Avetta review: A middle man company that hijacks existing customers ( 1 comment)

Many years ago, Avetta was Browz, then before that it was PICS, both legitimate companies with actual customer service.

It has degraded to a company with zero actual exchange for the extortion level fees and terms. It advertises itself as a way for contractors and vendors to "hook up" with potential clients. However, in the 17 years I've had to deal with these companies (Avetta, Browz and before that PICS), we have never once received a new client. They have only been forced to "onboard" with customers I have been doing business with on a direct basis for many years.

I suspect Avetta simply gets a list of their clients' existing or previous contractors and then automatically hooks up the contractor and the client on Avetta's platform. Since Avetta forces contractors to submit a credit card just to be a member, they then just bill us for that connection, whether it is valid or not. It's happened several times with my company. It takes several weeks to get it reversed. There is no way to deny or reject the connection.

Recently they have degraded further by making it nearly impossible to talk to a real person. Just their useless "virtual assistant".

We recently got (without our approval) onboarded to a customer we did a $3,000 job for 6 years ago and haven't heard from them since. Avetta charged us $1,600 for that "benefit".

I've been trying to get a response from Avetta since with zero response.

We do have one legitimate client for whom we do a lot of work, making the fee worth it (again, this is a customer we have been working with for 30+ years long before Avetta existed) so we had no choice but to maintain our Avetta membership. the downside is that they have a blank check from our credit card so sign up whoever they want whenever they want.

And I have a hard time seeing what Avetta actually provides to us that is of any value.

To make matters worse, they come off as an arm of the government with their "you are not compliant" emails.

Is what they do actually legal? I don't know.

At least when they were Browz and PICS, they did have service assisting us in navigating the requirements of the clients, setting up safety programs and we had our own assigned account manager. Now it's all virtual assistants, no real people at the other end.

Avoid if at all possible.