Z57 review: empty promises 10

Hi, my name is Jeremiah and I am the new Director of Service for Z57. I am also some what new to social media and blogs like this, so I apologize in advance for any missteps I may make by just diving in. But diving in is the best way I know to get things resolved. So here it goes…..

For johnadler22

I will do my best to keep this short and to the point, but by doing this I am in no way trying to be curt or discount your poor experience with us. My goal is only to provide additional insight.

We offer a guaranty based on the number of unique visitors to the site. To my knowledge, we are one of the only companies in the industry to offer a guaranty of any sort. We know that target market traffic (unique visitors that are looking to buy or sell in your area) provide target market leads and target market leads in the right hands turn into profitable transactions.

What we work so diligently to provide our customers is a website that turns those unique visitors into actual leads for the agent. I mean, we put lead capture all over the site and we do it in a way that doesn’t clutter up the site. That way you have a professional online presence that draws people in and works to convert them to leads, leads that you would not have otherwise received.

There are a couple of very important things to call out here.
1) Our sites typically convert traffic to leads at fairly high rate, usually between 5% - 10%.
2) The majority of our customers have worked with our On Demand team to learn how to customize their site. By customizing for their niche market or optimizing their site they increase their individual conversion rate.
3) You need traffic! Traffic is the life blood of a website like this. Better yet, think of the website like a sports car. It might be the sexiest sports car in the world, but if you don’t put gas in it, it’s just going to sit in your garage. You may have fully optimized your site or have content that is important to customers in your market, but unless they know where to look, no one will come to your site, and if no one comes to your site you wont get any leads.
4) Traffic for your site is all around you, you just need to know how to attract the visitors that you want. You can pay for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you can post on Craigslist for free with a link to your site, you can have your site on your business cards and other media that you send out to your community, you can have a Tommy Bahama sample sale at an open house sponsored by you and of course, your website. There are a million ways to drive traffic to your site! The more traffic, the more leads, the more leads, the more sales.
5) Sometimes people give bogus lead information. So say you get someone to your site, and their looking around, maybe they want to compare home prices or look for a 3, 2 in particular area and a lead conversion form pops up. You know that most people in the market today take 6 months to find a house, and sometimes they’re just not ready to give you their information yet. So they put in bogus info to continue on your site. Although that is not ideal, if you have worked on your site it will offer something that speaks to them and even though they may not have given you real info this time, the chances are pretty good that when they are ready, they’re going to look for the site that was so good and user friendly the first time.

Well it looks like I failed to be short and concise! If you have other questions please feel free to contact our On Demand team at [protected] anytime between 6:30 and 4:30 PST…. Our peak hours are of course between 9am and 2pm so if you call outside of those times you’re sure to get through more quickly. Thanks for your time and thanks for reading through this.

~Jeremiah

All that sounds good on paper, all z57 offers is unique visitors...not leads. They have been in business a long time but so have many bad companies. I read another complaint board this guys who said he gets 1, 000 visitors a month and was proud of it. The funny thing is he never mentioned what percentage he converted to leads or if they turned into an actual transaction. It's funny when I canceled the sales guy told me the exact same thing, one of his clients... It's like Jeremiah just wrote about the sexiest sports car, I have news for him even with gas the car can still sit in the drive way. It's these cheese used car salesman tactics that they use. Don't fall for it, most of these companies are horrible. They'll say anything to make a sale and further more I would go as far to say that most of these guys are failed real estate agents. SO DON'T PICK A COMPANY BECAUSE THEY OFFER 60 VISITORS . I learned the hard way and read the fine print, the 60 days doesn't start till the 1st of the month. And right when they see that their time is running out all of the sudden out of nowhere you got your 60 visitors, a few bad leads and nothing to show for it.

My experience has been very similar to Jeremiah’s. I have been extremely disappointed with Z57’s support. They have a very strong sales team that makes everything look good, but they don’t deliver the support they say they do. When you call their center for help they do their absolute best to get you off the phone as soon as possible without really being any help.

Z57’s real business seems to be selling their services. They are fast to try to up-sell one of their products, but are nowhere to be found to when it comes to delivering what that say.

Today, I had a person from Z57’s Traffic Department call me to try to up-sell me one of their traffic packages. When I told him how unhappy I was with the Z57 product I had, he told me it was my problem because of my negative attitude and hung up on me. When I called to complain I was passed to a voice mailbox and have never heard back from Z57.

For the price there are lots of other options out there. I would strongly recommend not doing business with Z57.

Looking for an excellent alternative to your current real estate website or if you are looking to establish your web presence, I suggest taking a look at http://www.MyEliteSite.net

I agree totally with the complaints! They take your and do nothing.

