SalesForce
reviews and complaints

Our Account Executive's first line of defense is to tell us that our requests are not possible, in Salesforce.com. As I worked in Salesforce.com Support, I know that they are indeed possible. Once I tell the AE this, he states that he will investigate the issue. These delays and the ineptitude of the AE are driving management to possibly look to another CRM

Salesforce.com lured me into a 3 year contract with promises of what the product would do to integrate the customer data for my business. It does not perform as I was promised. I was told by my salesman that I could cancel at any time and pay the regular price for the months I used. After a few months with the product, it was not doing what I was promised. In addition, the response time of this web based CRM was too slow to be of any use to me. I have a 10 MB/sec high speed cable connection to the internet, so it was not my connection speed but their servers that was slowing me down.

I tried to cancel my contract but they refuse to negotiate or provide any kind of relief. I am a disable veteran. I was too sick to work much last year and made 0 dollars after expenses in my small business. Yet this greedy company continues to force payment on a contract even when they aren't upholding their end of the bargain.

I signed a contract with Salesforce.com im May of 2010 for 50+ users of Salesforce.com Enterprise. I did this based on the conversations I had with my sales rep and my sales engineer. Needless to say they have not delivered what was agreed upon. First they said the system could be easily changed to do web integration, it cost me an additional $10, 000 to do this. They said it could be easily adapted to do commissions for my rep and I had to build a separate system to complete this task. They told me our sales engineer would give me significant hours of support, we soon found out that they did not have the expertise to do what we needed. The system does not do what we were promised to this day, and it has been a great disappointment to me and my company. The technical support was also terrible. The only thing that Salesforce does well is collect their money. That is on time, not flexible, and as arrogant as they come.

This company's customer service is lamentable.

They are super-attentive when trying to seal the deal - I can only assume a brutal incentive plan - but after the event you might as well be talking to a different company. Don't expect them to do what they say they will, expect them miss any deadlines they give you (by weeks), and even when they're clearly at fault and have caused you loss, don't for one minute expect any recompense.

It's a short-termist strategy, because my company is growing at a triple-digit rates and now I'm going to take my business elsewhere.

Salesforce is an old-fashioned SAAS business and given how much it charges for its core product - basically a fairly basic database with virtually no innovation to the main CRM part for a decade - I think we can expect a slow demise. Its customers and leadership are old and you can tell from its products.

Salesforce.com is a nice service, but they make it pretty much impossible to cancel and their customer service is worthless. You have to go through this multi-step cancelation process and heaven help you if you try to cancel after your renewal date. They have to "go to management" to get approval to only bill you for what you used. Really?

Any company that thinks its ok to charge for services not rendered and makes it impossible to quit is not worth doing business with. Worse when they have their customer services tee'd up to shovel up the BS I just heard. I strongly recommend you consider ACT or another product which provides all the capability and none of the BS. Its also totally portable. To bad Salesforce put greed in front of common sense business.

My small business uses salesforce as a crm - sold to me as a hands off 'software as a service"no hardware to buy - no software upgrades - easy to add users (Employees) they keep your data safe etc.

Well my salesforce database had a problem (Not necessarily their fault) but beware friends - they do not have a quick back up solution for you - they got very weird and unresponsive when I needed my data restored to a provious date and time - like they didnt know what I was talking about - then they offered to help me out for $10, 000.

I was never offered a data backup plan - as an"add" - so caveat emptor - their service works great when it works - but I guess they really don't keep your data stored.

I'm currently out of business waiting for salesforce to get my data back up and running - I won't rely on them again.

I paid for an account and now I need a login reset and it's taken weeks. I had to fax and email them a form and once I did my part they disappeared and of-course it's because they already have my annual fee. I've emailed my sales agent and the company's contact form and there has been NO response, BEWARE OF SALES FORCE, HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE.

