Complaints

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. 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.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:25/08/2023

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  UnresolvedMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  We began working with War Room Inc to execute our ad campaigns starting on March 1, 2023 and terminating on May 15th, 2023. They operate by collecting payment upfront, paying for and running our online ad campaigns and taking a percentage of the ad spend. However their invoices only break out what they'd like to collect (e.g. $40K) with no supporting documentation of actual expenses (e.g. ******** Ads) so it's impossible to reconcile the ads purchased and therefore the associated service fees. We questioned these practices and after 2.5 months stopped working with them on May 15th and have used the subsequent 3 months requesting invoices and expense reports to pay them and reclaim unspent ad budget. By their measure, we have $30K in unspent ad spend which they refuse to return and we're questioning whether the amount is higher given the lack of backing expense reports. We're requesting either the $30K that is mutually agreed as unspent ad budget or a full reconciliation of their ad spend.
  
  Thank you.

  Business Response

  Date: 01/09/2023

  War Room Inc. acknowledges that we entered a $600,000 contract with our client, *** ******, for an Annual Campaign slated to run between March 1, 2023 and February 28, 2024. Throughout our partnership, we communicated to the client that our team operates on a retainer model. Monthly retainers are settled in advance, and all services, including ad spend, are applied throughout the month. As Mr. **** mentioned, his team terminated our partnership prematurely. However, contrary to their initial statement, our email threads confirm that the termination happened on June 16, 2023 (Appendix A). Unlike the claims made by *** ****** against the agency, our client expressed their desire to terminate their contract based on performance expectations (Appendix A). To expand, the client expected aggressive profit margins to be generated within an unrealistic period. After conducting an account audit as part of our client onboarding process, our team discovered several discrepancies previously communicated by the *** team to War Room Inc. which supported the infeasibility of the client’s benchmark goals. To address this, we discussed that our early campaign performance will largely be influenced by testing and learnings during our Kickoff Call on February 15, 2023 (Appendix B). 

  
  The monetary value of $39,556.44 that *** requests to claim is a part of our 15% cancellation service term ($76,133.47), which the client has acknowledged and agreed with when entering the partnership (Appendix C): "*** may reallocate a portion of the budget, or delay the campaign up to 3 months from the start of the original campaign with no fees incurred. If a project has commenced, the cancellation fee is 15% of the remaining ad spend."

  
  To clarify the values in question, $76,133.47 is 15% of $507,556.46, which is the total unfulfilled campaign budget of $600,000. The retainer value that *** ****** wants to claim is applied towards the cancellation fee, to which the client still owes War Room Inc. an additional total of $36,577.03. 

  
  As a Demand-Side Platform (DSP) connector, War Room purchases ad placements and bids in bulk. This creates the opportunity to maximize the value of our client’s dollars by delivering competitive ad bid prices due to volume pricing. In return, ad publishers charge War Room for the total amount spent across all ad accounts, meaning that our invoices from said publishers reflect a total monthly charge that is undifferentiated by ad account but instead by total usage. However, our team utilizes software to track client spending and has been transparent in providing exact spend amounts allocated towards *** ******. We provided an ad spend breakdown with every client report and the numbers related to their ad spend were passed onto the *** ****** on several occasions as per their request (Appendix E).

  
  Amid our communication with the client regarding our cancellation terms, we emphasized the importance of our cancellation fee as it assists in covering some of the upfront investment that War Room amortizes over the period of a campaign.  *** ****** insisted that War Room fully waive our 15% cancellation fee. However, with the extensive time and resources invested into *** ******, we would like to be compensated in part for our labour and maintain the charge communicated in the contractual agreement.
  

  
  

  Customer Answer

  Date: 12/09/2023

  
  
  Complaint: ********
  

  Summary
  
  I am rejecting this response because the response does not address the core concern which is we do not have a reliable audit of expenses incurred and therefore there is no claim on the $39,556 in dispute. Our original request was for the $39,556.44 in unspent prepaid advertising, but is now $105,851 (see below). We also wanted an audit of expenses as its unclear if more was due to us and to substantiate War Room's claims of covering upfront costs. However War Room's note now indicates that they get volume discounts and as our fees are based on a percentage of spend, we believe that those savings have not been passed on to us as a client. Furthermore we now have data to show that our own ROI from ads is dramatically higher than War Rooms. This is contrary to what one would expect - that an outside expert should be more cost effective than unskilled internal resources, not less. This is after all why companies hire outside agencies and contractors. Therefore I believe there are clerical errors in our fee structure that should be reconciled. Finally, I will speak to the cancelation terms, though it's secondary as regardless of the terms, clients have a right to transparent billing practices.

  Over Billed

  Contrary to industry norms, we only have the highest level of financial metrics for ad spend - Cost per Click (CPC) from War Room. The average CPC reported to us by War Room is 3-4x higher than what we able to achieve with our prior agency or on our own. This runs contrary to logic since War Room specializes in Digital Ads where neither our prior agency or *** does. *** has limited CPC data but for the months of January, February and June, July and August (two months before working with War Room and three months after) our CPC ranged from $0.37 to $1.92 compared to $5.04 to $6.05 for ****** Search. From War Rooms reports in their Appendix D, $22,408 was spent on ****** Search. Their inefficiency means that $14,937 more (assume 3x) was spent than historical norms. If this was applied to all channels, then of the $92,443, $66,295 was wasted on inefficient ad spend. Or their reports are in error - in either case the source data is required to determine reality.

