Dont Buy Eco, for the victims of I Buy Eco

February updates

February 3rd, 2010. Published under BISL, I Buy Eco, IbuyEco. No Comments.

Well its been almost a month since my last post, time for a post I think.

Our push to increase the sites visibility is certainly working, currently we are seeing 107% growth over last the last month. As I mentioned over on the micro blog, I am also very pleased with the source of the new visits. 35% is from search engines, which is great as we have been putting in considerable effort there. While Im on the subject, the micro blog is a place for smaller and more frequent updates and this will stop this site from being too bogged down. So please feel free to book mark it.

Just staying with the search engine news for a little longer, we have been doing really well in searches such as “I Buy Eco” as referenced in this post but we havent been doing so well in searches for “ibuyeco” (all one word) so we have been making an effort to address that and Im very pleased to so that searching for “ibuyeco” on Google will now result on us being no.4 on the first page. Im so happy about this

Motivation.
I remain utterly motivated, my own “pain” and loss of money is over 12 months old but I continue to receive stories by people who are still being ripped off by ibuyeco. I have had two this month alone. As upsetting as it is to hear these stories, it utterly motivates me to continue to spread the word about this awful company and its practices. Rest assured I am not going to give this up any time soon

Doing more and advertising

January 5th, 2010. Published under BISL, I Buy Eco, IbuyEco. No Comments.

As some of you may have noticed we have added some Google Ads to the site, we have tried to make them blend in with the look and feel of the site as much as possible. The reason we have taken this decision is that, in order to spread the word, we recently bought a couple of new domain names and while Im not looking to make a profit, I dont want to spend too much of my own money on this, Im still broke enough after the I Buy Eco incident.

I hope you all understand and I if you are looking for a way to help, then please support the advertisers by clicking the occasional ad that may interest you. This will help keep us online and spreading the word about I Buy Eco

Want to Do More?

If you are looking to do a litlle more then please visit some of the sites below and add your stories to them. Ones I have found recently are

plebble.com (At the very least a quick vote for my review here (no sign up needed) http://www.plebble.com/view-comment.php?id=48517)

and I also tried to enter a review at shopsafe but it hasnt been published yet. Maybe if a few more of you add your reviews they will start to add them.

and of course there are the old favourites, if you havent added your stories to these places then I encourage you to do so now. Lets help protect people from these crooks

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1796265

http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews153955.html

http://www.uk-insurance-index.co.uk/insurance-company-2794.html

http://www.trustpilot.co.uk/review/www.ibuyeco.co.uk

Working hard to continue spreading the message about I Buy Eco

January 4th, 2010. Published under BISL, I Buy Eco, IbuyEco. No Comments.

Yes its the new year and we are determined to increase the visibility of this site and raise peoples awareness about this terrible company.

With this in mind we have been paying attention to making sure we appear nice and high on search engines, well Im pleased to say that its working out quite well on the whole. Take a look at the two pics bellow and you will see that we are in the number two slot on both Yahoo and Bing – which is as good as it can get realistically

Now we have slipped down a little on Google but Im not too unhappy about that. In number 1 slot (at the top) are I Buy Eco as you could imagine but although we are not too high up at the moment, all the other links on this page are links to other sites that are also spreading the news about this company – so thats why Im not too upset. So long as the message gets out there, I dont mind who is saying it

Anyway, wishing you all a great new year and promising to keep doing all I can to spread awareness about I Buy Eco

Update

Today we also re-appeared on the front page of Google, in the 3rd and 4th slots no less. Ive added it to the screenshots above – we are very pleased with this

We Havent Gone Away

January 2nd, 2010. Published under BISL, I Buy Eco, IbuyEco. No Comments.

I made a twitter post recently, its reproduced here for those that dont follow the social media streams

We havent gone away, we will continue our awareness campaign against I Buy Eco

With this in mind we now have a new domain registered – http://ibuyecoreviews.co.uk

This should rate nice and high on search engine results and maybe, just maybe save a potential customer from making a very bad decision.

Do your part and help spread the word about these guys

Happy New Year

I just wanted to illustrate this with a quick look at the stats – I must confess I have let things slide, especially over the xmas period but the right hand side of the graph below is what I want to see. The more people see this site, the fewer people get ripped off by I Buy Eco

Stats for the end of December 2009

Im committed to continuing to spread the word and increasing the spead of the message. Please join me in helping spread the word and lets keep this growth curve healthy.

More Victims

January 1st, 2010. Published under BISL, I Buy Eco, IbuyEco. 3 Comments.

