Meltwater

Andrew from Camera Obscura (51 -100 Employees )

We used Meltwater's services for one year when we had one big news story. The results were interesting. But it was a one-off for us. Autorenewal came up during lockdown. Our business was closed and losing a lot of money. We'd cancelled everything we could. We missed the ambiguous email from Meltwater and tried to cancel a week into the two month cancellation period. Despite having no use for their services and no wish to continue they held us to the renewal at a cost of thousands of pounds, money we did not have. In the end the only way we got this bill reduced was to involve our lawyers. In 35 years of being in business I have never dealt with such an intransigent company. Caveat emptor.

Janine

I truly cannot express my dissatisfaction with Meltwater Group.
When I came into my company we were already using Meltwater to find reviews and press stories about my company which were then displayed on our website.
In the beginning things worked well, but over time publications have begun to lock away their news stories, requiring logins to view the information. As a result, we were left with a very expensive service that was rendering links to information our customers could not view.
When it came time to renew our contract we tried to cancel. The problem is that 60 days prior to the end of a contract you must submit in writing that you plan to cancel. Well 58 days prior to the end of the contract Nick, the Sales Manager in the DC offices, was still explaining our options to us, and failed to mention to cancellation policy deadline.
When I pointed out his failing Nick simply said that “normally he is on top of these things, but our deadline just slipped through the cracks because he was busy setting up his new office,” and he “was happy this had happened because it gave him a chance to show us what he could do for our company.”
We are currently in discussions with the main office to cancel our contract, but so far Meltwater is holding firm about the deadline. If Meltwater truly forces issue we are going to be left with THOUSANDS of dollars out a pocket for a service we do not want or that has any use to us.