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Hit Web Design review: bad business to work with/for! abc4 news utah will expose! 528

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12:14 pm EDT
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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!

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 20, 2009 1:04 pm EDT

i am also an ex-employee this as all true! i believe that the ABC 4 news story will air later this week.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 21, 2009 4:35 pm EDT

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!

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 21, 2009 5:51 pm EDT

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!

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 21, 2009 6:08 pm EDT

WOW! Things are worse than I thought...

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 23, 2009 12:07 am EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 23, 2009 12:41 pm EDT

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...

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 23, 2009 1:09 pm EDT

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...

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 25, 2009 12:38 am EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 25, 2009 12:46 am EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 25, 2009 6:01 pm EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 26, 2009 10:28 am EDT

This is all very sad and I don't think that anything is going to change until we take this a step further...

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 26, 2009 7:50 pm EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 27, 2009 1:10 pm EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 28, 2009 2:04 pm EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 28, 2009 7:56 pm EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 28, 2009 11:15 pm EDT

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...

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 28, 2009 11:20 pm EDT

Actually they are failing miserably.

Plus, why would anyone take a stand for a company they have no relation to?

Thanks for trying though.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 29, 2009 12:35 am EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 29, 2009 12:50 am EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 29, 2009 12:30 pm EDT

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!

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 29, 2009 5:04 pm EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 29, 2009 11:26 pm EDT

awesome-company,

we all know you are not this altruistic.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 30, 2009 11:38 am EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Oct 30, 2009 12:00 pm EDT

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Nov 01, 2009 5:34 pm EST

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?

Update by stopthegreed
Nov 01, 2009 5:57 pm EST

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Nov 03, 2009 10:03 pm EST

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?

Update by stopthegreed
Nov 04, 2009 1:59 pm EST

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.

Update by stopthegreed
Nov 04, 2009 3:08 pm EST

Ethicalhit,

If that is the correct link, it looks like he took it down.

What's there to be ashamed of Ryan?

Update by stopthegreed
Nov 05, 2009 11:18 pm EST

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.

Resolved

The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.

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ExHitDesigner
ExHitDesigner
Logan, US
Send a message
Mar 10, 2011 8:46 pm EST

Interesting development, look at this blog thread on complaints board today, Mr. Morrills address shows up in Eagle Mountain and I can swear the red truck outside looks just like David Aiken's, which is a resident of Eagle Mountain, see I am a former designer, I left a while before all this but interesting resemblance, I may be wrong. Anyway, you may be interested in this thread:
Hit Web Design — Website & Hosting Errors

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webdecade
US
Send a message
Mar 19, 2011 10:02 pm EDT

We are a small niche website development firm if you guys need your website launch or hosted please visit www.webdecade.com

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webdecade
US
Send a message
Mar 19, 2011 10:07 pm EDT

We can help you one on one to help get your website launched.

cal our toll free number [protected] or go to www.webdecade.com

we can host, design, develop, seo and do custom programming

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Empower by knowledge
Provo, US
Send a message
Mar 23, 2011 8:19 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

@webdecade
These people have been scammed and defrauded. Attempting to profit there from is inappropriate.
Anyone who wishes can prepare a site for free at http://demo.joomla.org/ It has been designed for non-programmers to get their sites up quickly and easily. Within minutes or the same day your site is up and running. The site you create will look professionally prepared for free.

You can do social sites, e-commerce sites, and much much more.
Who uses Joomla?
MTV Quizilla
Here are just a few examples of Web sites that use Joomla:
* MTV Networks Quizilla (Social networking) - http://www.quizilla.com
* IHOP (Restaurant chain) - http://www.ihop.com
* Harvard University (Educational) - http://gsas.harvard.edu
* Citibank (Financial institution intranet) - Not publicly accessible
* The Green Maven (Eco-resources) - http://www.greenmaven.com
* Outdoor Photographer (Magazine) - http://www.outdoorphotographer.com
* PlayShakespeare.com (Cultural) - http://www.playshakespeare.com
* Senso Interiors (Furniture design) - http://www.sensointeriors.co.za

Check out their sample sites and portfolios at http://community.joomla.org/showcase/
A Joomla site through the Demo is hosted for the first 30 days for free on cloudaccess.net. You can move your site to any hosting company you desire.