I had planned to get this post done over the Christmas break but Im a little later than anticipated

People continue to send me their own stories about how I Buy Eco have mistreated/ripped them off also. I thought it would be a good idea to just print a few of the below. I have removed their names and emailed each one to ask if they mind, before posting these

Story #1

Insured my old car cheaply with ibuyeco but changed it when it was blowing out smoke all over the place.Bought a newer car but ibuyeco more than trebled my premium. I cancelled the policy but still had to pay (They were going to send the heavies round) for the remaining 6 months that the policy had left to run.(small print)SAVING THE PLANET BUT ROBBING THE PEOPLE ON IT! Ibuyeco my arse!

Story #2

Three years ago a guy crashed into my car whilst my wife was driving.Going against the british tradition of being innocent until proven guilty these bunch of complete and utter incompetents wiped out my no claims bonus (just in case it turned out to be my wifes fault)and my premium went through the roof.Nearly two months ago after much legal wrangling the other driver was finally blamed 100% for the accident.Since then the idiots at ibuyeco still havnt managed to calculate how much we have over paid over the last three years with a view to paying us back.Apparently it takes ‘several’ departments at ibuyeco to operate one electronic calculator and in the great tradition of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing,after nearly two months they still havnt figured out where the on/off switch is yet.If i were to tell the whole sorry tale email by email,phone call by phone call id be here a week.Once this whole incompetent sorry mess is finally sorted if i havnt died!
of old age by then ill be off like a shot and will make it a personal campaign of mine to tell everybody i know not to go within a million light years of this company.Ps,wheres James?James is the guy from ibuyeco who was assigned to ring us every three days to tell us they still havnt found the on/off button on the calculator yet.He rang twice then must have lost our number.Where are you James?

Story #3

Renewed my insurance with this company in July got a new quote for £55 per month. They now come back in Oct and allege i need to pay £25 admin fee for document changes and increase premium to £64 per month. no explination and 7 days notice of collection from my account. Dialogue is useless. They say they will check thier ‘recorded’ telephone call of policy set up.
I have inssited on a transcript or an audio version.. The sooner this policy expires the better.

Story #4

Hi i have been with ibuy eco insurance for 10 months now and had two more direct debits to pay the annual premium on my car insurance.I cancelled this policy over the phone which the company stated i would still have to pay the two month direct debits. ok i accepted this. two days later i rang and asked if they would keep my insurance policy with them so it would cover me over the following two months which i was paying for. They informed me i would have to take out a brand new 12 month policy . I would have to still pay the two month direct debit . HOW UNHELPFUL ARE THEY AND NO LOYALTY TO THE CUSTOMERS

I have many more stories like this but I think you get the idea – if you are considering using this company I would urge you to think again

More Unhappy Customers

October 29th, 2009. Published under BISL, I Buy Eco, IbuyEco. No Comments.

As this site gets more visibility I am getting more and more people filling in the contact form and letting me know about their own horror stories. In some ways its nice to know that its not just me, but its also not nice to know that there are so many people affected by this company. Surely its only a matter of time before the get what they deserve?

Im going to contact each of the people who have sent me feedback via the contact form to see if they mind me adding their stories to this site (obviously with their names removed). I will also be changing the contact form to add a field that will indicate if I can publish their story anonymously. Until then, if you want to share a story via the contact form, please let me know if Im allowed to publish it – if you dont state it, I will assume not

Ive been a little busy of late and updates to the site have suffered, so Im hoping to re-focus my energies and continue to get the word out there. The more stories I hear, the more motivated to keep on the pressure I feel, so keep the feedback coming in

Just when you thought things couldnt get worse, I Buy Eco shaft me again

September 16th, 2009. Published under BISL, I Buy Eco, IbuyEco. No Comments.

As my car is now 2 years 11 month old I took it for its first MOT – it failed on excessive tire wear on one of the rear wheels.

They asked “has the car been in an accidnet?”

“Yes it was” I replied

“Basically the rear wheel is badly aligned, and has ruined your rear tire”

So its £180 for a new tire, and £249 for a “all wheel” realignment

I will endeavour to claim this back from the insurance company but judging by previous experience, Im not expecting much

PLEASE consider very carefully when you use bargin basement insurance companies like I Buy Eco

I Buy Eco – not in public

August 8th, 2009. Published under BISL, I Buy Eco, IbuyEco. 3 Comments.

For those of you following this sorry saga, you may remember that I Buy Eco joined MoneySaving Expert and asked for my details so that that could investigate it. I replied that I would send them my details so long as we do this in a public forum. Some time elapsed and then they replied with this

We have processes and procedures in place to deal with customer complaints. We would encourage you to send your details through as requested, so that a member of our customer services team can contact you directly.

We view any customer complaint as a matter between ourselves and the customer and therefore do not feel it is appropriate to resolve individual cases in the public arena.

ibuyeco

So it seems they dont want to do this in public – what have they got to hide ?

I Buy Eco dont like to be kept waiting

July 22nd, 2009. Published under BISL, I Buy Eco, IbuyEco. 9 Comments.

