voiceofreason

Quick question. I signed up for Firepow yesterday morning. However, not only did the login codes sent to me not work, but all the emails I was supposed to get "referenced in the welcome email" still have not been sent to me.

I had set aside yesterday to create some much needed new blogs and to get this program rolling, instead, my full day was wasted. I have tried contacting the support center (They don't even give you an email) amongst other things, yet still no reply.

It seems now that I do some digging on others using Firepow that this is the norm? Many end up never getting a response? (Or in many cases, wait over 1 or 2 weeks?) So my question is: is it worth it? I don't have time to waste waiting for a reply just to login to the expensive software I already paid for.

I'd like to know if the software at least performs as advertised before I make a decision to wait another day or 2, or dump it in favor of something that is attached to a company with decent service. Thank you in advance.

voiceofreason

Wow... Another day, still no reply nor an active login sent. Quite frustrating.

Leanne King

It seems that you are experiencing some weird problems with FP. Andrew Hansen is a fellow warrior here perhaps you could send him a PM or email direct to the email shown on your PayPal receipt.

Hope it all works out for you.

Leanne

voiceofreason

Thanks for the recommendation. I've done all three - Personal email, IM on here, and 3 Urgent requests to the Support center. I did some searches, and it appears there are quite a few complaints that the customer service from Firepow is below average. Quite disappointing. Hopefully I will hear from him soon and he'll make this right.

Adam Jackson

Have your checked your spam folder? Possibly in there?

Firepow is a powerful tool- the kinks will be worked out for you.

Adam

voiceofreason

Yes, I did check, and I finally got a reply late last night with a promise to solve the issue quickly. I replied instantly, but alas, here I am, clock ticking, no product, and now the time I had personally set aside to get this project done is now gone.

Firepow is quite the expensive tool to have such terrible service. There is no way to reach anyone on their site, only submit a ticket, and hope they get back with you. At this point, I'm shopping for something else. Any recommendations on a tool similar to Firepow that actually offers something resembling custoemr service?

voiceofreason

Well, it's now Thursday....

Bought Monday, and it's now Thursday, and yet I STILL cannot login. This is now officially the worst service I have received. $147 per month, and they cannot be bothered to take care of a login issue.

Steve Crooks

Pretty disgusting service really, NMOC was a great ebook but no service is worth paying for when you don't get a reply from support to a simple request. My advice is cancel and get your money back and don't waste any more time on this.

As for another service that offers what firepow offers, personally I would...

1. Choose a product that is selling well
2. Use your $147 to get content written by a freelancer about the product you chose
3. Build a blog about the product
4. Get some good plugins (do some research on warrior forum)
4. Get some links back to each page using various methods (social bookmarking, link exchanges, blog comments, forum posts, article marketing, video marketing.. etc)
5. Add content to your blog on a regular basis
6. Rinse and repeat each month

This works for me, and I am sure it can work for you as well.

voiceofreason

Thanks Steve,

I'm really considering cancelling. Today is my last day waiting for this to be resolved. My reason for wanting software like this is I do have a large network of membership sites, software services, blogs, etc, and I do need to expedite the process. This seemed a good way to take a lot of manual activities, and automate them.

However, I'm beginning to consider maybe hiring someone on apart time basis to handle this for me might be the way to go, as these service providers are constantly disappointing me.

Steve Crooks

If the support department can't even get the simple things right for you then how would they be with the important stuff? Your business is worth more than that in my opinion. Outsource the tasks that firepow was supposed to offer you and that way you get to keep control of your business.

Ray Erdmann

I'm surprised either Andrew or Colleen haven't been able to help resolve this issue as of yet. I was very interested in purchasing the membership as a way to get my IM career moving forward faster, but now after reading about basic 'customer service issues' like this, I'm very suspect on pulling the trigger.

I think the program has a lot of worth to it, especially for those like me, who just can't afford to outsource the amount of work needed manually that FirePOW does seamlessly.

Just my $0.02 is all.


Ray Erdmann

voiceofreason

Day is almost done, still not a peep... I've

- Pm'ed him twice

- Sent 3 personal emails

- Opened 2 seperate support tickets, and labeled them as urgent

I've been looking into doing some more outsourcing, and I've found some great resources. Maybe having Firepow turn up to be a dud was a good thing in disguise!

60MinuteAffiliate

Hi there everyone,

I can understand your frustration....I've been lucky enough to not experience any of these delays.

