Hey everyone, I wanted to share an experience I've had with SocialCaptain. First off, I am the owner of a new small startup type business that has really started to grow. As a result, we have decided to throw some cash at Instagram to help grow our online presence in the online community and more importantly, automate most of our activity. As a disclaimer, I have zero affiliation with any of these types of companies. This forum seemed to be the only place discussing SocialCaptain and other services I was looking at in an unbiased fashion. I specifically made this account on here to share my current experiences with others looking for answers.
Our overall goal with any of these services is to gain quality followers that might actually have an interest in our products. We are not looking to just spam people 24/7 to gain the maximum amount of followers. After some research, I started to try some of these services. Most of them were garbage. But last week I decided to try ViralSoda. Over the span of that week, everything went pretty well. It is easy to understand and has all the features we were looking for. Price really isn't a major concern for us as long as the service provided is doing what we want. That being said, VS was on the lower end at $14/ month. Nearing the end of the trial, everything had gone well, other than our feed becoming complete trash. But I decided I needed to keep trying other services I had my eye one. I decided to try out SocialCaptain. IMO, the price is high. But I thought if many of the innovative techniques they're claiming actually work, it is well worth the money over paying for ads or someone to run the account.
Late Friday night I signed up for the trial. As another user here stated, I was already not liking the trial only being 24 hours. It just isn't very long to decide to commit or not. But oh well. I soon realized many of the features I wanted to use were not available during the trial. I decided to just let it run overnight. The next day I decided to go ahead and upgrade to the premium plan because I really wasn't getting a full go around with the trial. This was probably a horrible reason to upgrade. But with the fall back that I could ask for a refund within another 24 hours I decided to go ahead. After I received full access with the premium plan, I quickly noticed a major problem.
Where is the Auto DM feature?
Auto DM is a very important feature for us. When new followers are added, I like sending them a personal message thanking them for the follow and reiterating the importance every customer is in a growing business. This message also contains my personal contact information. No product advertising or anything of that nature. Pretty much just a thank you. We do not participate in auto commenting or any other type of spamy features. But the auto DM is something I really like.
This feature is blatantly listed on their front page. In fact, it is 1 of 3 of the main features listed. I have attached a screenshot. But feel free to check it out for yourself. I didn't see this feature in the trial. But I thought it was not available due to the trial. Now upgraded to premium, it was still nowhere to be found. After searching and some googling, thinking it was just hiding somewhere, I still didn't have any answers. I tried to contact customer service. But they were not available until Monday morning. So I waited until today and contacted them via the chat. It was immediately confirmed that "we do not offer a Direct Messaging Feature at this point, since we strictly focus on growing your audience, but we do have plans to add that in the upcoming weeks". Unbelievable.
I will let the chat conversation below speak for itself. But I could not believe they would pull something like this. These deceptive business tactics have really turned me off to them all together. How hard would it be to remove this feature from the front page? or better yet, simply state it is a feature that's on the way. This alone would probably have kept me with them until I decided the service wasn't working for us. But now? I don't think so. It's a shame as I did like several things they were offering. The auto mute feature for new followers is especially nice. I hope this is something competitors incorporate in the future. I'm not sure if the AI, advanced targeting stuff really makes a difference just yet as we just didn't have the service long. But if there is any truth to it, I could be a game changer. I informed them that, until today, we were actually prepared to move up to the $99/ month Turbo plan. For now I'll probably pay the modest $14 / month to reactivate Viral Soda while I continue to test out other services.
If anyone has any questions feel free to message me or I'll try to reply to them in here. I'm also welcome to any thoughts or suggestions on this subject. As I said, ViralSoda is the best I've found so far. But we're open to try others. Jarvee is something I'd like to try and tackle. I just haven't found the time just yet.
**I'd also like to add as of this post time, I am still waiting for a refund (giving me time to write this post). Notice in the chat there is no mention of addressing this misleading tactic. Even if they had zero intention of taking it down, you'd think they'd say "they're working on it". Also, no effort to try and retain our business.
CHAT
Me: Hello, I signed up for your premium service this weekend after trying many other services. Only question I have right now is how do I access the auto DM feature for new followers?
SC: Hi there, thanks for reaching out! Maxine from SocialCaptain, here. We do not offer a Direct Messaging feature at this point, since we strictly focus on growing your audience, but we do have plans to add that in the upcoming weeks
Me: **attached screenshot of front page to chat**
Me: So why is this being advertised specifically on your home page, right up front, as a current feature? That is very misleading
SC: yes, I understand appreciate your feedback-- that copy went live a little too early. That feature is still in the works but should be coming soon. Let me know what I can do to make the best of your experience in the meantime!
Me: Well I would think you guys would take this down until it is live. That is pretty shady. I'm the owner of a small start up. We are at the stage where we're ready to spend some money on social media exposure. I really like everything SC has to offer. There are a sea of services like this out there. SC being one of the more expensive options. But our team decided on you guys due to a few features that others are not offering. Specifically the layout, automatic muting, and overall new approach to adding quality followers. We were prepared to flip up to the Turbo plan. But blatantly listing features on your website, on the front page no less, that are not available, is unacceptable and downright false advertising. This is very disappointing. We would like a refund.
SC: I understand. I do apologize. I've reached out to our billing team to assist you with this matter. Once it's been taken care of, a billing expert will reach out to confirm. In the meantime, please let me know if there's anything else I can help you with!
Me: How will they be reaching out? Email?
SC: They'll reach out here, but you'll receive notification about it via email as well.
Me: Ok I will just wait.
**35 minutes later
Me: Still waiting.
SC: I can confirm your issue is on the billing teams queue - they will reach out via email once it has been processed.
**as of this post it has been an hour and I'm still waiting.