SalesForce.com's Sales Team made my decision for me -- I will never recommend nor purchase their product. Their focus is "sealing the deal" vs. understanding the needs of their prospective and existing customers. My experience: 1) the sales person contacted me 8-10 times over the period of 1 business day -- by office phone, cell phone and email (my conclusion: their sales team is disrespectful of other people's time); 2) when I provided the sales person with 6 reasons why the software wouldn't work for my business (via email), he responded several hours later, asking me how the evaluation was going (my conclusion: he chose to ignore my concerns); 3) later in the day he insisted that I call him to discuss the software, at which time I told him that using email would be a more effective use of my time since I was buried with work, he wrote: "OK well we will part ways as friends because I was going to walk you through created custom fields which would answer the majority of your questions." (my conclusion: if he could have solved my software concerns, he would have indicated as much in email -- he really wanted me to call him back so he could either try and sell me a more expensive SalesForce.com solution or tell me every reason why I should still buy their product even though it wouldn't work for my business.) My SalesForce.com experience was abysmal. I did call and asked to speak to the person's Manager. SalesForce.com took my name and phone #. We'll see if they call me back.

Was pestered by Salesforce to sign up for 6mths, I explained we were unsure of it and was told we could cancel if not satisfied. We had a BRIEF look at it and decided it was not for us, DID NOT upload any clients nor use the service at all! They are now trying to persue us for ONE YEARS revenue! Poor Attitude to clients, try to LOCK YOU IN, disgusting tactics - I URGE you NOT TO USE THIS SERVICE!

Probably the worst company i have ever worked with. Once you pay for your order don't plan on talking to anyone after that. They will not answer their phone and if your lucky, you will get a chance to speak to someone with a heavy Indian accent. I would suggest alternative crm solutions like zoho. At least they answer their phones. My account rep was Nathan Frietas and i don't think he can even hear his phone ring... Save yourself time and a lot of frustration. And the most ironic attribute is that they can't even look up your info when you call yet they are a customer retention company.
--bryce

We have been a customer of Salesforce.com for almost 3 years now. Until now we have always advocated to all of our clients that Salesforce.com is a very good company and solution. We have probably helped Salesforce pull in more than 50k in revenue. We are a small business and just like all small businesses have been struggling to pay some bills. Well we got behind with our quarterly payment of $750 with Salesforce. We informed them that we would need 1-2 months to get caught up with our bills to pay the amount due. We asked if we could pay a portion of it now and then the rest when we can within 2 months time. They told us if the full amount was not paid we would be sent to collections. So now 2 months later we have had our account shut off. We contacted them to pay the amount owed, but now they say the only way we can avoid being sent to collections and have our account reactivated is pay them the entire amount of our 3 year contract amounting to about $5, 000 which we definintely don't have. Correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn't a company as big as their set an example and be sensistive to smaller companies who get behind in their payment and be at least willing to work with them instead of completely shutting them out. So now they stand to lose our business and all of the future clients business that we would have recommended to them. I suggest if you are a small business you stay as far away from them as possible!

This company and their billing is ridiculously deceptive. I paid for a one-year subscription to Salesforce.com a little over a year ago, for the price of $99 plus tax, for a single user. I also purchased another Salesforce account for a co-worker/friend for $99 dollars. He ended up leaving the company and the account has not been used since October of 2009. You have already read this, but Salesforce does put you on auto-billing. I was unaware of that. Although I am sure I was notified one year ago, the honest and non-deceptive method would be to notify me via email that both subscriptions are about to expire, therefore I will be charged for both accounts. There was not a notification.
After realizing that I was billed for both, and there was no need for the second account, I contacted them via telephone for a re-reimbursement of funds charged for the second account. The lady on the phone was very apathetic towards my concerns and made it sound like it would be taken care of, no problems! Yeah right! I was contacted and said they were looking into it. On 06/17/2010 I received an email from Adriana Vasquez with an invoice attached that was supposed to show how I was charged for the two account renewals. Keep in mind, every email I receive from them states "DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL". The attachment she sent, was BLANK! Though this email did not have the statement, most others state "contact your customer rep w/any questions". You do not get a rep for the $99 dollar package. You obviously do not even get the option to reply to any of their emails. I am sick of wasting my valuable time and money with this crooked and deceptive company. I will go to the BBB and the FTC. I feel that they may be in violation of federal law and will take all necessary actions to ensure this does not happen to others. BEWARE OF SALESFORCE!

