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:04/08/2023

  Type:Order 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.

  Original contact date: December of 2021 - I agreed to start an e-commerce business with Gregg J****** of Albany Distributing. They were to develop a website for me under the name of *****************. Total money outlay is $5,846.95 ($1,200 to get started, $400 second payment, $376.06, third payment, and $3,870.89 wire transfer on 5/2/22). After months of solving various problems with Gregg J******, I was told the website was complete, even though I was never unable to access it, and it is not live at this point. In May of 2022, it was active & I was told I had 13 orders from customers that needed to be processed immediately. I was told to wire transfer $3,870.89 to cover the cost of the orders. The problem was they never told me I needed a payment processing system (**********.net or ******, etc.) to be in place. So they took my money, they allegedly shipped the products to the customers, & I was unable to process the customer's credit cards so that I could receive my profit because I didn't have a payment processor in effect. They made my website inactive at that point. By the time they figured out which payment processor I should use, the authorization time to run the credit cards ran out. My only option was to contact each customer myself & ask for the credit card information again & have them input the information on my website. I can't do this until my website is live. Albany Distributing will not return my phone calls or emails to assist me in the completion & making the website live. I have tried to call & email Albany Distributing to resolve this situation many times and have been ignored. The last email was October 4, 2022. The owner, Mr. M******, has blocked by phone number and nobody answers the phone when I call Albany Distributing. I have tried each & every extension of Albany Distributing and have left a ton of messages. No response at all. At this point I'm afraid I have been scammed & would like to get my money back that I invested in this business.

  Business Response

  Date: 04/24/2023

  I want to clarify some inaccuracies. There were 11 service orders for the website, marketing, and SEO and 2 shipped orders for $23.89 + $44.91. The customer did have access to the website built for her, however, it has since been taken down due to nonpayment of hosting fees dating back to May 2022. However ***** definitely had the access since we had had gone over tons of revisions and modifications including updating policy pages, website contact info, SSL security seals and widget placement. Also, *****'s phone number was never blocked from calling into the phone system. Multiple attempts to reach ***** on the phone in the past yielded to no avail, due to the fact that she had been busy with other commitments, therefore she was unable to speak with our company to address her account and website issues when we contacted her in the past.  I reached out to ***** on April 21st, 2023 she was unavailable to speak with due to being at another job, however, I did arrange a call back with her for April 22nd, which we did speak and go over her account and website issues. In discussing the account with *****, the following actions have been taken to address the account and website issues.  1. The website will be reactivated and all hosting payments will be deferred for the next 3 months.  2. The product mix in the website will be updated, and the account will be enrolled into a ramp up program. 3. ***** stated that she will confirm the ****** account is activate with ****** and send an email to confirm, and on my side I will get our developer to setup the API integration w/ ****** at no additional cost so we can start receiving payments for transactions (this will happen once ***** confirms the ****** account is active).  In the past, when this was setup, ***** had transposed the banking account routing numbers and account numbers that caused payments to fail. As long as ****** is active, there should not be any issues.   
  Best Regards,
  Albany Distributing