Marg Post Planner

There are no pros. The quality of the service is low, my engagement did not go up, I received my first spam complaint in over 5 years of working with social media for business.

Product usefulness is low, the cost is high, billing policy is unnecessarily unfair at best and unethical at worst.

Not worth it. Buyer Beware.

A company worth its salt would not have to employ a policy of charging for their service three months in advance of the renewal date with no email notice and NO possibility of a refund. Oh - but that's in their terms around the 1300 word mark so read carefully and buyer beware! This company is a great example of how unethical companies take advantage of consumers.

I manage several social media accounts and purchased a membership for $60 in Feb 2016 because their advertising promised that I could generate more posts for my clients with increased engagement in a shorter amount of time.

During my first trial, I was not very impressed with the quality of the posts but was not ready to totally give up. Months later I got a chance to go back to it. I really put a lot of time and effort this time into pouring through post, article, and other suggestions to find something of value that wasn't just "fluff." Many of the posts and article suggestions were too generic or not appropriate for use with business social media accounts. I could only use about one of every 15-20 posts I had to look at. When I tried to save custom searches, they ended up mostly producing ZERO suggestions with any stars (more stars indicate higher levels of predicted engagement. I have clients in several different industries, so it is quite odd that nothing popular could be found for any of my custom searches. It was all - "have a great day" puppies, and "you can do it" cats. Anything that wasn't along those lines would not ever have any stars. Now I know there is popular content for the industries I serve since I work in social media every day.

I did end up posting some of these silly "fluff" posts because PostPlanner promises that your engagement will go up. Not only did I get less engagement from their posts, I got my first spam complaint on facebook :(

I decided that I had burned through way too much time with this program and I had a few more months until it expired so I set a reminder to give it one more shot before I canceled.

Lo and behold, in November 2016, I was charged $93.37 by PostPlanner. I was taken by surprise. "This must be a mistake," I thought. I was in no way prepared or willing to pay anything for this silly service let alone almost $100! I do a lot of commerce over the internet and am even a web hosting vendor myself. So I think, "No Problem." I figured I would just tell them I didn't intend to purchase the service renewal and request a refund. SURELY, that would not be a big deal since THERE IS NO MONEY OUT OF THEIR POCKET and since it goes through PayPal, it would literally take seconds to log in to PayPal and click the "Refund" button (as I know from personal experience with my business. But I was denied stating that their plan renews anytime within 90 days before your due date and it is NON-REFUNDABLE once it goes through. After a few emails back and forth (which were obviously boilerplate because I see the same responses on this site, the last correspondence is (and I quote:

"Hi Michelle-

I'm very sorry you are unhappy. Our policies are very clear in our terms.

Regards,

Leeann"

Yes - it IS stated in their policy. This policy is accessible from a link at the bottom of their website and start at about word 1200. Some will argue that it is my fault and I did not read the 73 paragraphs consisting of over 5600 words outlining all of the terms in the middle of my work day when I was trying to increase my productivity. And they would be correct.

But I am also a business owner and a very active online consumer. I believe that we should be able to have just a little tiny bit of trust when we make a purchase. When a company puts some very non-standard early billing terms in their agreement that have no reason or justification and just plain don't make sense, it seems like it is only a sorry tactic to increase their revenue. I have in the past refunded fees charged for something (that did not cost me anything if there was a misunderstanding. Even if it was clear in my terms. This is so rigid and outside of my business experiences over the last 15 years. Personally, I go above and beyond to make sure my customers understand their billing! If I had to charge three months in advance for something, you better believe I would send an email or something. Just so I wouldn't have to deal with these bad reviews if for nothing else!

This is just bad business and very unethical to me. I have never in my life heard of charging someone so far in advance for a virtual service and then refusing refunds! This is why I am writing this. This is so obviously an attempt to rip people off.

There are no pros. The quality of the service is low, my engagement did not go up, I received my first spam complaint in over 5 years of working with social media for business.

Product usefulness is low, the cost is high, billing policy is unnecessarily unfair at best and unethical at worst.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

nothing - This business takes advantage of knowing someones credit card information.

They renew your account with no email notification, refuse to refund your money and have ZERO personal customer support. I paid for one year to try PostPlanner out and decided very quickly I was not going to renew. I was not aware that they would automatically renew my account, charge my credit card, with no notification and then NOT GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK when I told them that I didn't want to renew! It's clear I haven't even used the account for months! Just really BAD BUSINESS that takes advantage of online sales by simply taking your money whether you want the service or not. It's businesses like this that ruin it for legitimate businesses!!

none!

nothing - This business takes advantage of knowing someones credit card information.

They renew your account with no email notification, refuse to refund your money and have ZERO personal customer support. I paid for one year to try PostPlanner out and decided very quickly I was not going to renew. I was not aware that they would automatically renew my account, charge my credit card, with no notification and then NOT GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK when I told them that I didn't want to renew! It's clear I haven't even used the account for months! Just really BAD BUSINESS that takes advantage of online sales by simply taking your money whether you want the service or not. It's businesses like this that ruin it for legitimate businesses!!

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

The service shows a series of feeds of the top posts on twitter and facebook, by retweeting or facebooking these popular posts the popularity on your social media profile increases. Posting second-hand material already proven to be liked means that you get more likes!

A real time waster. That's why I'm posting this, because I don't want others to make the mistake I did.

Post Planner advertises that using their service to on social media saves you time. In my experience it does not.

One part of the service is to select people/organisations and the postplanner is supposed to bring up all the content from that person/organisatoin. This function did not work. I took this up with customer service, who told me that that feature was broken right now. It was still broken 6 months later.

All the content they suggest is not relevant to my industry.

The story gets worse, because the product auto-renewed with no warning, so the next year I was charged around $60 for a product that despite my best efforts took too long to use. I complained about this, but since it was after the 30-day limit I was not allowed money back. Even worse it took me three emails before they would cancel my subscription and even now they will not remove my details from their data base - which I would like them to do. This I believe is against the data protection act.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?