Vent: Burned $1,200 on a lead gen service that just sent me bot traffic

Signed up with this company called something like LeadStream back in March. They promised 50 qualified B2B leads a month for my IT consulting firm. First month I got 48 'leads' but none of them ever replied to my emails or answered my calls. I checked the IP addresses on the click data and half of them were from data centers. These weren't real businesses. Wasted 4 months and $1,200 before I figured it out. Has anyone else had a lead gen service turn out to be fake?

3 comments

3 Comments

fiona_kim1mo ago

honestly $1200 over 4 months isnt even that bad, i know people who dropped like 5k on similar stuff and got nothing. lead gen is basically a gamble, half the time its just some dude in a basement running scripts. but also you gotta ask yourself, did you really vet these guys before signing up? like a quick google search wouldve shown complaints.

charles_young921mo ago

Honestly, you hit the nail on the head with "some dude in a basement running scripts." That's exactly what it sounds like. It's wild how many of these places operate like that, just collecting checks and sending fake traffic. Yeah, $1,200 could have been worse, but it still stings when you think about all the time you wasted chasing those leads. Ngl, it makes you paranoid about every other service out there too.

nancyjones1mo ago

Oh man, that paranoid feeling sticks with you! Right before I read this, @charles_young92, I was just telling my buddy about a landscaping company I tried two years ago where the "leads" were all people looking for house cleaning or something. Like a guy named Dave who said he signed up for a deck quote but the form said "pest control." It's wild how these places just throw junk at you and hope you don't notice. Makes you second guess every professional service you hire now, even the ones that seem legit.