I have just sent an email to Andrew pointing him to the thread and why these delays have been occurring.

I actually don't have any control with this issue - Firepow is Andrew's baby. I'm just an active Firepow user and also coacher.

Kind regards

Colleen

AndrewHansen

Ok let's review what's happened here...

1. Customer signs up to Firepow... or believes he has signed up to Firepow.

2. He gets his login codes and they don't work. He emails me to ask why.

3. I have a delay in getting back to him. I'm out of town for a few days and miss his email, totally my fault, my responsibility. Sir, please accept my apology for this.

4. I check his email address and realize that he has in fact not made a payment to me. I email him and ask if he can tell me the email address he paid with through paypal.

5. He sends another email with another address, which I confirm to be also NOT in the system.

So right from the start, he couldn't log in because he has NOT PAID and NOT SIGNED UP.
Or if he has, he hasn't provided me with the paypal address from which he's done so, so I'm unable to search it and find his login details. No records of his first or last name, OR any of the email addresses he has sent me, are in my system as a paid user.

I won't cop a public claim that our support is bad, because I will back our support against any software in this industry.

If anyone would like, I'll have 50 members post in this thread to verify that our support is of the highest quality.

Before making a public claim about someone's product, it might be worth making sure the error isn't on YOUR end first.

Andrew

Mark-Dickenson

hmm...that is interesting. I think I will give Andrew the benefit of the doubt here and check out his product this weekend as I had originally planned

Jeremy Kelsall

I've used firepow now for months with no problems or delays with either support or the product itself.

Definitely recommended.

Jeremy

60MinuteAffiliate

I have actually had it occur myself - where someone has believed that they've signed up to Firepow through my link but they actually haven't and have wondered why they haven't been able to log in so it does seem like a genuine response on andrew's part....(though perhaps a little steamy :O))

Colleen

voiceofreason

Hello there Andrew,

I stand by my statements. I see your email back to me late last night telling me the system didn't take payment. But here's what you left out...

- First of all, the system never told me the payment was not accepted, it went through the whole process, sent me my logins and everything just fine. I cannot login, and thus email you and open a trouble ticket.

- Next, I wait and wait, and a whole day goes by without a reply. The next day, the same... It's not until Tuesday night that you get back to me...

- In your email, you admit that the service was poor, and you apologize, but then explain that you were out of town... At the end of this email, you promise me you'll take care of my issue immediately.

- The EXACT SAME amount of time passes before you finally address the issue. You didn't respond that night, nor Wednesdaym nor Thurday until night time.

Yet now you come n here and publicly claim that you stand behind your "good serivice?" Really? There's a contradiction there, as you admitted the first time around was slow service, yet what you did after that was just as slow... All for a task that would have taken you 3 minutes to perform, and what makes it worse, is it is DESPITE the fact that you promises to take care of this immediately.


PS --- I like how you end this email claiming the error was on MY end... Sorry bud, it was your system that screwed up then. I got all the emails from your system welcoming me to the site, so how on earth am I suppoed to know YOUR system didn't take my order? Through telepathy? It sent my autoresponder messages and passcode, which I also gave that info to you as well. So where was MY supposed error then? In trusting you to take care of the issue as you promised "right away?" Perhaps...


You're spinning the issue here to avoid taking responsibility for servicing your clients, and I think that's very telling about how unimportant customer service is to you.

Matt James

...you didn't think to check your account see if any money had been taken out??

You're ranting at Andrew without having actually paid him a penny!?

voiceofreason

Interesting Matt, you completely missed the points:

#1 - I went through the process to pay, and the system claimed payment was made, and sent me my emails.

#2 - Andrew did not reply in a timely fashion, and then, when he did, promised to take care of it ASAP, and then once again, did not

#3 - When would I have known my payment wasn't received, when the system SAID my payment was received? Do you call up your bank when you pay for groceries to make sure payment was received? I shouldn't have to! However, if Andrew had followed up to this when he claimed he would, I would have KNOWN there was a problem with the payment system, and I would have resent...

When it take a full week to buy something Matt, and even BEFORE I'm a member, the owner of the company is not keeping his promises, I think there is a reason for a rant.

Matt James

Ok, but if I hadn't received my goods, the first thing I would do is check my Paypal to make sure they weren't hanging on to my money - I guess that's just me.

