Visible.net
Visible.net is an e-commerce software and online marketing provider for businesses, entrepreneurs, and individual merchant retailers. The company is located in Redmond, Washington.
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| Type: | Privately held |
| Industry: | Marketing & Advertising |
| Founded: | 2004 |
| Founder(s): | Gilbert Walker |
| Headquarters: | Redmond, Washington |
| Country: | USA |
| Employees: | 100 [1] |
| Website: | visible.net |
| Blog: | visiblog |
| LinkedIn: | Visible.net |
| Key People | |
| Gilbert Walker, Chairman
Glenn Jones, President | |
History
Gilber Walker founded the company in 2004 as Visible.net Inc., a privately held e-commerce software and technology firm specializing in creating easy to use solutions for online businesses.
The company launched is new brand and official website Visible.net on May 1, 2008 with an objective to satisfy their clients and provide the necessary training for them to be able to maintain and manage their own site effectively and increase revenues from their investments.[2]
Services
The company provide e-commerce, marketing, search engine optimization and media services for new and existing website owners. Visible.net offers different options to meet a client's needs based on the company size and budget with scalable, semi-automated, e-commerce packages and marketing programs.[3]
Partnership
The company has Integration partnerships with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask.com, Verisign, Authorize.net,PSiGate, Paypal, eBay, Shopzilla, USPS and UPS. Its technology partners include pHp, MySQL, and Rackspace Hosting.
Legal Issues
On November 12, 2008, Washington Attorney General Robert McKenna filed a lawsuit against Visible.Net a.k.a. Web Marketing Source, Web MarketingSource.com, Caputures.com, and Captures.com, Inc. due to alleged violations of the State's telemarketing and consumer protection laws.[4]
The law suit was filed as a result of the complaints from about 160 customers received by the Better Business Bureau and the Attorney General's office. According to the Attorney General, “Visible.net and Captures.com promised small businesses that they’d be ‘blown away’ by achieving top Internet search results. But merchants who paid thousands of dollars hoping to increase sales found the defendants couldn’t always deliver on their promises.[5]
In 2010, Visible.net was found in violation of Washington's telemarketing law by the King County Superior Court judge. The company filed a settlement agreement with the superior court resolving the remaining charges of consumer protection law violations. Visible.net agrred to pay $250,000 to the Attorney General’s Office and agreed the company will not:[6]
- Misrepresent their ability to significantly increase traffic to customer Web sites by achieving top search-engine rankings.
- Fail to provide refunds or honor cancellation requests.
- Claim to provide around-the-clock customer support, technical advice or consultations, unless available.
- Fail to register with the Department of Licensing as a commercial telephone solicitor.
- Charge consumers’ credit cards without authorization.
- Misrepresent their affiliation with other marketers.
According to Senior Counsel Paula Selis, head of the Attorney General's Consumer Protection High-Tech Unit who led the investigation of the case, the Attorney General's Office expects to retain approximately $50,000 from the settlement payment to reimburse the State's legal expenses and the remaining $200,000 will be restitution for customers who filed the complaint; those individuals were to be be contacted by mail and are supposed to receive a full or partial refund after the company paid all the necessary payments to the State by 2012.[7]