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As an ex-employee I can say that HIT Web Design, formerly known as Heritage Web Solutions, was once a great company to work for. Unfortunately this is no longer the case.
I had worked there for 2 and a half years and in the past year, HIT (who changed their name to run away from their bad reputation) has seriously gone down hill. It supposedly all started when customers began charging back on their credit cards due to a flurry of bad complaints in a scared economy (which actually never happened, they are just very greedy).
Needless to say the company is ran very unprofessionally. They were once the leaders in custom website design but have now abandoned their business model...
When you treat your employees so poorly they will not give the customers the kind of help they need. That is why there are so many customer and employee complaints.
This all has now come to a head as Utah's ABC4 News will soon be airing an investigative report on how HIT Web Design has lied and cheated their customers. The ABC4 News crew showed up Friday October 16th to interview employees on what has been going on.
The air date has yet to be released so please contact Annie Cutler of ABC4 News to express your disgust with HIT Web Design/ Heritage Web Solutions at [protected]@abc4.com
Let's make sure HIT Web Design will not continue doing this to customers!
i am also an ex-employee this as all true! i believe that the ABC 4 news story will air later this week.
HIT Web Design will do whatever they need to in order to safe face and the company as a whole. No matter what, we all know their business is going down the toilet when all they do is ask for more and more from their customers and employees and give nothing in return.
Dave Aitken, CEO at HIT, is ignorant to think that just because employees make good money (or atleast used to), that it is considered treating them fairly. Is that fair? NO!
Well said. HIT's customers have no idea how bad it really is there and its disgusting how HIT management are such cowards as to deny the truth that has mounted up before them.
They should just "man up", "dial the phone" and admit they are the ### we all know they are!
WOW! Things are worse than I thought...
Someone who knows, it seems you have some great perspective on this. I do not apologize for anything that I've said but I should not have called Dave and Jeremy "uneducated idiots". It is not easy to create a business as successful as HIT once was.
It is disappointing that they have abused their power and have got so greedy over time.
Someone who knows, thank you for your words, integrity and honesty.
What a good way to discredit everything, "grow up please". But it all ties into speech patterns, which, by nature, cannot be manipulated. all the postings have very distinct, and different, speech patterns. you know that "grow up please" is Dave Aitken..
Now Dave, you know you can not speak out of both sides of your mouth, even though we know you try! You would send emails stating that our compensation was so good we couldn't find work anywhere else to make the money we needed to support our families. That was EXTREMLEY intimidating and the money was the only thing that kept us there. THIS IS WHY PEOPLE WERE NOT WALKING OUT!
You would also tell us that there was no where to go and it was a dead job market but we are welcome to leave if we were unhappy. WHAT A MIND GAME! HOW DECEPTIVE!
I was told by a manager that they "only need one more paycheck and im out of here!"
Now Dave, dont do what everyone thinks you are going to do and flip out. I would sit down with your managers, suck up to them and let them know how much you appreciate them.
Or, maybe you could send one of your oh-so-powerful threatening emails. This is your choice...
Just to reitterate, "donebeingbullied" is referring to Dave Aitken's, aka "GrowUpPlease", threat to Bryce Turpin.
Dave was assumptive, as usual, in stating that Bryce is posting while he is at work.
I am paraphrasing as this thread is becoming VERY long...
Ryan, you are a smart guy and have been nothing but helpful to employees who asked you for help at anytime. I am sorry that they stuck you in the middle of this.
By your understanding you know HIT management to be reasonable and sensitive. You have never (for atleast the 2 and a half years i worked there) had close association with the sales team and how it was ran.
Please don't put yourself out there saying that HIT management is reasonable and sensitive. You dont have the capabilities to make a blanket statement like that. You have no idea what hell everyone on the sales team went through to bring in the money to support their families! There was even a sales manager who was constantly humiliated just to "motivate" the sales team. How sad is that?! This same sales manager was very sick one day and was forced to come in. He puked in front of everyone! How embarrassing!
THAT IS NOT SENSITIVE OR FAIR AND THIS ALL HAPPENED ALL THE TIME!
I know you have a nice family to support and need to protect the place you work at but please dont make blanket statements when crap like that is happening.
Also, why would HIT need to be told to be more sensitive or aware of family emergencies? That is basic business ethics.
The mere psychology of your post lets us all know that you are somewhat siding with us subconsciously, most likely due to the lack of training management/supervisors are given.
Every single person at HIT is encouraged to sell.
Just in the past week there has been a major change. There is no sales team!
The sales team has been absolved and lumped in to the account managers department.
Does this sound like a company that may have a problem here or there and may "stub their toe" once in a while? NO!
This all just makes the comments by HIT management all that more laughable.
