales Manager, and Jim Alles - Sales Service Manager. Within 6 months Jim Alles was my main contact person.
On June 25, 2008 I wrote Jim a short email that said:"Your rankings are getting so high, all we can expect are small gains now."
Jim Alles responded on June 26, 2008:"As long as we are going up and not down. Thank you by the way if I haven’t said that before. The web site is good and the response is 10,000 times what our old site was."
Greystone International was happy with my work and we continued our relationship as they kept signing up for my Yearly Maintenance Contract. Under this Contract I provided Greystone International with monthly ranking reports, did outside linking back to their site which greatly improves a site's rankings, made small changes to the site at no charge (charged $75 an hour for major work), acted as a consultant at no charge, and sent them periodic newsletters.
We had a good relationship until 2009 when Greystone International was going to be sold to an investor with Gaylord Stanton as the new President. (Not sure if the sale ever went through.) Two of my invoices weren't paid in 2009: a February 2009 invoice for $75 for work I did on the Harmony web page and a July 2009 invoice for $1997 for my Yearly Maintenance Contract covering July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010. In 2009 I spoke to Jim Alles about these overdue invoices and he told me that the company had "cash flow problems" and that if I was patient, I would eventually be paid. I also spoke to Gaylord Stanton on the phone in 2009 and he too assured me that I'd eventually get paid. I agreed to wait and be patient and work with them through this difficult economic period. Other than change some email addresses on their Contact Us Page, they never asked me to do any further work on their website. Since a website is the best bang for a company's advertising dollar, I thought that it was very odd that new products weren't introduced, new brochures created, and upgrades weren't being done to improve the appearance of the website.
In December 2009 I contacted Jim Alles several times and here's proof that I was led to believe that Greystone International was still going to pay me for services provided under the July 2009 Yearly Maintenance Program:
Not long after I received the above email, Jim Alles was let go by Greystone International. Jim told me that I was still going to get paid and to refer all questions to Richard Dunham, Sales & Operations Manager. I spoke with Mr. Dunham several times about my unpaid invoices. Finally in April 2010 I was paid the $75 owed on the Feb. 2009 invoice, but only a partial payment of $997 towards the July 2009 $1997 Yearly Maintenance Contract - leaving a balance of $1,000.
In June and July of 2010 I contacted Mr. Dunham several times by email and phone requesting full payment of the overdue invoice. My requests fell on deaf ears as no one would give me an answer. So I followed up with emails and left voice messages for Mr. Stanton to call me back. He wouldn't respond. I sent Greystone International another $1997 invoice to cover this year's maintenance contract from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 with the stipulation that first I must be paid in full for 2009's Maintenance Contract. Again, no response which wasn't a big surprise.
So obviously Greystone International was not interested in renewing my Yearly Maintenance Contract. That's fine as that is their prerogative. But for sure they should pay the remaining balance of $1,000 that was owed to me back in July 2009. I've now gone and deleted all back links to their website. Over time the search engines will see fewer links to the Greystone International's website and therefore their rankings will probably slowly go down as a result. To me this is a very poor business decision on their part, as they'll get less business from their website unless they go and pay more money to another Website/SEO Firm or get involved in Pay-Per-Click.
Now that you've read this article, do you think Greystone International is an honest company and one that you'd like to do business with?
Sincerely,
Bill Hamilton
Not in first 30 means your Web site was not found in the top 30 positions. NA means Non-Applicable or no prior day's positions to report yet.NM means No Matches were found for that keyword search.
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