Bluehost SEO services: a review

I started a website 2 month ago, and used Bluehost to host my websites. They had great customer service, so great that I decided to use their SEO service as well. I thought "if their team is this responsive and caring about their customers, their SEO team must be the same." I did some research for Bluehost SEO, and found nothing. No reviews. In hindsight, this should have been a red flag, but I was so impressed with their service, I decided to ignore this. It turns out Bluehost's SEO is ran by a separate company called SEOGears (not to be confused with SEO Gear). I signed up for an aggressive 3 key word package for $350/month and here was my experience:

My Bluehost SEO experience:
- The marketing manager (whom I will not name in this article, but if you PM me, I'll tell you) was brand new - he didn't even have his laptop set up at the time I joined
- My initial reaction was "how can I trust someone brand new with my SEO efforts?"
- Initially, it was very hard to get ahold of him... he said he was going to call but didn't call, and he said he was going to call again, but didn't call. When he finally called, he said he tried calling and emailing but they didn't go through. Personally, I think he's lying and making up excuses.
- They never provided me with their "free website analysis"
- They say they do on-site SEO (like checking meta-tags and stuff), but in reality, they told me to contact my web developer
- They DO NOT tell you what they are doing to their site. This is the most frustrating part. On their SEO dashboard, you just see items as 25% or 50% or 100% complete. They do not tell you how many links they are building or where they are building it. They tell you that all the info is proprietary. However, they could also be building 1 link for all you know.
- All they will tell you is "85% of our clients end up on the first page of Google within 3-6 month" - Don't believe every statistic you read... You should consider how many clients stayed with them for 3-6 month. I bet the number is less than 10%.
- I asked if they can switch a marketing manager for me because the one I had was so new. SEOGears refused.
- I complained about this issue to Bluehost and asked for a partial refund. Bluehost said they were unable to do that.
- I receive an email from the SEO manager from Bluehost and he said because they responded to inquires within 24 hours, they will not issue a refund. WTF? I never complained about my inquires not being responded on time. Was this guy even listening?
- In general, the SEOGears was super unresponsive to any inquiry. You need to contact them 3-4 times to get a reply (if you PM me, I can send you the email thread). I really regret going with them. The frustration they caused me was through the roof.
- I hope this review will help someone out there because when I was doing my due diligence, there was nothing written about the Bluehost SEO team. They are not what you expect, and not what the sales people tell you it is.

My takeaways:
- If the SEO company says everything they do is proprietary, STAY AWAY (I think it's important that you know their plan and can see the links they create)
- No matter how nice the sales people are, look at their competitors and make a list of criteria to evaluate them on. In hindsight, I should have made a spreadsheet and evaluated them more objectively rather than how much I liked the salesperson (lessons learned!)
- Always get a recommendation from 2-3 unbiased party before making a decision. That's the main reason I've signed up for Warrior Forum - to get in touch with more like-minded individuals.
- If the salesperson says you cannot talk to the person in charge because they are too busy, STAY AWAY (if you don't have time to talk to you pre-sale, how will they have time to talk to you post-sale?)
- Always talk to the SEO manager or the person doing the work before you purchase. Just make sure the person's actually competent.
- Always start small. Never start with one of their biggest SEO packages. You want to do start with their smallest package just to test out their friendliness, service, and skills.

I think going with Bluehost SEO/SEOGears is one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made. However, if I look on the bright side, I did get a vendor selection lesson that I'll never forget (it does suck that it costed $350). Anyways, at this point, I'm wondering if someone can give me some pointers as to which SEO company I should go with, or what I should try at this point. Thank you!