Anyway, I can see the steam coming out of your ears so I'm stepping away now....

voiceofreason

Nah, no steam that I can see yet. I'd be visiting a doctor at that point. Haha I'm fine, just frustrated is all. But I was fine with him hanging onto the money if I would have received my login, so there was no concern on that level. My only concern was getting into the site and getting my 4 new blogs built, customized, and bookmarked.

But after I hit the end of the week, I had enough, so I'm stepping away myself. Too busy to keep my commentary going, and I've been looking at some interesting outsourcing solutions at this stage that I think will save me far more time anyhow.

Still at the experimental stage, but we'll see how it works out.

AndrewHansen

Your sign up got through only the free account stage, and that's why you received login details.

Those login details didn't log you into the paid area because you hadn't paid.

You would not have received confirmation of a payment - not from me and not from paypal.

And "customer service" is irrelevant here - you weren't a customer! After I realized you hadn't paid, I waited for you to reply with the correct paypal email, which you failed to do on two occasions.

If you'd taken the time to check up on this first rather than starting a public rant, you might have realized these things.

This is no longer a review of Firepow but a support thread and I hope the mods will deal with it as such.

All the best mate,
Andrew

Paul Schlegel

On a separate note. I have two questions about Firepow - really the only two things I didn't like. And it could be I'm mistaken about how they work.

1) The sales page states that it bookmarks to 40 SB sites automatically when you post (or you can picka post, etc).

Is there anyway to set it to only post to a certain number of SB accounts randomly for each post like AutoSocialPoster does?

With ASP if you have hundreds of blogs you can also set up hundreds of SB accounts and have it post to pick randomly x number of SB accounts to post to.

2) Does the user always have to review articles, etc. before they post? Or can you set the system to autopost what it finds?

Thanks in advance.

Paul Schlegel

voiceofreason

Not true Andrew. In fact, I'd be happy to snap a screenshot with Jing of the exact progression of emails open in Yahoo as evidence. The VERY FIRST words in my email when you asked me to give you the email adress I purchased with began with "The email address I paid with is..." Go back and check it in case you forgot. I have the screenshot here if anyone cares to see the truth.

I then did not hear from you for 2 more days despite your promise. But at this stage, it's beating a dead horse. I gave you a chance to make things right, but the service was slow, and you came in here shifting blame instead of just solving the issueand moving on. You simply offered "I can give you 50 other people happy with my service." Yea? So?

I you were getting bad service from a waiter, and he came back and pointed to others he was serving who were happy with his service, would that make a difference? Of course not! You'd look at him like he was clueless!

Next, I did not "immediately come in here to make a rant thread" as you so colorfully claimed. I posted this 24 hours after not getting a reply. I was growing frustrated, and jumped on theweb and some other boards to see what other members had to say...

I was disturbed to find quite a few members of Firepow complaining of lack of replies, and poor service. Now I'm not oneto believe everything I read, so I jumped in here, posted my experience up to this point, and asked what others had experienced, as I feel that I tend to get pretty accurate assesments from members of this forum.

So there you have it Andrew. I've said my peace, and you've said yours. I harbor no ill-will toward you, but I am glad I got a chance to see what sort of service to expect before spending the money even if that was not the intention. So maybe the payment error worked out for the best.

To those who are happy with Firepow and have receivedgreat service, all the best to them as well. I'm glad that they are happy with their service, and hope they continue to be.

writetale

i found the same unresponsiveness....
could not get past the "five flags" indicating that there were some errors...
when i pulled the plug, and explained why in gory detail, all i got was a canned "sorry to see you go" email, with no attempt to right the situation....

J Elizabeth Dize

I've always gotten great support...there will always be a few hiccups with so many members I imagine.

Still, I've probably had 3 or 4 support requests over the 4 months I've been a member and they were promptly taken care of and resolved. It boggles my mind that people are having issues.

Firepow rules

AndrewHansen

Hey Paul,

To answer your questions:

1) Is there anyway to set it to only post to a certain number of SB accounts randomly for each post like AutoSocialPoster does?

A: You can choose automatic or manual modes, to submit your posts with social bookmarking. Automatic mode submits everything you write, to whichever social sites you select. Manual mode lets you pick any post from your site, and just submit it, to whichever social sites you have selected.

Q: With ASP if you have hundreds of blogs you can also set up hundreds of SB accounts and have it post to pick randomly x number of SB accounts to post to.

A: Unfortunately, we can't do that... yet

2) Does the user always have to review articles, etc. before they post? Or can you set the system to autopost what it finds?

