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:02/15/2024

  Type:Service or Repair Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore 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.

  I was notified on 1/15/24 that there are no service plans at the amount of ***** per month. My card was fraudulently charged at ****** this month for services without my knowledge. There was no written notice sent to me with a change that I agreed to. This company provides website hosting for my website. It is unprofessional to just randomly double the charge that I did not authorize to this company. This is fraud. I am also asking for the last two years of payments back due to the company not being authorized to automatically deduct from my bank account. I was making the payments when they sent me the invoice and then they started to just deduct from my account without my authorization. This is also fraudulent. I did not sign any documents authorizing the automatic deduction from my account nor have I received any notification of a rate change on my account other than today.

  Business Response

  Date: 02/20/2024

  Dear ****,
  I hope this message finds you well. I am writing in response to your complaint filed with the Better Business Bureau. First off I want to apologize for any inconvenience this situation may have caused. At Studio98, we take such matters very seriously.

  Upon receiving your complaint, we immediately conducted a thorough review of your account. Our records indicate that you have been a customer since Dec 2017, which we appreciate very much and that we have been actively providing website hosting and support for ********************* website since then.

  I did see that you were incorrectly charged in 02/2024 for $100 instead of $50. We apologize for this. This was the mistake of an individual on our team and this has been addressed with them. We have also issued a refund for the $50 difference, so you were only charged $50 (the same as you have been charged since you started service with us).

  As far as your complaint of fraudulently charging you for the last 2 years, this is patently false. We have been delivering services for you for a number of years, have records of hosting your website during that time and take care of requests as they have been submitted. 

  I have attached images as examples of some of the requests you have submitted to our team, which were promptly taken care of. This is besides the hosting, monitoring, plugin updates and security maintenance work we do with all client websites. I have also attached the screenshot of the refund we issued for the $50.

  We believe in honesty and are more than willing to own up for our mistakes and make them right. Especially since we have been serving you since 2017 and have never had a situation like this arise before, we believe the correct action would be for you to ****************** with us and we would have corrected the mistake (partial refund for the incorrect amount) - not accusing our company of fraud. The mistake was an individual upgrading your account to the standard pricing we have for any customers that have started with us over the last several years (but you have been grandfathered in before that so you had better pricing).

  Since you are accusing our company of fraud, which is a serious accusation (and is not true), but also have not asked to cancel services with our company, I want to address this directly.

  We charged your company a few days ago, so you have service paid through 3/15/2024. I am instructing my team to package up your website files and send them to you in a format that you can provide to any company that knows how to host Wordpress websites so they can set up your website elsewhere. We will keep your website live and continue to provide excellent service through 3/15 and beyond this we will be terminating your account and have canceled your subscription for any further billing. 

  We wish you the best in your business and hope you find a company that is better suited for you.

  *******************************
  Founder and CEO of Studio98

  Customer Answer

  Date: 02/22/2024

   
  Complaint: 21297366
  
  I am rejecting this response because: Studio 98 has not provided any documentation showing that the bill would be going up from $50 monthly to $100 monthly. Please provide a formal document showing this. If you cannot then this is called fraud. Your company was not authorized to charge this amount period. You are only providing Help Desk tickets showing my requests for changes on the website which is different from making an incorrect charge. If there was a mistake made, you stated in the email that I provided that the rates had changed as of the same day you charged me $100. You are trying to tell the BBB that it was a mistake, but the email you sent states otherwise. You also have not provided any documentation showing that you had the authorization to debit my account on a monthly basis. Please provide me and the BBB with this information. I have never authorized your company to do automatic debits to my accounts. This is fraud and that is why you have chosen to cancel my service with your company. If you stop the service, then you can continue your fraud with other companies. I didn't cancel the service, you did. This shows your fraudulent tactics and you need to be shut down. It really is that simple. All you need to do is provide the document showing that I authorized your company to do automatic debits and provide a formal document stating that the rates would be changed on 2/15/24. What is there to hide? We will be glad to move our website to a more professional and honest company after 3/15/24. 
  
  Sincerely,
  
  *************************

  Business Response

  Date: 02/22/2024

  Hi ****,

  Again, we apologize for the mistake of one of the staff upgrading your subscription and we have provided a refund for this. As a note, our pricing for $100 for Support has been our price for many years, but you had been grandfathered in. We had reached out to certain clients to upgrade their subscription, but one of the staff accidentally adjusted yours instead of another subscription. This was fixed and refunded. This would be the equivalnt of someone coming to your business and you should have charged them $40 and then charged them $50, then you issue a refund. This is not fraud. It is a mistake.

  As for your ongoing payments, your company provided a payment method and we have been doing the work for your company since 2017. We have been hosting your website and taking care of requests you have sent in since then. Saying that it's fraud and asking for years of refund is simply not true.