It just goes to show that HIT is in a state of disrepair.
This is all very sad and I don't think that anything is going to change until we take this a step further...
You can contact Annie at ABC 4 at the email address annie@abc4.com...
The rest of the contact info is on my original complaint.
This is just like Dave... he loves to butter people up and make them feel good so he can use that as leverage at their most crucial moments.
Trust me, Dave is not this altruistic.
Not sure if Greg is unemployed by HIT - or if he's just working from home to save face for the company... Why would a company with this much greed ever actually get rid of someone who can manipulate an old lady with a severance check to use her social security check to line their pockets? ... hmmm... perhaps someone should try calling their sales line and ask for him, you might be surprised at the results.. unless you are familiar with the company. Then you wouldn't be surprised at all when they get him on the phone.
Yes and its a bunch of crap... just disregard it with a laugh and ignore it. There is nothing they can do to you. There is so much evidence that they are horrible, unethical business owners that would be foolish to even think about pursuing "legal action" against you.
Before I left on my own free will, months actually, HIT was hitting $30-40, 000 in revenue daily! This was expected and it was quite dreadful to management when we fell below this norm.
Now the latest from the HIT sales team... 3 days in a row at $12000 in revenue or less!
Having worked there 2 and a half years, 3 horrible days is deffinitley hurting their business. I've even got word from some employees that customers are sending links to reps from specific complaints done right here on complaintsboard.com.
These customers are demanding their accounts be cancelled! Let's hope this trend continues...
Actually they are failing miserably.
Plus, why would anyone take a stand for a company they have no relation to?
Thanks for trying though.
idiotswillalwayscomplain,
im sorry you are stuck at HIT. Obviously you have no where else to go. I'm sorry if we are harming the place you work at and we all would be mad if we were still there too because it would be hurting our paycheck.
The truth is, I have great friends that work there and they are amazing salespeople. Heck, I might even know you! We are not here to destroy your paycheck, in fact HIT is already doing that to you. We do not want you to fail but we do want HIT to change their ways. At HIT we had no voice! This is the only voice we have for the time being. Hopefully all of our collective complaints have been heard through out the state and government agencies we have made them to. There is only one way to fix HIT and hopefully bring it back to the positioning it was once in...
The Aitkens must go. I don't even think that is possible since they own a majority of the company from my understanding, but it is the only way. They once had HIT in a great position and it was the best place to work, now they have ran it in to the ground.
I really wish you the best of luck. There are many options for employment, employment that will pay you and treat well for the effort you put in.
wow "culture of fear" describes HIT perfectly.
By the way, Mark Strong and other HIT management have told their sales reps to say the same things to clients as Mark presented in the interview.
Its all fluff to make people feel good. The customer does not buy it in the end.
It may have worked for Mark because he is a nice, stately man who was speaking face to face with the news anchor. This is also why it hasn't aired.
I QUIT after the let one of the top consistant performers on the sales team go. This guy was awesome. He was always in the top 3 sales people pay period after pay period. Great guy with a nice wife and a few kids.
He was let go as an example that we were all expendable!
How sick is that! I was near tears to see him walk out, knowing he was going to have to go home, tell his wife he was fired and then hunt for a new job when he had kids to feed. I could not work for people that are vendictive as they are.
If you go to HIT management and try to talk about making $600 on a paycheck when you have earned them $20, 000 in a pay period is unfair they will say "So what?! We have kids to feed too!" (direct words from Jeremy Aitken). Keep in mind a pay period that productive would yeild a sales person atleast a check between $[protected] before management got greedy.
HIT sure is GREAT!
Now that is just greed... why would they fire someone and then say "oh you can work from home for us!"
Once again, they have no business sense at all.
awesome-company,
we all know you are not this altruistic.
In this case I think HIT was duped and was embarrassed to tell their employees that it really wasnt "national news".
It was deceitful as all employees thought that it was going to be a big break for HIT.
My_Compaint,
The reason they haven't been able to push our comments away is because they no next to nothing in regards to search engine optimization.
They follow antiquated SEO principles. They still think that meta keywords are KING! HIT tells their sales people to tell the customer that only custom sites can be optimized but templates easily can.
That will soon change as they are switching to template sites starting January 1, 2010.
TO MEDICINE AND ALL OTHERS WHO ARE TRYING TO DEFEND HIT...
It doesn't matter what you say or do at this point. You came in to this thread to late in the ball game!
This thread has been optimized for many phrases that are being searched when family, friends, ex-employees, customer, ex-customers and current employees search for "hit web design abc4". Just Google it.
Now if we do a quick search for "bad business abc4" (as we all know ABC4 is known for their investigative reports and consumer call to action stories) we pull HIT Web Design up in the number 2 spot. Ouch.