A: Not quite sure what you mean here. Could be a few things:

- Articles that you receive from the blog network...
A: You can choose whether you want the ability to review them, or have them publish automatically to your site.

- Articles that you get from the article gathering features...
A: Yes, you review all the articles you want to add to your blog as the search brings them up, and remove any that you don't approve of.

Hope that's helpful!

Andrew

Peter Johnston

I had same problems with Terry Telfords product, couldn't get a hold of any of them when needed. It's been so annoying since the telephone became extinct isn't it?
Come to think of it, John Reese owes me a CD from TS2 and I can't get a reply from his crew either.

Peter Johnston

There's nothing worse than a hypocritical guru hiding behind an autoresponder. I really hate that, especially when you have wasted a lot of time on their product. Maybe we should start a vigilante group instead of a passive forum?

gcintermed

I've been reading this thread with fascination. I think there are lessons to be learned all around. My observations:

First, let's not forget we're all ultimately in the service business. And the better we do at creating products people want, the more passionate our customers will be about getting access to them, so our support needs to be even better.

It's worth noting that "Voiceofreason" started this thread and spent so much time on it because he was clearly passionate about getting access to Firepow. Those type of customers can be your best testimonials... or your worst detractors.

In view of that, if I'm in Andrew's shoes, I find a way to make the guy happy. There's little to be gained from engaging in a public debate and trying to prove your customer wrong. Again, I don't know the facts of the situation, and it really doesn't matter. As a potential customer, I'm looking at how complaints are handled. And an attitude of going the distance to make the customer happy is very impressive and builds confidence.

In short, while I empathize with both VoiceofReason (his expectations were clearly not met) and Andrew (we've all had snafus and irate customers that we felt were unreasonable), ultimately I think this was a missed opportunity for Andrew to convert an unhappy prospect into a loyal customer, and come off as a hero in this public forum.

Just my 2 cents, as a lifelong student of marketing methods.

-Gene

TeamGlobal

Re: "FirePow?

My personal experience with FirePow has been nothing short of exceptional. I've always received timely responses to any support request.

Based upon my personal contact with many FirePow users I would conclude that your experience was an isolated incident.

All The Best,


Tony

Steve Crooks

After being quite sceptical about Firepow as you can see in this thread, curiosity got the better of me and I signed up to see what the fuss was about. I have to say now that I am a convert to Firepow. I still believe a lot of what Firepow gives you can be done for free yourself but Firepow just makes the whole process so darn easy and quick. Anyway I have made a video in my sig that shows my positive experience of Firepow.

dpm

The link in your sig doesn't seem to be working.

Steve Crooks

All should be okay now.. Thanks for pointing that out dpm.

writetale

you hit the nail on the head, gene.....that was my point exactly, an opportunity missed....and i probably would have stayed with the product.

Mark-Dickenson

I used Firepow for a month and I honestly can't figure out why the price is $150/month.

Sure, it is quick to install a blog but I can use the blog installer of Expert Wordpress to install a blog in under 5 minutes...so it probably takes 3 minutes w Firepow. Expert Wordpress is $27 or approx $120 w Platinum which I opted for

Secondly, Firepow submits your blog to the different RSS agregators..approx 20 of them. Well, RSS bot by Big Mike can submit your feed to 50 some odd aggregators...for $7

Firepow also submits to social bookmarking services. The only issue is, that it can only submit posts and not pages. That was a deal breaker for me

Social Bot, again by Big Mike, is only $27

Firepow does have the Yahoo answers marketing however. Their get content is pretty cool, too...but the same thing can be accomplished w various plugins

One of the things I wasn't a fan of was the fact that Firepow was supposed to speed up my blogging. I didn't find this to be the case.

For example, if I was working on a particular blog, every time I went to take action on a blog, I had to choose from a drop down menu which blog I wanted to work on. There may have been a way around that but that was highly inefficient and time consuming

It was much faster just working in the wordpress interface

Firepow has a cool feature where you can schedule tasks for you to do...but similiar can be done with outlook if you want to schedule tasks

So my take on the software is that is should be a one time fee...otherwise I would not be posting this

...but for $150/month, you could get a ton of quality content written for you...so if you are new to IM, you may want to consider that

I should mention that Firepow has a blog network you can submit articles to. I never used it so I can't comment on the effectiveness but I know their were mixed reviews with the network

I am a huge fan of Niche Marketing on Crack...I just think Firepow is way over priced for what you get...especially when there are much cheaper solutions and I would much rather see newbies put their money to better use(ie outsourcing content)...just my 2 cents

dpm

I only joined Firepow a few days ago, so it is still too early for me to say if it is value for money. Although I was able to obtain a discount to the monthly fee it is still an expense that can add up over time.