My experience with Z57 was not good. They charge a lot of $ for a template web site were it take them a few minutes to fill in the blanks and up load. They do nothing to position you in a good spot under real estate google search trulia was a good touch but with every comment passed on their were a lot of responders. I never received a direct viable lead. I paid a lot of money. They are still taking, unauthorized, funds out of my account months later. Z 57 is a battle and I need my money and to spend time working. Be careful. Alan Pierce

Please see my blog and the accompanying comment... I think you'll appreciate it. (and feel free to add on, we're on the same page)

http://holbrookcanhelp.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/an-ethical-dilemma/

They are not only giving you folks issues, but, in my opinion, are using job seekers for information and advice and never hiring. Maybe I'm wrong, but when the same ad for a director of marketing is posted on craigslist / san diego for nearly a year and on a daily basis...

You people are not too smart. Z57 is the best internet company out there. When you pick up the phone to speak to one of the reps, they have the patience to deal with how little you know about the internet and how to market. ihouseweb is a joke as is AccessDirect, and all the other companies trying to pretend to know how to handle a real estate agent and create an effective website. My advice to all of you who are complaining-when you talk to Z57 reps, be quiet and listen. They are far smarter then you are and are only trying to help. Those of you who have billing issues...are you sure you know how to read a contract or use a calculator? Just trust Z57. Henry-you are the man! Steve Webber is a genius and is only trying to help the unintelligent real estate agents stay in business

Johnadler22 -

We know this post is rather dated, but we saw a new posting today that we felt we must address.

First off… we do NOT agree with the opinions of J Howley. We’ve looked through our files and Howley is not an employee (past or current) or a customer (past or current). Howley’s comments are inappropriate, rude and completely uncalled for. Howley - we don’t know who you are, but please stop with the name calling.

The Complaint Board is set up for customers to share their opinions - good and bad. And while it hurts to hear the bad – we needed to hear it. Frankly, we have taken everyone’s feedback very seriously and are rolling out new changes at Z57 that we hope will be the first step towards improving your perception of Z57. While we cannot repair all of the mistakes of the past – we want to improve and are making serious changes here. And we welcome your continued feedback as we strive to improve. Hopefully we can win your business back. But regardless, we want you to know that we heard you and we are changing.
Here’s what we are doing:

Our Traffic Guarantee
We received a lot of feedback regarding our Traffic Guarantee. While Z57 has consistently delivered the traffic we promised, we found that not everyone understood what traffic meant and what the guarantee truly delivered.
We are grateful for the feedback on the social wire. Z57 has built its business working with thousands of Realtors for more than 12 years; we take pride in the products we deliver and we would never intentionally create an offer that clients didn’t understand or felt misled by. We were surprised by the feedback and pulled together our resources to make changes.

Effective immediately, we have removed the Traffic Guarantee and are replacing it with a new program: the Z57 Academy. The Z57 Academy is a comprehensive program that teaches Realtors how to be successful with Internet marketing. Through these five one-on-one courses, Realtors learn how to harness the Internet and Z57 services to maximize their marketing and take advantage of every opportunity to generate traffic, which converts to leads and ultimately– transactions.
We have a lot of experience making Realtors successful online and felt that these courses would offer our clients more value and more back-end support. At the end of the courses, Realtor’s earn a ZPro certification for their marketing and will give them access to additional Z57 resources. For a limited time, we are offering these classes free to Z57 clients so if you are interested in enrolling in the Z57 academy, simply call us at [protected] to schedule your first course. Also, any existing clients who are currently under the traffic guarantee may immediately switch to the Z57 Academy if they choose to.

Beyond our traffic guarantee, there are several other programs and activities that we are working on to improve at Z57. But in fairness to your post, we don’t want to dominate the conversation. However, we did want you to know we heard you, we are making changes and we are grateful for the feedback so we can improve our services.

Lastly - J Howley – we don’t know who you are, but please stop insulting people who simply want share their opinions. If we didn’t get feedback, we couldn’t improve.

Z57 Client Development Team

T0 the Z57 Client development team:

Good job of presenting us with Good Cop-Bad Cop routine. I bet you know full well who J Howley is. Either way it is nothing that any one can prove short of hiring a fleet of lawyers. How convenient.

Z57 ripped me off and I still have the emails from Paul Lamotte suggesting I should give him my log-ins. Only an idiot would give up their MLS LogIns. The MLSs prohibit members from doing that specifically. As if you guys didnt know that - well maybe you dont if you catch my implication.

And I quote Paul Lamotte
"are you able to give me the user and password for that agent long in section so i can look around to pull a link off of that?"

You got plenty of feedback from me and yet you NEVER privided me with any real service. Everything I said in my preivious post on this site still stands. Offering up an apology for past bad conduct does not make up for that conduct. It only shows me how despicable and unethical you people really are. I can walk outside and get clean hot air.

CalCon17