  I wish you the best going forward and hope you find a company that will better suit you.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:11/10/2022

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore 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.

  this company hit my credit card twice now - the first time they debited then immediately credited $6. i complained. they said Hi ***********,We are sorry about the charges you are getting. Unfortunately this was not done by our company, and was done by a scammer who is impersonating our business in order to test cards and account numbers. We have already filed an official complaint with the *** Internet Crimes unit regarding this situation and are hoping that they will catch whoever is doing this. We recommend that you reach out to your bank so they can help you take any steps you need to protect your account/card. You may call us at ************ or email us at ******************************* if you have further questions.We appreciate your understanding.they hit my card again yesterday - same deal $9 debit then $9 credit seems to me this list wasnt stolen and their internal systems are verifying credit card numbers they bought from the dark web.which makes them criminals. ..*** never done business with them as far as i know.i will try to file a complaint with the ***

  Business Response

  Date: 11/10/2022

  Hi there, I understand that you are saying our business hit your card, but we can assure you this was not the case. We have been in business 15 years and serve thousands of companies across a number of countries, besides the fact that is illegal, we don't benefit from doing authorizations/small charges on random credit cards. It would be the same as if you owned a business and someone else decided they would start making phone calls pretending to be your business and scamming people to give them money and then someone said you did it again. You didn't actually do it, but you report it to the authorities. That is what we were able to do after we exhausted all options to confirm it wasn't from our company. Someone is scamming people with a payment processor with our company name on it. As stated in our last reply, we have filed a report with the *** as it's criminal and fraud committed on the part of the person doing this. If your card was was charged/authorized, we definitely suggest you get with your bank and getting a new card so it doesn't continue. 

  Customer Answer

  Date: 11/10/2022

   
  Complaint: 18369354
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  these charges are not theft but a test of an existing credit card system.  first a debit then a credit for the exact same amount. also, i have never done business with this company.

  i can only assume they purchased a list from the dark web and have been testing numbers to ascertain validity of those numbers for future sale back to the dark web OR to defraud the numbers themselves.

  how can we escalate this further?  where is the proof the *** is involved? this is the third time they explained what is happening in the exact same way.  again, their name is attached to this.  and, they never contacted me initially, i contacted them.  so - something very fishy is going on with this company that sells lists!  selling data then fraudulently using data seems in their wheelhouse.

  provide the *** report or put me in contact with them on your behalf as a wounded party

  after this im headed to *** and pittsburghs carnegie digital crime bunch.

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

  Business Response

  Date: 11/10/2022

  Our attorney called our local *** field office and they gave us the link to report internet crimes on the *** website. Attached is the report that we filed. You said in your rejection that you were charged and then it was credited/refunded. Our company had nothing to do with either of those. That (or doing authorizations) has been the strategy these scammers have been using. Again, someone is doing this in our company name, from an account we don't have access to and have no idea which payment processor it even is. Hopefully the *** can help us. Any information you want to provide to them would be appreciated, maybe they can use that to track it down. Also would recommend that you report the fraud to your bank so this compromised card doesn't continue having the same thing happen to it.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:07/23/2022

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore 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.

  What a disaster, buyer beware! I paid this company over 5800.00 to re-build our 15 year old website. They seemed very professional in the beginning. They where supposed to complete the site in 2-3 weeks. 2-3 weeks turned into 13 months and an absolute travesty of a website. They pulled a bait and switch by luring me in with alleged websites they claim to have built. I chose the site and literally told them they just needed to change the name and add a few add-ons with pictures of our vehicles and it would be perfect. Soon after they started, the website they had lured me in with disappeared and was no longer available for reference. Our site began to take form into nothing like the one advertised. We had all sorts of issues from shopping cart information not transferring customer and product information as well as complete incapability with cell phones. They tried to pass the site on to me several times saying they had "their team" go over the site yet each time the site had fatal errors and customer use issues. It was a complete disaster. After 13 months, they claimed to have fixed everything they claim to be able to fix and the other issues/concerns would be my problem... again this is supposed to be a "New site" that they admit they could not make 100% even for a single day. Less than 2 days after they claim the site is good, I dedicated a page on the site to advertise the complete incompetence of studio98. I sent them a link to their new page because I wanted them to know they are getting exactly what they earned. That very day our new site crashed and they stopped answering phones and emails. We have IP address evidence that the site crashed right after someone with a Studio98 account logged in. So now we are left to sue this worthless company for the money they stole from us. My best advice is "Buyer Beware" of Studio98. They outsource their work to Africa, they do not communicate effectively what so ever and they failed/refused to build the we ordered!

  Business Response

  Date: 08/18/2022

  Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2022/07/27) */
  It is unfortunate that after hundreds of emails back and forth of work from our staff, changes being done, approval to make the website live and then turning it over to **** he is unhappy with it. In this claim, he is insinuating that someone at our company logged in and did something to cause the website to crash. ****, as we asked about before over email, please provide the information supporting this claim. We never got any information to support this and you stopped responding when we were asking for information.
  
  
  Consumer Response /* (3000, 7, 2022/07/28) */
  (The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
  All lies! I was strung along for over a year. The site was supposed to be completed in 3 weeks... I gave them the benefit of the doubt as my old site we still functioning while they built the site... after the first designer failed to produce a functioning site, they fired him and hired a new designer who basically went off of the garbage site the first guy was putting together. The fact that they never produced the site that was specifically ordered and the site they tried to pass on did not even remotely resemble the site promised is a huge issue all in itself. They pulled a bait and switch and passed on a website that never functioned a single day without major issues. They site was riddled with functionality problems, customer cart check out issues and the list goes on. They just got tired of not being able to build the site properly and want back in their promise to make it right... because they could not! The site was non-functional even as they tried to make it functional... with all that said, they decided to bail, and a couple days after I left feedback on their very bad service, the broken site they did leave me went dead... literally the day I left the feedback. I sent screenshots of the sign in activity showing one of their email addresses signing in at the same time the site went dead. They continently claim not to have seen the screen shots. I'm on my cell phone right now but will post the screen shot of the time and the Actual location of the log in... either way, even with the site going down, we where not delivered the website that was advertised to be built... the site we wanted was one that they used as a bait site... it was perfect, i even told them they could literally just change the name and make it ours.... When the dust settled we got a site that a 10 year old could have done better work on!