I'm certainly interested in cheaper solutions, especially when they will achieve the same kind of result. I would be interested in what you use to do similar to what Firepow can.

You mentioned that you could use:

Expert Wordpress
RSS Bot
Social Bot

Are there any plugins or anything else you can recommend to replace what is in Firepow?

Have you had any success with your Firepow blogs? If you made your than $147 in your first month I would consider that to be a worthwhile investment.

Steve Crooks

You could be right about the other products doing the same or better job than firepow at creating blogs and promoting them I will have to give them a try as well. However all I am going to say is that with Firepow I can get a brand new domain indexed on page 1 of google for a keyword with over 2,000,000 competition and it has been there for a few weeks now.

This is not the domain that I demonstrate in my video in my signature but a new one. Yes, this has led to affiliate sales which has so far in my first month with firepow eclipsed the $97 monthly charge by more than 10 times!

I will give those other tools a try just to see if I can get the same results but I have to say I have never had so much success from my first month of a membership site, ever..

chris47

I joined firepow and although it saved me a lot of time with social bookmarking etc. which was included in the members site, it was too expensive for me to keep paying so i am back to using social marker.

I can say that any problem I had was sorted out but sometimes it took a few days.

Christine

Jessica Lynn

I have used Firepow, and completely agree with Mark-Dickenson's review. I also loved Niche Marketing On Crack, and even found the Firepow Blueprint that came with my subscription extremely useful, but the monthly subscription price is, in my humble opinion, a little too high.

I was fairly new to Wordpress when I joined, and I've learned quite a bit from my time with Firepow, so it was still a worthwhile investment in my case.

32paul52

any body else to share there experience with Blog pow? -I have just had a lot of PHP sites de-indexed so i am looking for options

niceweb

I also find the price to high. Now days most hosts have cPanel that enables you to install a wordpress with a single click. Now all you gotta do is upload the plugins you wish.

sarahstaar

Ok so it is possible to do everything Firepow can do for free or very little money ?

It would be good if someone could do a step by step guide to blog SEO which would give the same results as firepow.

australianrealestate

Wow what a cool thread.

Andrews a nice guy. I also agree that when you're in a no win situation the customer is always right ( regardless ) so as an earlier poster stated, there are lessons to be learned.

I like the ole line " you're a little bit right and I'm a little bit wrong" ...whatever is needed to take the heat out of things.

Not that voice of reason was that heated anyways, just frustrated because he didn't have a lot of spare time and felt a bit powerless to move on anything....I have had that happen many times on the net and you feel like knawing your arm off.

Shame the two lads can't meet in a pub, down a beer and have a laugh.

RebeccaL

You could check out the software, note what it does then do it all manually (what can be done that is). It would take you a lot longer though, obviously.

thehuntingdog

that would be a great contribution...

It would be good if someone could do a step by step guide to blog SEO which would give the same results as firepow.[/quote]

Danny Turner

mmmm interesting thread - now I'm sure ( as stated here) that Andrew is a really nice guy, however .......
His first response here was to prove the fault was with the customer and finishes post with dig at same customer .....
Rule no 1 of good customer relations -
you guessed it - he's always right
now on face value his response is justified however as a bystander
it appeared a bit arrogant to me JMOA
a response like -
I'm sorry you had a problem ..... (no allocation of blame)
here is what we need to do to fix it
you keep the customer and everyone else is impressed
with your mature attitude -
If instead of rushing to defend his reputation Andrew had given top priority
to fixing the customers problem, Andrew's reputation would be enhanced in my view, - as it is ......
I purchased Colleen's blog inferno last night and WAS considering
signing up for firepow- however will put that one on hold for now -
to be honest I'm a bit weary of the arrogance exhuded by so many
succesful IMers -
just my 2 cents worth

molsted

Hi!

I can vote for good technical support from the guys @FP.

FirePow is a great system but there is of course always room for improvements.

Best Regards
Martin Mölsted

Steve Crooks

I am not going to try and defend Andrew but all I will say is his customer support is usually very good, we are all human at the end of the day and maybe he lost his cool a bit in this thread. The upshot is, for people who are looking for an all in one solution to creating and promoting Wordpress blogs quickly, then Firepow really works.