P.S. I have attached the "detailed" invoice that Ms. Vasquez sent to me. Yes, it was blank when it came to me as well.

Salesforce allows the user to connect its Microsoft Outlook to it. A couple of months ago I lost this connection. I have spent the last two months on the phone for hours, responding to emails, to try to fix this small problem. Unfortunately I need it fixed. The latest is that I was assured that it would be fixed in 48 hours and 5 days later it isn't. It is hours and hours of my time. I get asked to try the same things over and over again because they don't compare their case notes.

I'm not impressed.

If you go with SalesForce, you better be in it for the long haul. Even if you sign up for quarterly billing, there is no way to cancel. The minimum contract length is one year, and even if you decided that you don't like after 2 months, you will have to pay for the remaining 10 months.

Why?

Because the investors would not be happy. To SalesForce, investors are more important than customers. I quote one of their sales reps:

"I understand your frustration and wish that there was more that I could do. I'm sure you can appreciate that you are not the only company who has asked us for special consideration to get out of a contract early. However, as a public company our auditors and investors would not be happy if we granted this wish to you and other companies who are requesting to back out of their commitment. This hurts our company as well when contracts are not fulfilled and ultimately renewed. "

I think this sums it up pretty nicely. We will definitely never use their services anymore, as we now have to pay for their service for another 9 months even though we're not using it.

Well, at least the investors are happy.

Salesforce is very sneaky in presenting their service to the business public. Their billing is deceptive; although they quote monthly pricing, you'll get a bill in advance for the first year. In fact, they'll tell you they don't have monthly billing frequencies; minimum is quarterly. If you try to change the billing frequency you'll get billed in advance for the next quarter plus. They try to get as much money from you as possible, in advance. If you try to change the number of active seats be careful. Your account exec will dummy up and act as if they don't know what you're trying to accomplish. The best thing to do is stay away from them. They'll try to use strong arm tactics to collect from you; a company out of the east coast, AMS a collection company. I've been in business many years and have never run across a company like Salesforce.com.

We signed a contract with salesforce.com on 03/27/08 which was a 3 month contract for $1, 125.00. We did not want automatic renewal, so the salesman put billing frequency as annually on our contract.

On 11/26/08 our contract was void. on 11/28/08 our account was fraudulently charged by salesforce.com for $3, 375.00. We had NO contract stating that they had authorization to do this.

We called on 11/28/08 when we saw this charge hit our account. We left two messages with the billing department and one for the salesman. Our salesman reconfirmed that this was not agreed upon and that salesforce.com was at fault. Salesforce.com kept putting us off and saying that 'the money will be in your account tomorrow'. This was the same excuse we heard day after day.

After one month, the billing department finally called us back. Finally we made an arrangement with the salesman to give us another 3 month contract for 1 user for 12/23/08 through 03/22/09, and then we would receive a $3, 000.00 refund. We received a refund of $2, 675.00. After battling with them we received $375 less than we had agreed upon. Their excuse was that we had lapsed time without paying them. First of all, they automatically charged our account 2 days after the contract went void without authorization. I guess 2 days of lapsed time equals $375.00 !?!?

I strongly suggest not to do any business with salesforce.com. Their Tech support is TERRIBLE! and I have not once been able to reach their Billing Department during business hours. After 20 minutes of waiting on hold, it transfers you to voicemail. I have not had one good experience with salesforce.com - their program isn't any good anyway! Look at how many bad reviews they have! Don't sign a contract, they won't honor it anyway!