I wrote that I Buy Eco posted to the Money Saving Expert forum a while back. That was on the 14th of July, seems they don’t link to wait more than a week. Seven days later that post again. You have to see the irony in that – they dont like to be kept waiting!?!? Its funny in their second posting they ask me to identify myself and they say that they “can see from their records that I haven’t contacted them”. Quite a few people on the forum pick up on that “you dont know who he is, but you can see he hasn’t contacted you???”  LMAO

I have repeated their second post below but you can read it and peoples response to it here

ab2009

We can see from our records that you have not yet contacted ibuyeco. As we are unable to see from the information you have posted any details that may help us identify you, we have no other means of contacting you.

To enable us to trace your policy in order to help you, we would be grateful if you could email the following details to feedback@ibuyeco.co.uk :

* Your name
* Your policy number
* A contact telephone number
* A convenient time during business hours to contact you

Our Customer Relations opening times are Mon to Fri – 8:30am to 5pm.

We do value our customers’ opinions and invite the opportunity to discuss any concerns or issues they may have with the service we provide. This helps us improve our service for current and future customers.

ibuyeco

So, I made them wait about 10 days and I have made clear that we either do this in public or not at all. My response is below, you can also see it here on the forum

Hello

Did you get the feeling I was dragging my feet in responding? Frustrating huh? Lets see, you had to wait a week for a response. It was September when I was hit, it was July before I received my excess back. 10 months! Its not really the same is it? I have lost count of the number of times you have told me you would call me back and haven’t.

By the way you say I haven’t contacted you and you give me your customer service number – over the last 10 months I have called you so many times that I actually had a repeating calendar entry to chase you up. When you trebled my policy I called you eight times and spoke to different team leaders and supervisors – they all trotted out the same line “while it was not your fault, you are more of a risk”

Moving forward, yes I will respond to you. The fact that you couldn’t work out who I was from all the facts that are available doesn’t surprise me, I have learnt that I am not alone in having my policy triple for no reason. You have a lot of unhappy customers it seems

Anyway, here is how we are going to do this – I will PM you my details but any other responses (ones that don’t involve personal info) should be posted here in public in the spirit of transparency. I want the rest of these people to see what you come back with so they can make up their own mind

How does that sound? If you agree, I will PM you the details

AB2009

As ever, you know that I am going to keep you guys up to speed on every single thing that happens, as it happens. So keep checking the site and the other social networks for updates

Finally a response from I Buy Eco

July 18th, 2009. Published under BISL, I Buy Eco, IbuyEco. No Comments.

Earlier this week, shortly after we had managed to get four out of the top seven links on Google to be links about how this company rip its customers off (see graphic below), I received notification that my thread over at Money Saving Expert had received another update.

Victory on theFront Page of Google

I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn that its a response from an “I Buy Eco company representative”. You can read their post here or see it below

We are sorry to read you’ve not been happy with your experience with the service received from ibuyeco. We are unable to see from your comments whether you have logged a complaint with us regarding this, which would enable us to investigate your issues thoroughly and respond accordingly.

To enable us to trace your policy in order to help you, we would be grateful if you could email the following details to feedback@ibuyeco.co.uk :

• Your name
• Your policy number
• A contact telephone number
• A convenient time during business hours to contact you

Our Customer Relations opening times are Mon to Fri – 8:30am to 5pm.

We do value our customers’ opinions and invite the opportunity to discuss any concerns or issues they may have with the service we provide. This helps us improve our service for current and future customers.

ibuyeco

I cant say Im surprised that they dont know who I am, lets face it, from what we’ve read, Im not exactly the only one who has had this experience.

Before I go on with that, lets touch on website stats. Im both shocked and pleased that the sites popularity continues its steep climb, as you can see from the graphic below

Weekly Stats

Anyway, back to their post on the Money Saving Expert forum. Undoubtedly this is in response to the PR nightmare that has been stirred up by myself with the help of other victims. I will respond, but in my own good time, lets face it they have dragged their feet over this whole thing. Many people have asked me what I want out of this – what would i do if they offered to refund all the money they have extorted out of me?

To be honest, while I wouldn’t exactly say no to the money, this has become about more than the money. Its about how large companies treat people when they think they can get away with it. Also, if they gave me back my money, would they be contacting all their pissed off customers – starting with the 44 over at Review Centre ? I doubt it very much!

So what will I do? I really don’t know the answer at the moment, but I do know one thing for sure – Im not going away any time soon. I will continue to expose this company for what they undeniably are and make sure that no-one else has to go through this. Will it stop them sprouting up under another logo/brand – I doubt it. Will it make them think about how they treat their customers, I really hope so

I’d love to hear your thoughts or feedback – either via comments or via the contact form