  In addition, any bulk ad pricing they received was not passed on to us as our agreement was a 9% fee on actual ad spend, not pre-discounted ad spend. The fact that the CPC were higher than historical and subsequent norms indicates a lack of "maximizing the value of our client's dollars".

  Cancellation Fees

  We did not cancel - War Room failed to do their job. During the 10 week period with War Room, we had lower revenues, $25,915 with higher ad spend spend $92,443 or roughly 10x what we spent in the prior months. No one spends 4x on ads then they receive in revenues. No business can function for more than a few months with that cavalier approach to sales and lack of accountability. I am not sure what is aggressive with respect to wanting one's business to survive. Once we left War Room we have doubled our monthly revenue with 1/10 of the ad spend. 

  Ask

  1. We continue to ask for an audit of expenses. If War Room is able to determine in their own reports how much to charge us, it means their bills from the ad publishers break out the spend. If the publishers didn't break out the spend then shame on War Room because that means they're just charging clients arbitrarily.

  2. Or in the absence of a breakdown of expenses, we are now requesting $66,295 + $39,556 = $105,851 or the unspent ad budget plus what I assume is a clerical error in War Room's calculation of our spend. This number is subject to change as we continue to gather more data on the other channels and reconcile it to the limited reports provided by War Room.

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

  Business Response

  Date: 27/09/2023

  Audit of Expenses
  We acknowledge ***’s concerns and are still interested in resolving this as amicably as possible. We recognize that *** is seeking an audit of expenses and is concerned that they were not provided with the same volume pricing as other clients do. Our volume pricing is proprietary, and all clients benefit from this as per our standard process. 
  
  We provided all spend reports at their request, broken down by channel and month. These are the reconciled balances. 
  
  
  Account Audit
  As part of our onboarding process, we performed an account audit to verify and understand the status of ***’s ad performance so we could make relevant recommendations and optimizations across their account. We noticed several errors with how their ad accounts were set up during this process, ultimately impacting the quality of their data. Without sufficient data on their historical revenues or Return On Ad Spend, we could not test the viability of the client’s revenue targets.
  
  We informed the client in a recorded onboarding call that meeting their desired targets would not be guaranteed, and recommended focusing on generating product awareness for the first 4 months as we generate accurate audience insights first. From there, we could then identify the most responsive audiences and hone in on those specific segments to maximize their return on investment, to which the client agreed. However, despite generating over 18 million impressions in a 10-week period, the client expressed their desire to pause all campaigns. 
  
  
  Performance & Delivery
  Although we cannot speak to their current performance, our team delivered results for *** during our partnership. Some factors such as the client’s ******** verification were out of War Room’s control, but the agency continued to support *** in resolving this. To expand, when *** was having trouble verifying its own ******** Ad Account, our Technical Marketing team stepped in to provide additional out-of-scope hours and help find solutions. Tasks that require the attention of our Technical Marketing team are charged extraneously to the ad spend budget as they are beyond the standard project scope. However, for ***, these hours were not billed or charged to the client as we were aware of their financial troubles. 
  

  
  Across all live channels, our post-campaign insights demonstrate that we saw strong performance improvements as the campaign progressed:
  We outperformed their previous programmatic partner by 62.5% when comparing our Return on Ad Spend on ****** Search.

  At the time of the campaign pause, the client’s *********** *** ad channel saw a 257% increase in conversion rate as compared to the start of the campaign.

  Similarly, our Display ads also saw performance improvements as the campaign progressed; post-optimizations, this channel saw a revenue increase of 33% period over period.

  We have been transparent with all the challenges that were presented to us during the campaign launch and the progress made since then.
  
  
  Discounted Cancellation Fees
  War Room operates on a Retainer Billing Model, where retainers are paid at the start of the month and drawn down as they are applied to any cost or fees. In this case, the residual value of their retainer was applied to their original cancellation fee. While we remain entitled to the full cancellation fee amount set out in our contract, we have offered a 48% discount on the cancellation fee in an attempt to resolve this matter.
  
  War Room has provided several concessions to preserve the client relationship, and we still desire to resolve this so both parties can walk away from it comfortably. For us, we’d like to maintain the charge of $39,556.44 to ensure our labour, time, and efforts are partly compensated by the client.

  Customer Answer

  Date: 29/09/2023

  
  
  Complaint: ********
  
  
  
  I am going to keep this very simple - I am rejecting this response because it does not address the fundamental issue. War Room has not provided a breakdown of expenses tied to any auditable receipts. Our own analysis of advertisement spend does not reconcile with claimed spend. Put another way, they are either terrible at their job (spending money on ads with negative returns) when they claim expertise in this domain, or there is an accounting issue. Every ad platform (******, ********, etc) provides a breakdown of spend so it's not valid to hide behind their own "proprietary" system. No other agency or vendor I've ever worked with has such an obfuscated billing structure.
  
  
  
  Sincerely,
  
  
  
  ******* ****