If you need to add a feature to your site like a shopping cart the add-ons are free or have minimal costs of $0-$30. If you wish to change something the software helps you do that for free. If there is a feature that you would like and there is not an add-on available, you can make a request for help. The costs are reasonable. There are no high pressured sales people to worry about.

Joomla is type of software that allows companies like isowebworks and PPCmanagementllc to produce a website for your review quickly. They are not building your site nor coding to build your site. They use free open source packages like Joomla to build the sites. This software is available to the public (you) for free. Why pay someone else to do this when you can do it yourself with ease and for free. Before you pay someone to build your site give Joomla a try.

Joomla is a free open source content management system (CMS). Some companies put there name on top of the CMS and call it their product when in fact it is the work of many who have devoted their time to the free open source development projects.

We are not against anyone choosing to pay someone to create the sites using Joomla. We are only against not giving credit to the free open source community who actually developed the programs such as Joomla and disclosing its usage to the public.

Because of the short amount of time it takes to build a site with Joomla, use care when paying someone to build your site. Make sure they have actually built sites from scratch and understand CSS, XML, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, Perl, and AJAX at a minimum. Make sure they have and are building some sites from scratch or have disclosed to you that they only use a CMS. Make sure it is disclosed in your contract if they will build the code themselves and have qualified programmers or use free open source software.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
1. Never sign a contract that does not provide a full refund if you are not satisfied with the product or service.
2. Make sure that you do not pay for hosting until your site is live and functioning the way you requested.
3. Make sure that you ”own” your site code with no strings attached except payment for the building of the site as agreed to in writing.
4. Never sign an agreement that does not require a deadline for building the site or provides for phased rollout with deadlines of features. You can even request that there is a penalty for each day the site is past the due date to motivate the completion of the site.
5. Never agree to jurisdiction outside of your own state or country.
6. Never agree that the full price as been earned or is due unless the site is built to your satisfaction.
7. Make sure you have documentation of what is in scope of your request and what is out of scope for your request. Get it in writing.
8. Never let anyone pressure into purchasing anything. Tell them that you need to review it with your partners and that until you have your partner”s sign off you can not make the purchase. Then take the time to research and review the information before you buy. Get a family member or trusted friend to be your partner in helping you make the decision. Get three opinions before you buy. If you are uncomfortable in any way don’t buy. It is better to wait than be sorry.
9. Always read the terms of the agreement before you sign. If you don’t like the terms you can change them. Any company that is unwilling to work with you on the terms is giving you a sign of what is ahead. Run don’t walk away from a company that is unwilling to work with your terms.

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HitWebDesign
Provo, US
Send a message
Mar 23, 2011 8:24 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

@Empower by knowledge great post, and great advice to follow!

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utookthewordsoutofmymouth
US
Send a message
Mar 27, 2011 8:36 pm EDT
Verified customer This complaint was posted by a verified customer. Learn more

thanks there empower by knowledge

i know if i need a website i'll remember that...

ExHitDesigner
ExHitDesigner
Logan, US
Send a message
Mar 27, 2011 10:24 pm EDT

Excellant point, allot of the consumers who got screwed cant afford anoth $120 bucks to "recover" from Hit Web Design. The only help you can offer somone who just got robbed, is "Free" help. Great advice @ Empower by knowledge. That woul be the best course of action instead of coming out of pocket.

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webdecade
US
Send a message
Aug 13, 2011 7:33 am EDT

Please visit www.webdecade.com we are a dallas texas based web design, web development, seo, ppc, sem and hosting firm that specializing in building websites from scratch and also modifying joomla, wordpress and drupal. I have helped alot of HIT customers to get their site back on track they did pay a little more but you do get what what you pay for a high quality site that can be expandable to a ecommerce site since we can build stuff fro scratch since we have about 15 years experienc in doing this.

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