Just a warning to potential buyers that companies Magic Social, Social Steeze, LikeSocial, Social10x and Rise Social all are found to be operating through one singular company in New Zealand: Series Next Limited.
They sell fake Instagram followers marketed as a “growth” service online, by running IG accounts through a bot which can get you banned. There have been a bunch of fake review sites made by them such as JonathanSpire .com and other sites like TrustAdvisor, selectedbest, income artist etc. There also seems to be a suspicious amount of paid TrustPilot reviews on all these websites, and they report any bad reviews from legitimate customers.
The company has a strategy of buying existing blogs and then using them to pump out fake reviews of their services so people think they will gain legitimate growth on them. They also seem to slander their competitors so they rank for search terms associated with more popular companies, and then steal their customers too.
If you have any experiences with these companies, let us know in the replies. They are selling snake oil and using sketchy fake review tactics to do it.
The other thread was about SocialSteeze. This one is about Magic Social and their other sites. It’s important to have a thread so it shows up in google before they drown it out with fake review sites. It’s fine to sell growth services but don’t create fake bot networks of reviews to lie to customers. If your product sucks make a better one.
OP, show proof of these accusations. Also, if this IS true, good work and thanks for letting users here know. But we likely dont have many users around here at all that would go to any of these sites unless they are lazy
(or are new and are learning after getting ripped off and finding those types of fake service sites, if any of yall see this lol forgive me haha)
Yup, I can’t help the feeling that this is a competitor’s post I’m using Fuelgram anyway and purchase real likes and comments from niche-related profiles, because I think it’s much better to grow followers organically instead of purchasing fake followers.
After looking at the examples OP provided, there is some suspicion here, but no real proof at all.
Pictures of a fake review website and saying some person owns it and others are accomplices without undeniable evidence (chats, who.is evidence, etc) does not mean these people are complete sharlatins.
This is a definitely a bias written “honest” review about the overall of what these guys at steeze, likesocial etc are doing.
However, the facts are NOT straight. This “Fred Harrington” left a TRULY honest review with negatives attatched when selling the socialsteeze.-net services. Slightly glorified when giving “stars out of 5” BUT, he clearly states that these services negatives are
“Followers without engagement are fake and no value to your instagram”
“Fake profiles are targeted and removed by Instagram’s algorithm”
“You could get banned due to fake profiles and/or blatant bot use whether you’re aware of that or not”
This guy clearly is not in on it or he would not be posting these things in the header articles of his site.
Thus I have a hard time believing alot of this web due to drawing quick conclusions.
I talked to a user here a couple days ago telling us in a thread about how she was used by socialsteeze so I MORE than want to believe. And I do. But I need evidence.
Otherwise they could just have horrid results and be ridiculously amazing marketing of themselves. This isn’t illegal as long as you disclose etc in your terms of use. This is incredibly greasy and I dont think its actually legal on that side of the pond (im in america and you can absolutely do this and its 100% legal, other places you need to clearly define what you’re offering and uphold that… Cali enforces this slightly with stuff like refunds and what not.)
Find better evidence and I’ll gladly call the NZ Commerce Commission and report these websites and people involved with real evidence.
Hell, Im in Phoenix… I could go over to godaddy and file a complaint with them directly since my pops knows the owner.
I will post better stuff tonight. Essentially on all their websites they have Series Next Limited at checkouts, and that links back to this company in New Zealand. New Zealand has public company records so you can see the owner, which links up to Ricky.
Some people have said that this company was previously Social Envy who were shut down by Facebook by threat of lawsuit (I will also publish info later if I can get it). Basically all the sites were the exact same format as Social Envy (including code) and took over exactly when Social Envy went down. The company directors also live in the exact same neighbourhood as the guys as Social Envy (shown here).
The blog jonathonspire.com also leaves negative reviews of all the Instagram follower providers and then very conveniently leaves the “recommended providers” at the bottom of the page, all which linked up to Series Next Limited. The company has noticed people caught on and is changing some of its payments gateways to Stripe so as to hide their name at checkout.
