Information and Alerts

Pattern of Complaints

On August 1, 2018, BBB recognized a pattern of complaints from consumers regarding customer service issues, billing or collection issues, and advertising issues.  Consumers allege that Alaska Web Service is not transparent regarding what qualifies for free posting to the online classifieds and that they are charged a fee to delete posts that have yet to be posted live.  Consumers claim that if they decline to pay to either post or delete the ad, that they are bombarded with emails requiring them to pay for one or the other.

On September 7, 2018, BBB received the following response, which has been excerpted due to its length:

We don't charge anyone whose ad we have published a fee to delete their ad. We provide an Ad Management Link to every user who posts on the Posting Success Page, which users can use to edit their ad and delete it anytime they want.

However, if a free user loses his Ad Management Link, or fails to save it, as instructed, then that user will be charged $1.89 to delete the ad when he is ready to remove the ad. We think this is more than fair, because not only did we edit their ad for free in order to bring it into compliance with our Publication Policies (i.e. perfect their title and reorient their pictures and ensure that it was posted to the right category), we are then forced to manually delete their ad from our database, notwithstanding their agreement with us that their advertisement at Alaska's List would be a self-service one.

Over 60% of all postings ever published at Alaska's List over the ten years that we have been in business were provided to the community free-of-charge. We have price limitations, as well as other limitations, that we impose on such charity, and posters are notified by the system whenever they post. For example some sections (take the Rentals category, for instance) mandate payment, and all categories impose a price limitation at the time of posting. About 30% of the time, posters will either ignore the payment directive and post without paying anyway, or they will attempt to subvert our posting facility, by various means such as putting a lower price than the limit in the PRICE field, while putting the actual price in the ad text itself. Should we not also charge these users $1.89 to delete their posts? Especially, given the provisions of our Terms of Use Agreement, and the fact that they basically committed an act of larceny against our business by doing such things.

As of September 20, 2018, the company has not responded to complaints filed with BBB.  

Alert

On August 24, 2020, Better Business Bureau
recognized a pattern of complaints from consumers regarding customer service
issues, billing or collection issues, and advertising issues. Consumers
allege they utilize Alaska Web Service to advertise items they are selling, but
further state Alaska Web Service is not transparent regarding what qualifies
for free posting to the online classifieds and they are charged a fee to delete
posts that have yet to be posted live. In some cases, customers that have
sold their items are billed to have their ad removed from the website.
Consumers allege management has been disrespectful towards them when they
challenge the imposed advertising fees and billing issues.

On August 24, 2020 and September 08, 2020,
Better Business Bureau reached out to Alaska Web Service for a response to the
consumer allegations, however as of September 22, 2020, the business has not
responded.

Consumers can file complaints with Better
Business Bureau at www.bbb.org, as well as
with the Alaska Department of Law Consumer Protection Unit at
http://law.alaska.gov/department/civil/consumer/cp_complaint.html