And YIKES! When we search for our favorite web design company under their new name "HIT Web Design" we find complaints immediatley under their own site. Bummer.
Sorry guys, try as you might but you are screwed.
Your business is failing and you are watching the ruins crumble.
Try doing something legitimate about it. You guys must be in real bad shape if you need to get on this board and monitor every little thing people are saying about you.
I wonder if the CEO of Wal-Mart does this?
Geez, you are right! What was I thinking?!
They know how huge they are, they don't need to stroke their own egos to prove it.
You know what I think is neat? If someone were to do a google image search for "Design by HWS" a TON of Heritage/HIT's websites come up. There usually is some contact info on the sites.
What could be done with that info?
Ryan, what about the grievances? I know for a fact Turpin's grievance is 100% legit as I was there.
Please address this. Thank you.
Ethicalhit,
If that is the correct link, it looks like he took it down.
What's there to be ashamed of Ryan?
This must be quite a bit for Ryan to take in. Notice he isnt saying anything...
By the way, accoridng to a source who is still at HIT Web Design, at te begginning of the year they had 400 employees and now they have about a tenth of that left!
January first there were 25 sales representative on the "sales team" now there are 7.
What a wonderful company! I'm glad to see they are doing so well.
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
Ryan,
Glad you got a call to try to backup a company that no matter what you say or do is going under. All because the owners are GREEDY! If I were you I would look elsewhere if you really have that much education. I will agree and Say that Mark is a very nice man but he is behind closed doors and really does not know the amount of mental abuse that his employees go through DAILY! The biggest mistake is when they let Jeremy TRY to manage a company of fear and fear alone. If that is how he treats his employees that he says he considers "family team" then I'm sure glad I'm not part of his real family!
At one time this place was enjoyable and there were happy clients until they chose poor management that only sees number signs!
We started to be forced to stay after our shift, keep in mind this is after our 8 hour shift. If we wanted to leave at 5:00 we had to talk to the supervisor first. They then would pull you into a room in the back sit you down and poor out a sorry excuse for a guilt trip.
I am quoting Tanner Wolsey Supervisor over Account Managing dept. Again keep in mind this is after working our 8 hour shift. "If you do not stay after I will be putting your name on a list, this list will be shown to upper management, if you do not stay late we have plenty of people that apply here everyday that will".
My response "well I have a family I need to get home to".
Tanner's response "I don't care if your wife is labor right now, that is not a good enough reason to leave right now."
WHAT THE $%^&!
This is the kind of crap that is happening RYAN, of course you would not see any of this going on. Quit making excuses for them Ryan just because your a still receiving a check. Needless to say it didn't take me long to find a new job and quit this company. This company needs to held accountable for their business practices, this can't continue to happen.
Ryan,
The reason people post comments as anonymous is because they don't want to be sued by the legal team of HIT Web Design, are you serious? Ryan you know as well as I do that if I blast the sacred name of HIT Web Design, you will take everything I own. But you can't slander when what all these people on here are stating as fact. We should stop selling websites and complete the ones we have here and make these customers happy. The incoming phone calls we are taking are all pissed of consumers. When they ask for a simple change on there sites it takes 3 weeks. We don't know how to run a business and our customer service sucks, let's stop lying and take care of these customers. As far as our team here at HIT quit threatening to decrease our pay, oh wait you didn't threaten you did take away our pay! Any legit business makes room for a slow economy any ### knows that. If you take care of your people they will take care of you. The scare tactics needs to stop!
My name is Ryan Nelson and I am currently employed in HIT’s legal department. I am somewhat taken back by the ignorant nature of the comments posted here by what are apparently disgruntled ex-employees of HIT. They are nothing more than mere allegations made out of frustration in an attempt to get revenge or to harm HIT’s reputation; yet they provide no specific instances or substantive evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever.
I have to give Bryce Turpin credit for being man enough to provide his identity. If what Bryce says about his time off requests is true, then I would have to concur that it is unfortunate. However, it is certainly not typical of what I have seen in my experience at HIT and without knowing HIT's side of the story, I can't formulate a fair opinion of Bryce's claims. HIT values family and tries to accommodate personal and family leave as well as vacation leave and sick leave and I have seen that throughout my career at HIT.
The rest of you—what are you hiding from? I suspect that most of you were terminated as employees for some shortcoming or violation that you committed and you are now feeling embarrassed and revengeful. Why don't you come out of anonymity and tell us about it? I'm sure that it’s easier and safer to hide behind an anonymous online nickname and take pot shots at HIT’s reputation than it is to identify yourself and raise some legitimate issues for discussion.