They also appear to be operating a paid blog network to boost SEO by buying these old domains and starting up ‘review’ sites to write ‘reviews’ about Instagram services. Again, all recommending the same sites and slandering their competitors. Using fake Schema code to rank in google with star ratings etc etc.
Anyway I’ll post it all later on. Thanks for your help.
You seem a little overly occupied with wanting to out them, or expose them. Tbh, after looking at them… they don’t look much different than other services out there that promote sm services.
It’s possible that they have an array of other websites and blogs to help promote their service, that’s what you call good marketing. Is it completely white hat? No, but they definitely put in a lot of work to getting all that done.
If they completely beat you for your money, then I would be siding with you, as I don’t respect a scam artist. But if your gripe is just about not liking the service you received from them, then really that’s on your for falling for it. Most sm services out there aren’t doing anything that you can’t do for yourself really. You’re better off spending your time reading and learning the right strategies to be able to promote your accounts on your own. Not only will you gain more knowledge, but also have adapted a marketable skill… which in return you can seek your revenge by out doing them, as opposed to complaining on the forum about it.
It’s very interesting that people with no experience with this company are now defending them. It’s a far stretch to call a fake blog network with falsified customer reviews “good marketing”. It’s unethical and misleading. Take a look at the reviews on this site:
https://www.igreviews.co
They feature endorsements of all of Series Next Limited’s websites and bash their opposition. They even include fake reviews with fake names, fake 5 star ratings, etc.
They also suppress negative reviews on TrustPilot by consistency reporting them again and again, and have a suspicious amount of positive reviews.
You can say I’m “too occupied”, however their web traffic is in the hundreds of thousands and some have estimated that Social Envy made millions by putting clients accounts into a bot, liking spammy hashtags, getting peoples accounts banned etc. There have been plenty of reviews which indicated that people also were double charged for their service, in which the company sneakily puts in that the subscription is charged “monthly” when its actually weekly. People have written about Social Envy and Social Steeze doing this practice.
Again, if you want to defend fake review sites, blog and bot networks as “good marketing” then you’ve obviously never been screwed over. There is a reason they have to acquire fake review sites: because their service is a complete sham.
Instead of wasting your time writing rants and raves about it, maybe take people’s advice and try and move on. I can understand you don’t want to hear anything other than people agreeing with what you’re saying but theres nothing you can do about it now. There’s no need to cry over spilled milk. Take it as a lesson and move forward.
And and yeah, I referred to it as good marketing and I stand behind what I say because I use bh techniques mixed with wh techniques for marketing, so I’m not going to put down someone else who uses bh methods. Unless you’re 100% wh, then the best you can do is charge it to the game and move forward.
Have I ever been unhappy with a service or product I bought online? Yes, numerous times. Did I go on a forum to complain about it? No, as that isn’t going to solve the problem. I understand we all deal with things differently, so different strokes for different folks. But you can’t assume just because everyone isn’t finding sympathy because you got misled means that we’ve never had a bad experience buy/using a service on the internet. We all deal with it differently. You’re expecting sympathy, but you’ll still be in the same position you were before.
I’ll give you advice on how to avoid this next time, which you should already be aware of. Use PayPal if you’re using a new service that you’re unfamiliar with. If things go south, you’ll always be protected. You need to learn to protect yourself on the internet, not blame people when you get beat. There are sharks in the water and they’ll always be there, pointing the finger and looking to blame someone isn’t going to help you, you should learn how to protect yourself in these situations. Your last message was as if you were mad because I wasn’t taking your side. Reality is, I know its part of the game… and it happens. If you equip yourself better, and learn how to move properly in life and on the internet, you’ll know how to better deal with these mishaps rather than looking to point the finger and looking for sympathy from strangers. What I’m saying may not be what you want to hear, but it’s the truth and only putting you on on how to move better and deal with things better in life.
Good luck in the future, and sorry that it happened. <- is that better?
forgive me haha)
I’m using Fuelgram anyway and purchase real likes and comments from niche-related profiles, because I think it’s much better to grow followers organically instead of purchasing fake followers.
your blog post has zero facts or proof about how they scammed you, just seems to me that you have a personal issue.