BrightLocal

"Subscription Fees will not be refunded for early cancellation or any other reason" is their policy. This includes if you purchased the yearly plan and used their software for 1 minute, hour, or day... you will not get a refund, whether you are satisfied or likely not.

We moved on from BrightLocal because we want our product to scale with us, and the only way to resolve inaccurate data displayed to our client-facing dashboard is to fix it manually.

They only make sure the information displayed is accurate if you have an Enterprise plan. They claimed that I was misinterpreting the data (not true at all), but then went on to say no platform is 100% accurate, so which one is it...?

I think my chat with their support team sums things up perfectly:

Chat started on 27 Jan 2020, 04:28 PM (GMT+0)
(04:28:04) *** Visitor 30997541 joined the chat ***
(04:28:06) Customer Service: Welcome! Can we help you with anything?
(04:36:56) Visitor 30997541: I just heard your pricing is insane... you offer packages for $79/month for 100 locations, but then say you can only care about 50 location reviews. But then a friend of mine said they needed 160 locations and said you gave him a quote for over $900/month? Do you really charge more per location once you go over 100 locations?
(04:37:04) *** Mike joined the chat ***
(04:37:32) Mike : Hi Mike here
(04:38:13) Mike : The seo pro plan at $79/month covers up to 100 locations, Yes
(04:39:35) Mike : Once your requirements exceed the allowances in the plan there are 2 options available
(04:40:14) Mike : You can eiother purchase additional credits for the reports you need or we can look at a custom plan based on your exacvt requirements
(04:40:54) Visitor 30997541: ok, but if I simply wanted 101 locations... it wouldn't just increase by an expected multiple of the cost of the plan? say... $0.80/location?
(04:41:52) Mike : No it wouldn't. It
(04:43:37) Visitor 30997541: ok, but if I wanted 200 locations, surely it would only be $79 * 2 = $158/month right?... maybe even less since it would be more of a quantity discount.
(04:46:05) Mike : No, I'm afraid it doesn't work like that . Depending on your exact requirements we would build a custom plan for you if you require more than is included in the seo pro plan
(04:46:43) Visitor 30997541: ha. Ok, so why wouldn't I just sign up for second account?
(04:53:08) Mike : Only 1 account is permitted per business
(04:53:49) Visitor 30997541: ah ok. Well, thank you for your time. I think I have enough information to know I would not do business with BrightLocal.
(04:57:05) Mike : no problem, If you let me have your email i would be more than happy to pass this on to our head office and ask them to follow up with you to give you more insight into our pricing structure and custom plans
(04:58:48) *** Visitor 30997541 has rated the chat Good ***
(04:58:48) *** Visitor 30997541 has commented: The person on chat was great to talk to. It's your pricing is insane and the reason that I would not do business with you. To make sure I clear, your advertised pricing is very reasonably priced, $79/month for 100 locations. But then to assume someone only cares to monitor 50 reviews of 100 locations and that if I needed to increase the locations by 60% to 160 locations the price is going to 10x to over $900/month is insane. ***
(04:58:48) *** Visitor 30997541 left the chat ***

This is a reporting tool who's data is 80%+ inaccurate. After working through many automated emails from them, my team and I finally got a meeting with our Brightlocal rep. They literally told us to go in and fix it manually for each and every client. Clearly we have no use for a reporting tool who's reporting is so aggressively wrong so we attempted to cancel our annual subscription. Here was the reply:

Our rep:
"As per our Terms and Conditions:
Section 6.5) 'If you subscribe to a Subscription Service then you may cancel such Subscription Service at any time. Termination will take effect from the end of the current Subscription Service Period. Subscription Fees will not be refunded for early cancellation or any other reason'."

Basically, if you own the annual account for a day, you can't get refunded for the year, even if the product is faulty in nearly every way from a reporting perspective, contrary to what was advertised.

I'm sure a representative will comment on this rating and claim that they "taught us how to correct this issue and how to identify reporting mistakes" so here is my preemptive rebuttal:

A. - Going in regularly to correct reporting issues completely eliminates the purpose of having a reporting tool. We were not made aware of the potential for reporting inaccuracies until after we were annual customers.

B. - With client facing white label reporting, I might be able to identify and ignore faulty information but my client certainly won't. Because these reports have my logo on them, Brightlocal's faults become my own. This is clearly not acceptable.

I implore you to purchase Brightlocal if you would like to:
+ look like a fool in front of your client and lose their business
+sift through 20+ automated emails before talking to your representative (even for the annual plan)
+Purchase a faulty product from a company that will not refund you

Worst product I have experienced in my career so far.