Consider, for example, the blatant ignorance of stopthegreed’s assertion that Dave and Jeremy Aitken are “uneducated idiots” – two guys who established and currently direct a company that sells and produces millions of dollars’ worth of work each year; and who made their company rank #22 in the Inc 500 list in 2007. They obviously must be doing something right to have accomplished all that they have accomplished.
Now, before you go calling me an “uneducated idiot, ” I will have you know that I hold three college degrees, including a juris doctorate, and have worked in web development since 2000. I have personally performed probably all of the job functions that you ex-employees have performed and more. I have sold products and services to HIT customers; I have personally built websites and fulfilled orders for HIT customers; I have managed a developmental department at HIT and have overseen HIT employees and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of projects; I have personally helped and continue to help many customers with concerns; I have personally investigated and responded to BBB and other complaints made by customers; I have also personally represented or been involved in representing HIT in legal proceedings and have represented HIT in arbitration cases.
I will tell you from experience at HIT that not everything is as black and white as your cowardly allegations make it seem. I won’t lie and tell you that I think that HIT has never made a mistake. However, I will tell you that HIT consistently works diligently with customers to resolve their concerns when they arise, especially in cases where HIT has made a mistake.
For example, I remember one particular occasion where HIT completed a customer’s custom database website exactly as specified in the database write up. The customer was very dissatisfied and wanted something different. I personally took the matter to Dave Aitken, who told me that we should start over from scratch and give the customer what she wanted at no additional charge - something which had a value of a couple thousand dollars beyond what the customer had originally ordered. We did. The customer was thrilled with the result and expressly told us how pleased she was. She thanked HIT by walking away and not paying her original bill, to say nothing of the free thousands of dollars of work given to her by Dave Aitken.
I have worked personally and closely with Mark Strong, a partner of HIT, and a man who I greatly admire and consider to have a great amount of integrity. Mark is the Chief Quality Officer of HIT and personally responds to BBB and other complaints. Mark has told me on numerous occasions that in dealing with customer issues, HIT wants to do the fair thing and be treated fairly in return. I have seen Mark on countless occasions offer free work to customers, give substantial discounts to customers, give refunds to customers and follow up personally on customer concerns.
The nature of HIT’s business is challenging in and of itself. HIT tries to take an abstract concept from the mind of an unknown third party and make it into reality through a creative process. This is not easy to do. It is hard for customers to communicate clearly what their expectations are and those expectations frequently evolve over time. Customers, for example, will order websites with particular features. Then during the course of development, they think of ways to improve upon their websites. They expect HIT to honor their change orders to make their site conform to their latest mental picture, but they don’t want to pay HIT for the extra hours that it takes to complete the modifications; and those extra hours do cost HIT.
Some customers have buyer’s remorse. They order something worth thousands of dollars, then decide later that they really shouldn’t have spent the money and want a full refund. That’s not fair to HIT after work has been completed in good faith and in reliance on the customer’s order.
In short, some complaints are not fair and do not portray reality fairly. Some are legitimate and HIT diligently strives to resolve them. Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature to complain rather than to give compliments. Upset customers post complaints and those relatively few complaints we find online seem to get a lot of attention. But, HIT has thousands of silently satisfied customers as well and the few customers that do complain represent a very small percentage of HIT's actual customer base of approximately 20, 000.
HIT will work to address all reasonable concerns and I invite you to bring them to HIT’s attention. You may email ceo@hitwebdesign.com.
well said Bryce! U DA MAN!
/currently removed/
Personally, I do not consider deceiving people "stubbing a toe!"
If you have been a victim of Heritage Web Solutions or Hit Web Design or whatever name they go by please follow the following steps.
1. Call your bank or credit card company and file a "charge back." This is really the only way you can get your money back.
2. Contact the Utah Attorney General's Office and file a formal complaint with them about the Hit Web Design's practices.
3. Contact the BBB and file a formal complaint with them.
4. Contact your local TV, Radio, Newspaper and tell them about Hit Web Design's predatory behavior, and destroying your small business plan, and taking your money.
5. Contact ABC4.com and help them with their story.
6. Post HERE and on other sites about your situation with Hit Web Design.
7. Share your results with us!
Throughout the interview the point was made that HIT seeks to be fair in every undertaking we make. The essence of the interview was very positive and overall a pleasant experience. It gave HIT the opportunity to express to a news organization how proud we are of the progress we have made, the commitment our staff has to our customers and how our efforts are focused. Occasionally we stub our toe (we are human), but at the end of the day, we truly seek to to treat the client and employees fairly.
I am excited to see the final cut, and personally I welcome any customer with specific concerns to contact me. You can email me directly at CEO@hitwebdesign.com or QCA@hitwebdesign.com